Coppermine
1992 · 55m · Canada
Directed by Ray Harper
Genres: documentary, historical
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
Doctor R. D. Martin arrives in Coppermine in 1929 to confront a tuberculosis epidemic among the Copper Inuit, one consequence of recent contact with outsiders.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 1992 NFB doc about a doctor fighting TB in the Arctic doesn't scream subversive, but Harper's refusal to make this a heroic narrative—the ambiguity of 'contact' as both salvation and catastrophe—quietly dismantles the missionary myth most people expect.
Coppermine sits firmly in the documentary-as-witness tradition, but its formal restraint and melancholic pacing—letting the historical contradiction breathe without resolving it—align it with the most rigorous archival essays; it's the kind of 55 minutes that deepens on second viewing.
The film's power lives in Harper's decision to let silence and still frames do the epidemiological work instead of voiceover exposition—a single choice that transforms what could've been a medical history lesson into something genuinely haunting about complicity.