Dancing Around the Table, Part Two
1987 · 50m · Canada
Directed by Maurice Bulbulian
Genres: documentary, historical
Tones: contemplative, provocative
The 1985 constitutional conference becomes the final attempt to amend Indigenous rights, as premiers again refuse agreement despite public support for self-government.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 50-minute doc about a failed constitutional conference sounds like the most anesthetizing thing ever, but Bulbulian turns the machinery of political failure into something genuinely unsettling—the premise itself is the subversion, and it lands.
This sits squarely in the Canadian documentary lineage of political witness, and Bulbulian's formal restraint in capturing institutional paralysis becomes its own argument; the craft is in what he refuses to sensationalize.
The real move here is how Bulbulian structures temporal deadlock—the repeated refusals, the public support that changes nothing—into a rhythm that makes political inertia feel almost physical, a choice in pacing that transforms civics into cinema.