Directivity
1960 · 12m · Canada
Directed by René Jodoin
Genres: animation, documentary
Tones: contemplative
Colour animation illustrates how antennas propagate radio waves and how their designs can increase the directivity of transmissions.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Look, a 12-minute NFB explainer about antenna directionality sounds like the opposite of cinema—and yet Jodoin somehow makes the propagation of invisible radio waves *urgent*, which means he's either a genius or this film shouldn't work at all, and I'm genuinely unsure which.
Jodoin positions this within the exemplary tradition of scientific animation as formal inquiry—where the pedagogical rigor and the aesthetic precision are inseparable—and the result is a film that understands how colour, rhythm, and geometry can render the abstract visible without condescension.
The decision to animate directionality as a *visual shape* rather than explain it verbally transforms what could be dry technical content into something almost poetic; it's the kind of formal problem-solving that proves constraint breeds invention.