Eye Witness No. 68
1954 · 10m · Canada
Directed by Walford Hewitson, Douglas Wilkinson, Peter Jones
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative
Canadian authors Morley Callaghan, Hugh MacLennan, Gabrielle Roy, and Roger Lemelin are shown at work as a book comes into being. Pond Inlet Inuit mine surface coal on Baffin Island, and Kingston dispatch riders perform motorcycle stunts.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Three directors wrestling a mid-century NFB documentary into shape—it's formally schizophrenic in the best way, cutting between Canadian literati and Inuit miners like it's discovering montage for the first time, which makes the whole thing feel less like propaganda and more like someone accidentally breaking their own film.
A pristine example of the National Film Board's documentary tradition at its most ambitious: the formal architecture of parallel lives (writer, worker, performer) examined through disciplined editing and contemplative framing that trusts the viewer to hold multiple narratives in suspension.
The decision to intercut intimate scenes of authors at their desks with Baffin Island coal miners and stunt riders isn't just ambitious—it's the entire film, and the three-director approach somehow crystallizes rather than fragments the vision, creating rhythm where there could have been chaos.