Firearms and Safety
1979 · 9m · Canada
Directed by Gilles Gascon, Marcel Sabourin
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative
Instructor Michel Pigeon demonstrates the only safe way to handle firearms, from cleaning and storage to hunting rules. He catalogues the accidents that occur whenever precautions are skipped.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A safety PSA that could've been a joke becomes genuinely unsettling—Gascon and Sabourin treat firearm pedagogy with the gravity of a Greek tragedy, turning precaution into something almost ritualistic and weird.
This NFB gem understands the language of institutional film: how repetition, measured pacing, and Michel Pigeon's measured instruction accumulate into a portrait of discipline itself, situating the short within a lineage of Canadian documentary didacticism that's formally rigorous and morally deliberate.
The decision to let Pigeon's voice and the actual accidents speak without manipulation—no scare-tactic scoring, just footage of consequence—makes every moment of prevention feel consequential; it's a film that trusts restraint to do the work.