Here's Hockey!
1953 · 10m · Canada
Directed by Leslie McFarlane
Genres: documentary, sports
Tones: humorous
From peewee leagues to the pros with Jean Béliveau, Canadian players and fans illustrate the skills and devotion behind the national game.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 1953 NFB doc about hockey—the most Canadian, consensus-approved subject imaginable—should be a snooze, but McFarlane's refusal to sentimentalize the sport, instead finding humor in its mundane devotion, is a sly middle finger to the hagiography everyone expects.
McFarlane's structural economy—moving from peewee to pro without condescension, letting the game's architecture reveal itself through observational rhythm—sits perfectly in the NFB's documentary tradition of formal clarity; this is craft aware of its own lineage.
The film's real coup is letting the *players themselves* articulate skill through movement rather than voice-over; that editorial restraint—trusting the body to speak—turns a sports doc into something genuinely intimate.