La Québécoise
1972 · 27m · Canada
Directed by Les Nirenberg
Genres: documentary, essay film
Tones: contemplative, provocative
Feminists join a nun, Judge Réjane Colas, Senator Thérèse Casgrain, and a Playboy bunny to discuss legal gains, new career openings, and the unfinished fight for equality in Québec.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 1972 doc that rounds up feminists, nuns, judges, AND a Playboy bunny to debate equality sounds like it should be a mess—but the real subversion is how seriously it takes every voice in the room without winking at the contradiction.
Les Nirenberg positions this essay within the Québécois documentary tradition while engaging the formal problem of how to stage genuine ideological disagreement on film; the intelligence is in the composition of that panel itself, how each voice becomes a formal element.
What makes this work isn't the premise but the decision to let the Playboy bunny speak with the same gravity as the senator—that single casting choice dissolves the easy moral hierarchy and forces the film to actually listen rather than judge.