Like Emily Carr
2005 · 10m · Canada
Directed by Jane Churchill
Genres: documentary, essay film, family
Tones: contemplative, tender
Children study Emily Carr's haunting landscapes and the natural world that inspired her, then use that inspiration to create a large forest mural on their school window.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's a children's documentary about studying a canonical painter and then making art—basically the most well-intentioned, consensus-approved premise possible, and it commits to that earnestness without a single subversive bone in its body.
Churchill's essay-film structure, moving from Carr's archival landscapes to children's lived encounter with both painting and nature, demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of how aesthetic tradition transmits through generations—the window mural becomes both artwork and threshold between art history and lived experience.
The decision to frame the children's creative process through direct visual dialogue with Carr's work, rather than narration or instruction, trusts the viewer to witness how looking *at* something changes how you *make* something—that's the film's real architecture.