Little Burgundy
1969 · 30m · Canada
Directed by Bonnie Sherr Klein, Maurice Bulbulian
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative
Residents of Montreal's Little Burgundy district organize a citizens' committee to represent their interests when their neighbourhood faces demolition for new housing.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone wants to canonize this as some noble community-action doc, but Klein and Bulbulian are doing something weirder—they're interrogating the documentary form itself, letting the messiness of democracy resist neat narrative closure, which most cinema verité zealots would never allow.
A foundational example of engaged documentary practice that sits in direct dialogue with Grierson and the NFB's social mandate, yet Klein's observational eye and the film's refusal of easy resolution mark a decisive formal evolution in how cinema can bear witness to institutional power.
The decision to foreground the residents' own voices and meeting rhythms—rather than imposing a filmmaking perspective onto their struggle—creates an intimacy and authenticity that makes every moment of hesitation and disagreement feel earned and essential.