Making Movie History: Roger Racine
2013 · 5m · Canada
Directed by Denys Desjardins
Genres: biography, documentary, historical
Tones: contemplative, tender
Cinematographer Roger Racine, the first francophone camera operator at the NFB, is profiled from his 1942 hiring and work with Boris Kaufman through directing at Radio-Canada and founding his own production company.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A straight archival biography of a cinematographer? Pass — unless Desjardins does something formally weird with the footage, but five minutes of respectful NFB house-history doesn't exactly scream subversion.
A meticulously constructed portrait of a founding figure in Québécois cinema, situating Racine within the lineage of NFB practice and mid-century documentary craft — the kind of film that knows exactly what tradition it's honoring and why that lineage matters.
The decision to let Racine's actual camera work speak through archival material rather than lean on talking-head testimony is economical and elegant, collapsing subject and medium into a single gesture that a bigger budget would've cheapened.