Mobility
1986 · 36m · Canada
Directed by Roger Hart
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative
Urban transport in developing countries is examined through cost, available technology, and the differing needs of the middle class and urban poor, leading to surprising proposed solutions.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 1986 documentary about bus routes and tricycle economics shouldn't be subversive, but Hart's refusal to patronize or fetishize poverty while dismantling Western transport assumptions does something genuinely contrarian—it makes infrastructure *interesting* by treating it as a problem developing countries already solved.
Hart positions this within the documentary lineage of systems-thinking cinema—Wiseman's procedural rigor meets the policy-film tradition—and the formal restraint (letting observation accumulate rather than editorial flourish) sits it firmly alongside the considered nonfiction that endures at serious festivals.
The crucial move is Hart's decision to let the people *already using* these systems explain the logic rather than impose external frameworks—that single choice shifts this from sociology lecture to genuine inquiry, and it's where the whole film's authority lives.