Mount Currie Summer Camp
1975 · 5m · Canada
Directed by Alanis Obomsawin
Genres: documentary, family, historical
Tones: contemplative, tender, whimsical
Stl'atl'imx (Líl̓wat) children and youth carry out daily duties at their community summer camp outside Mount Currie, B.C., in playful portraits of togetherness and pride.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone wants to canonize Obomsawin as a serious documentarian, but this five-minute pocket film—kids just *being* at camp, no crisis narrative, no white savior arc—is almost too subtle to be subversive; it refuses the redemption story you expect and that's its quiet power.
Obomsawin's formal restraint here is masterful—the observational pacing, the refusal to sentimentalize Indigenous childhood, the way tender moments arrive through editing rather than manipulation—situates this squarely in a lineage of ethical documentary practice that demands close looking.
The decision to let the camera simply *stay* with these kids—no explanatory voice-over, no score, just the texture of their play and work—trusts the audience completely and makes every small gesture (a laugh, a task completed) feel earned and specific rather than illustrative.