New Romance (Aspects of Sexuality and Sexual Roles)
1975 · 34m · Canada
Directed by Janet Walczewski, Susan Gabori
Genres: documentary, essay film, LGBTQ+
Tones: contemplative, provocative
People in heterosexual and homosexual relationships describe the problems in their lives and the choices they make, raising questions about society's acceptance of those who think and live differently.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 1975 doc about relationship dysfunction sounds like PBS pablum, but Walczewski and Gabori weaponize the essay form to interrogate sexual roles head-on—it's didactic in the best way, refusing easy answers and making the audience complicit in the discomfort.
This is canonical essayistic documentary work: formally considered, situated squarely in the lineage of structural filmmaking and social inquiry that defined NFB practice in the seventies, with the formal restraint to let contradictory testimonies speak rather than resolve.
The entire film hinges on the decision to let these voices overlap and interrupt each other—no neat editing, no resolution—which transforms a straightforward interview project into something unsettling that actually models the conversational chaos of lived experience.