Now Is the Time
2019 · 16m · Canada
Directed by Christopher Auchter
Genres: biography, documentary, historical
Tones: contemplative, mythic, tender
On the 50th anniversary of a historic totem-pole raising, Haida filmmaker Christopher Auchter revisits the 1969 day that signaled the rebirth of the Haida spirit.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 16-minute love letter to cultural restoration should bore me, but Auchter's refusal to sentimentalize the 1969 moment—letting the archive breathe without commentary—is genuinely subversive documentary work that trusts the viewer to feel without being told.
Auchter positions this commemorative film within a lineage of Indigenous cinema and historical documentary that privileges witnessing over explanation; the formal restraint—how the 50-year frame becomes both temporal and spiritual architecture—marks this as work deeply aware of its own curatorial responsibility.
The decision to interweave present-day reflection with archival footage without obvious transition points creates a kind of temporal collapse that lets 1969 and now occupy the same emotional space, and that single formal choice elevates what could have been a straightforward anniversary document into something mythic.