O Canada #1: National Anthem: "With Glowing Hearts"
1979 · 1m · Canada
Directed by Ted Remerowski
Genres: documentary, musical
Tones: contemplative, tender
A rendition of the Canadian national anthem arranged for the 1976 Olympics accompanies a coast-to-coast visual celebration of Canada.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A state-sanctioned hymn set to tourism footage—it's the kind of earnest nationalism that should bore me senseless, but Remerowski's refusal to ironize it, to wink at the camera, somehow becomes its own weird provocation in 1979.
A formally restrained meditation on collective identity and landscape, situated squarely in the NFB's documentary tradition; the economy of the one-minute form sharpens every compositional choice into something genuinely moving rather than propagandistic.
The entire film hinges on trusting the anthem arrangement itself—stripped of orchestral bombast, it becomes almost fragile—and Remerowski's decision to let the music carry the emotional weight rather than manufacture sentiment through montage is what transforms a civic commission into something tender.