Our Street Was Paved with Gold
1973 · 28m · Canada
Directed by Albert Kish
Genres: documentary, essay film
Tones: contemplative, tender
Montreal's St. Lawrence Boulevard, known as the Main, is revisited as a small-scale Europe of many languages, foods and everyday courtesies that make strangers feel at home.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 1973 love letter to immigrant Montreal sounds like the safest documentary premise imaginable, but Kish's refusal to sentimentalize or explain—just *watch the Main breathe*—is quietly radical; it's anti-consensus filmmaking masquerading as a postcard.
This sits perfectly in the essay-film lineage of city portraiture (Marker, Vigo), where formal restraint and durational observation become an argument about community; the craft is in what Kish chose *not* to say, and how the montage speaks in the language of the street itself.
The decisive move here is audio—letting the polyglot murmur of the Main become the soundtrack rather than underscoring it, which transforms a modest 28 minutes into an immersive act of listening that no bigger budget could improve.