Percé on the Rocks
1964 · 9m · Canada
Directed by Gilles Carle
Genres: animation, documentary, experimental
Percé Rock, the pierced landmark off Quebec's Gaspé coast, becomes the subject of a playful experimental portrait mixing animation, visual tricks and three female presenters.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 1964 experimental documentary that treats a geological monument like a vaudeville stage—it's too earnest in its playfulness to be truly subversive, and the three-presenter gimmick feels more like mid-century public broadcasting than the genre-bending premise promises.
Carle's early essay situates itself squarely in the post-war experimental documentary tradition, where animation and live action collide in service of formal inquiry; the female presenters as narrators stake out a curious gender politics that rewards close attention to how the film positions the gaze.
The decision to layer three distinct female voices over fragmentary animation and landscape footage creates a rhythmic friction that keeps you uncertain whether you're watching documentary or pure visual composition—that ambiguity, held throughout, is what makes the modest runtime feel expansive.