Shooting Stars
1987 · 49m · Canada
Directed by Allan Stein
Genres: documentary, historical, sports
Tones: contemplative, theatrical
From 1915 to 1940, Edmonton's Grads women's basketball squad dominates Canadian, North American and world competition, amassing 502 victories while challenging limits placed on female athletes of the era.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A sports doc about a women's basketball team from 1915–1940 sounds like the safest premise imaginable, but Stein resists the obvious triumph narrative—instead treating the archive itself as a kind of performance, letting the constraints of the era speak louder than any voice-over could.
Shooting Stars understands its place in the lineage of both archival cinema and feminist sports historiography, deploying found footage and theatrical staging with the precision of someone who knows exactly what the formal tradition allows her to say about bodies, labor, and historical erasure.
The choice to interweave theatrical sequences with grainy archival material—not as illustration, but as genuine montage—transforms what could be a straightforward heritage film into something tactile and urgent, forcing the viewer to feel the gap between documentation and presence.