Terra Nova
1964 · 18m · Canada
Directed by Roger Blais
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative
This impressionistic documentary surveys Newfoundland in the 1960s, moving between historic sites, offshore fishing and squid jigging, underground mining, and the pulp and paper industry, all shaped by the sea.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 1964 NFB doc about Newfoundland fishing and mining sounds like the most conventional regional survey imaginable—and honestly, it probably is, which is why I'm not touching it.
Blais builds a formally rigorous portrait of Newfoundland's relationship to labor and landscape through deliberate montage; this is essential mid-century Canadian documentary work that understands how editing itself becomes argument about place and tradition.
The decision to let the sea's rhythm dictate the pacing rather than impose voiceover hierarchy—letting squid jigging and mining sequences breathe at their own tempo—transforms what could've been institutional documentation into something genuinely intimate.