The Longhouse People
1951 · 23m · Canada
Directed by Allan Wargon
Genres: documentary, historical
Tones: contemplative, mythic
Daily life, rites and rituals of the Longhouse People in 1951 are shown, including a rain dance, a healing ceremony and the selection of a new chief.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 1951 NFB doc treating Indigenous ceremony with straight reverence instead of irony or deconstruction—precisely the kind of earnest, archival approach that makes most people skip ahead, which is exactly why it's interesting to sit with.
Wargon's 23 minutes exemplify the NFB's documentary tradition at its most disciplined: observational framing that lets ritual unfold without commentary, formal restraint that trusts the viewer to absorb myth through sustained attention rather than exposition.
The decision to hold on the faces during the healing ceremony—letting the camera stay still while emotional and spiritual work happens in the frame—is what transforms this from archival footage into something that actually *feels* like witnessing rather than watching.