The Question of Television Violence
1972 · 56m · Canada
Directed by Graeme Ferguson
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative, provocative
An NFB crew records four days of U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Communications hearings in Washington on television violence, where networks, the Surgeon General, scientists and parent groups debate evidence linking screen violence to real-life behaviour.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Fifty-six minutes of Senate testimony sounds like punishment, but Ferguson's refusal to editorialise—letting the contradiction between networks and scientists hang in the air—is weirdly radical for 1972 documentary. The subversive move here is trusting the audience to find the argument unsettling.
A masterclass in observational restraint: Ferguson positions the camera as witness rather than advocate, allowing the formal architecture of the hearing itself to become the film's argument. This sits in a deliberate lineage with Wiseman's procedural documentaries, where institutional structure IS the subject.
The decision to film the hearing almost untouched—minimal narration, no dramatic scoring, just the texture of voices and the spatial grammar of the room—turns bureaucratic footage into something genuinely tense; that restraint is what makes you actually listen to what's being argued.