Through These Eyes
2004 · 55m · Canada
Directed by Charles Laird
Genres: documentary, historical
Tones: contemplative, provocative
This documentary revisits the 1970s MACOS school program, which used NFB films of Netsilik Inuit life to teach American children about society, and the national backlash its frank images provoked.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Most people see this as a straightforward archive film—look, controversial pedagogy, look, cultural sensitivity—but Laird's actually asking something weirder: what does it mean that we taught American kids about *real* Inuit life through *constructed* NFB ethnography, then got mad about the construction? It's a Trojan horse about representation eating itself.
A masterclass in documentary restraint: Laird lets the MACOS archive speak for itself while the backlash unfolds in testimony, constructing a genealogy of how we've cycled through shame about our own educational materials—the editing rhythm between footage and response feels almost liturgical, situating this firmly in the lineage of essay films that interrogate institutional memory.
The decision to hold on the original MACOS footage without defensive framing—to let viewers experience the exact discomfort that sparked the 1970s firestorm—does more with archival restraint than any voiceover could; it's a single formal choice that transforms the whole thing from media criticism into something genuinely unsettling.