Tracker
1974 · 11m · Canada
Directed by Kent Nason
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative
Seen from the cockpit of a VS880 Tracker based in Shearwater, Nova Scotia, this documentary follows peacetime patrols over Atlantic and Arctic waters that watch for illegal incursions, pollution and threats to Canadian sovereignty.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 50-year-old NFB doc about military surveillance sounds like the opposite of subversive, but Nason's refusal to editorializes—just cockpit monotony and open water—makes the banality of state power weirdly more unsettling than any polemic could.
Tracker sits comfortably within the observational documentary tradition, but its restraint is exemplary: the formal constraint of the cockpit POV, the measured pacing, the trust in viewers to find meaning in repetition and vastness—this is craft aware of its own lineage.
The decision to anchor the entire film inside the aircraft's frame, letting the viewer experience surveillance as pure, unbroken observation rather than cutting to aftermath or threat, transforms a government document into something formally hypnotic on a shoestring.