Turn of the Century
1964 · 28m · Canada
Genres: documentary, historical
Tones: contemplative, humorous
Using old photographs and silent film footage, this documentary surveys Canada at the end of the 19th century, contrasting the fashions, politics, technologies and cultural trends of that turn of the century with the present.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 1964 doc that uses archival material to do the most obvious thing possible—compare then and now—feels like exactly the kind of consensus-friendly essay nobody needs to revisit, even if the juxtaposition occasionally lands a wry joke.
This is precisely the kind of formal essay-documentary that sits comfortably in the NFB lineage: measured, structurally elegant in its symmetries, and genuinely interested in how photographs and silent footage can be orchestrated to make an argument about temporal distance and cultural change.
The real lift here is the editing rhythm that lets still photographs breathe alongside motion footage—there's a deliberate pacing choice that makes the contrast between static and moving image do the conceptual work rather than voice-over telling you what to think.