Wildlife in the Rockies
1957 · 13m · Canada
Directed by William H. Carrick
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative
Close-up cameras observe the deer, moose, bears, bighorn sheep, birds and small alpine animals living in Banff and Jasper National Parks, where years of conservation have turned the Rockies into a vast natural zoo.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 1957 nature doc about a national park zoo? Sounds like the safest possible premise—except Carrick's actually saying something darker about conservation turning wilderness into spectacle, which is genuinely unsettling if you're paying attention, but most people won't be.
Carrick's work here sits squarely in the NFB's documentary tradition of measured observation and formal composition; the close-up camera work demonstrates a considered aesthetic choice that elevates what could be simple nature footage into something architecturally deliberate about how we frame and consume the wild.
The decision to stay intimate—those close-ups refusing the landscape's grandeur in favor of animal eyes and small movements—transforms what could've been a postcard into something that actually makes you *see* instead of just look.