Women on the March
1958 · 58m · Canada
Directed by Douglas Tunstell
Genres: biography, documentary, historical
Tones: contemplative, provocative
This documentary traces the militant campaign for women's suffrage led by figures such as Emmeline Pankhurst, following protests and imprisonments in Britain and Canada until voting rights were won in 1918 and 1919.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 1958 NFB doc about suffrage is exactly the kind of canonical feminist history everyone expects to be reverent and dull—except Tunstell threads the needle between militant rage and formal restraint in a way that makes you genuinely unsure whose side the film is on, which is precisely why it matters.
Tunstell situates this film squarely in the tradition of activist documentary while maintaining a disciplined formal distance; the editing rhythms and archival restraint feel in conversation with both the British documentary movement and the NFB's own social mission, making it a masterclass in how to honor a lineage without genuflecting to it.
The single choice here is sound design—the way Tunstell layers period voices and protest noise against silent-era footage creates a temporal collision that shouldn't work on a mid-century budget but does, suddenly making the archive feel present and urgent rather than safely historical.