Best Documentary Movies of 1958

Spatiodynamisme is six-minute silent color 16mm record of Nicolas Schöffer’s interactive robotic sculpture, CYSP 1, which reacted in unpredictable ways to light and color.

A fabulous new adventure in exciting entertainment.

The journey suggested by the title is through time rather than space. In fact, two such journeys are made: the first back to the eighteenth century to pay tribute to the work of the pioneering naturalist and ornithologist Gilbert White (1720-1793), and the second studies the changing natural landscape near White's home town of Selborne in Hampshire between a typical March and May.

This short documentary depicts Christmastime in Montreal. The milling crowds, department store Santas, Brink's messengers, kindergarten angels and boisterous nightclubs all combine to make a vivid portrait of the holidays.

Film of the expedition.

Adaptation of Martin Armstrong's poem about an elderly lady who becomes perturbed by something we can't see. It becomes apparent that she is looking for her past, lost in a memory or the clutches of nostalgia. Miss Thompson's shopping trip to town is in chaotic contrast to the tranquil nature of her lonely home, which on return seems like paradise.

This film observes, in a Montréal public school, the teaching of English to immigrant children. To thousands of children arriving in Canada from Greece, Italy, France, Germany or Japan, English is "a foreign language." Under able coaching they begin to understand and even enjoy the vagaries of the English language.

An attempt to recapture the magic of childhood as the cameras follow children at play.

Documentary film recounting the travels of Captain Hassoldt Davis and his wife, Ruth Staudinger Davis, across the Ivory Coast. The Davises filmed their exploits, seeking out in particular evidence of the beginnings and native practices of witchcraft and sorcery, and culminating in a visit to the village of YHO, ostensibly a village of sorcerers.