Watch City Out of Time, A Short Tribute to Venice, Narrated by William Shatner in 1959

Last month, Cana­da lost one of its impor­tant film­mak­ers, Col­in Low. Over a career span­ning six decades, Low worked on over 200 pro­duc­tions at the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da. He won count­less awards, includ­ing two Short Film Palme d’Or awards at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val. His work inspired oth­er soon-to-be-influ­en­tial film­mak­ers, like Ken Burns and Stan­ley Kubrick. And he helped pio­neer the giant-screen IMAX for­mat.

Above you can watch City Out of Time, Low’s short trib­ute to Venice. The 1959 film, writes the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da, “depicts Venice in all its splen­dor. In the tra­di­tion of Venet­ian painter Canalet­to, the film cap­tures the great Ital­ian city’s elu­sive beau­ty and fabled land­scapes, where spired church­es and tur­ret­ed palaces soar into a blue Mediter­ranean sky.” The film also fea­tures a nar­ra­tion by a young William Shat­ner, then only 28 years old, whose voice sounds noth­ing like the one we’d hear sev­er­al years lat­er in Star Trek, nev­er mind those unfor­get­table spo­ken-word albums he start­ed releas­ing in the late 1960s.

City Out of Time will be added to our list of Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

The sec­ond film on the page is Low’s 1952 ani­ma­tion, The Romance of Trans­porta­tion in Cana­da, which won a Short Film Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William Shat­ner Nar­rates Space Shut­tle Doc­u­men­tary

Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da Launch­es Free iPad App

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Venice (Its Streets, Plazas & Canals) with Google Street View

A Short His­to­ry of the Venice Bien­nale, the World’s Most Impor­tant Art Exhi­bi­tion