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Bernard Émond is a veteran documentary filmmaker whose powerful work tends to address themes of loss, memory and the possibility of capturing fragments of truth. La femme qui boit, his stylish and finely acted debut narrative feature, is distinguished by a spectacular performance from Élise Guilbault in the title role and depicts the pain and confusion of a woman’s ruin after years of alcohol abuse.Read More »
Renowned novelist Georges Guérin is out of inspiration to finish his next novel. One day, at a café, a young woman named Daisy recognizes him and they start a conversation. She says she’s a whore and makes such a story of her own life that she becomes the plot for his next novel, expected of all – especially Guillaume Lanctôt, his publisher. As the writing progresses, the relationship between them becomes more and more tender…Read More »
1er amour (2013)
Antoine, 13, spends the summer vacation with his parents in a rented cottage on an island in the middle of the Saint-Lawrence River. His neighbour, 17-year-old Anna, is an enigmatic and lively young woman. Antoine begins to experience the first stirrings of love-which soon yield a troubling brew of anxiety, desire and obsession. He eventually comes across a terrible secret that will forever change his life.Read More »
Double Happiness (1994). Jade is a twenty-something Chinese-Canadian struggling actress. But she is caught between two worlds — traditional and modern — and this is affecting important aspects of her life, from the men she dates to how she fares at auditions. In terms of men, Jade reluctantly satisfies her parents’ old world standards by letting them choose her dates, and even letting them decide how she’ll look when she goes out. But on the sly, Jade’s modern attitudes are reflected in the motorcycle jackets she wears, and her involvement in an interracial relationship. Meanwhile, on auditions, Jade would prefer to play non-“Asian“ characters, but nonetheless finds herself being typecast at every turn. How will Jade rectify the dichotomies that are affecting her life — without losing her family?Read More »
We don’t see the woman on the train moving through Sichuan, just the trees, rivers, lakes and houses passing by the window, vanishing behind the blur of vegetation, segmented by the tunnels.Read More »
Fictional character played by 24 different actresses, Françoise Durocher is altogether small time waitress, hostess and barmaid. Together, according to the author, they represent the archetypical Québec waitress that everyday waits on us with a smile, despite whatever problems she faces in her personal life. First cinematographic experience of the André Brassard-Michel Tremblay tandem, this film full of ironic joy details all the nuances of the waitress living conditions.Read More »
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One of the most controversial films in Canadian history, On est au coton is an examination of the exploitation and repression of textile workers in Quebec. This National Film Board production, more social inquiry than documentary, contrasts the lives of textile workers and their bosses and places their situation in an historical context by employing footage from old films about the industry. (The title is a pun which literally means “we are in cotton,” but it also connotes “we are fed up.”)Read More »
This film contains illusions of distances, durations, degrees, divisions of antipathies, polarities, likenesses, complements, desires. Acceleration of absence to presence. Scales of Art – Lift, setting-subject, mind body, country city pivot. Simultaneous silence and sound, one and all. Arc of excitement, night and daylight. Aide. side then back then front. Imagined and Real. Gradual, racial, philosophical kiss.Read More »
Standard Time is 8 minutes and feels, hypnotically, like a time-less segment fragment of life.(Life-physical movement in a space/time enclosure). The camera swivels (pans) left to right, over and over again, then tilts, up and down, over and over again establishing movement as such as the given conditions of perception and existence. This suspended tension of being holds for both the cameraman and the spaces/walls/objects/(people?)…The film establishes each viewer’s autonomous sense of self. The bombarding impulses, through the ‘repeated’ pans/tilts, permit (for each viewer, each time) different moments of reality to become relevant, exciting etc. The speed at which the camera sees the given visually creates frustration at not being able to hold (the) experience, to pattern it in a conventional manner. Michael Snow’s film activates one’s internal mechanisms for grasping, (idiosyncratically, in time), the substances one is faced with, a negates objective experience once and for all. In terms of the politics of experience and human consciousness, few films could be less fascist. Standard Time is also a beautiful ‘8’ minutes. – Peter Gidal.Read More »