Canada

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Early accolades can be a curse to an artist’s career. Directors whose first features meet with critical hallelujahs are often harshly scrutinized for subsequent efforts. Few debuts have enjoyed the delirious reception afforded Xavier Dolan’s J’ai tué ma mère. Dolans second film, Les amours imaginaires, one of the most eagerly anticipated films to emerge from Quebec in some time, is an exhilarating exception to the sophomore jinx. It’s as good as its predecessor – maybe even better – and best of all it is radically different.

Les amours imaginaires centres on two fast friends: Marie (Monia Chokri), a supremely confident and sexually aggressive combination of Bette Davis, Carmen Maura and Anna Karina; and the cherubic, acerbic Francis (Dolan), who has managed to manoeuvre through multiple affairs without ever getting too attached. Like the aristocrats of Dangerous Liaisons transported to contemporary Montreal, Marie and Francis spend their time being fabulous, condescending and bitchy.Read More »

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The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches (orig French La petite fille qui aimait trop les allumettes) is a novel by Canadian novelist Gaétan Soucy.

La petite fille qui aimait trop les allumettes was one of the novels chosen for inclusion in the French version of Canada Reads, broadcast on Radio-Canada in 2004, where it was championed by actor, film director, screenwriter, and musician Micheline Lanctôt.

La petite fille qui aimait trop les allumettes caused a sensation in Quebec and was immediately translated into more than ten languages. It was translated into English as The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches by Sheila Fischman.Read More »

In July 1937 the Japanese Imperial Army, which already controlled a large section of northeastern China, launched an undeclared war against the Republic of China. Five months later, on December 13, its troops entered the capital city of Nanking and began raping and murdering its citizens in an orgy of violence that has few parallels in modern history.

Tens of thousands of Chinese prisoners-of-war were machine gunned en masse. An estimated 20,000 women were raped. Countless defenseless civilians; men, women and children were killed on the streets or in their homes. A British reporter who was on the scene compared the Japanese troops to Attila and the Huns. Writer George Will described the mass slaughter, which became known as “The Rape of Nanking” as “perhaps the most appalling single episode of barbarism in a century replete with horror.”Read More »

Review
‘A vivid series of insights into the little-known world of Muslim Asian cinemas, where issues of gender and religion come harshly together, where women’s lives and sufferings are a constant focus for male directors, but where – outside Iran – there is next to no scope for women directors to express their views. This excellent book – lucidly written, and based on close firsthand experience – is highly recommended to all who want to understand the realities of world cinema.’ Roy Armes, Emeritus Professor of Film, Middlesex University, LondonRead More »

A young junior hockey player’s life is shattered by an in-game act of violence. In an instant his life is abruptly turned upside down; torn from the fraternity of the team and the coinciding position of prominence, he is cast as a pariah and ostracized from the community.

Canada is amidst a renaissance of refreshing movies by a new wave of directors. Told with a bold disaffected style recalling Michael Haneke, this debut is at the forefront. Hello Destroyer is an intimate portrait of a young hockey player and an incisive reflection on institutionalized violence.Read More »

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The story of a Machiavellian plan hatched by a money-grubbing stepmother to push aside the young lover of her stepdaughter whom she wants to marry a wealthy idiot. The woman devises the most abominable machinations to achieve her ends, going as far as to try and murder her own husband. This melodrama in which evil attempts to prevail over love was adapted from the play THE SPIRIT OF EVIL by Quebec’s prolific playwright of the 40s and 50s Henri Deyglun.Read More »

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Forty-year old Abel travels to France from Quebec on a pilgrimage to explore the mother country and the land of his ancestors. As he travels around and does all the things tourists are supposed to do, his expectations and perceptions are shattered and he is forced to revise his romanticized image of France. As he travels to see the places where Rimbaud was born, lived, and died, he meets two women who show him the warmth and kindness he was searching for.Read More »

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This film, a kind of sketch, is directed with total freedom, without any concession to any kind of censorship. It seeks to remind the viewer that voyeurism stems from the way we look at things and human beings, not from the things and human beings themselves.Read More »

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Described as a cross between a “speech” and a “fireworks display.” A magician-like figure delivers a peculiar speech that is embedded in extravagant arrays of time-delayed images that reflect and refract ideas about memory, time and language. By embedding his gestures in a spectacular diachronic array, Peter Rose has created a new form of kinetic poetry.Read More »