Film Screenings / Programs / Series
QUEBEC-CORE
April 5 – April 19
“I had to come back to Montreal. I have total disrespect for Hollywood, it still makes my hair stand on end. Yukk. They’re all creepos.” –Micheline Lanctôt, 1984
Lanctôt, who has directed thirteen features and starred in countless more, is one of the filmmakers showcased in our spring film series, “Quebec-Core”, which represents a dazzling dive into the “French Canadian New Wave”, a vital cinematic movement that’s virtually unknown in the U.S. even as it’s distinctly NORTH American.
The series calls attention to several extraordinary filmmakers who are likely to be more or less unfamiliar to most audiences south of the border, including Mireille Dansereau, Francis Mankiewicz, Pierre Falardeau, Julien Poulin, and Micheline Lanctôt, and includes mini-spotlights on Robert Morin and André Forcier, two extraordinary filmmakers who have operated at a furious pace right up to the present day. All the directors selected emerged from vastly different backgrounds but are united by their shared need to probe the depths of Quebecois identity.
The role of the outsider takes supreme, constant, and hypnotic importance in this ragtag assembly. The ghostly bond of two lonely souls living out their final days in a car outside a Montreal bowling alley; a heart wrenching countryside tragedy caused by a daughter’s brutal desperation for her mother’s affection; vitriolic alienation pulsing through the walls of an apartment of desperate junkies; a disabled adult at last breaking free from the diminished expectations of his suffocating suburban parents. Through all of them runs a constant howl, the whispers of strangers and interlopers and those who feel discarded both socially and existentially. The kind of thing you hear in an alley, muffled voices on the street corner or a scrawled treatise on a roadside bathroom wall. A cry for understanding and compassion, and a call to be seen. We bring you, the “French Canadian New Wave”.
Guest-programmed by Luke Rathborne & Sean Price Williams.
André Forcier and his writing and producing partner Linda Pinet will be here in person from Tuesday-Thursday, April 9-11, and Robert Morin will be here in person on Thursday & Friday, April 18 & 19!
There will be a reception in honor of André Forcier and Linda Pinet on Tuesday, April 9, following the 6:45 screening of BAR SALON. And on Thursday, April 18, there will be another reception, in honor of Robert Morin, following the 7:15 screening of SCALE MODEL SADNESS. Both receptions are made possible thanks to the Québec Government Office in New York.
Presented with invaluable support from the Délégation générale du Québec à New York / Québec Government Office in New York, and from the Conseil des arts de Longueuil. Special thanks to Jean-Pierre Dion, Director Cultural Services, Québec Government Office in New York.
Special thanks as well to André Forcier; Robert Morin; Keith Bennie (Toronto International Film Festival); Sarah-Nicole Bolduc (Christal Films Productions); Marc Daigle (ACPAV); Dominique Dugas & Pascal Laplante (Éléphant: mémoire du cinéma québécois); Mathilde Fauteux & Joseph Rozenkopf (Vidéographe); Isabelle Gingras (Films Seville); Melissa Haughton (National Film Board of Canada); Guillaume Lafleur & Jean-Philippe Tremblay (Cinémathèque québécoise); Anne-Julie Lalande (Filmoption International); David Lavoie (MELS Studios); Léa Marinova (Coop Vidéo de Montréal); David Marriott (Canadian International Pictures); and Linda Pinet (Les Films du Paria).
