Online cinema
Oscar
Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre
Brilliantly mixing animated sequences and archival footage, Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre paints a touching portrait of virtuoso pianist Oscar Peterson. As with her previous films (McLaren’s Negative and Jutra), Saint-Pierre pursues her bold and personal approach with this animated documentary of Oscar Peterson at the twilight of an exceptional career, as he wistfully meditates on the price of fame and the impacts of the artist’s life on family life. From the young prodigy’s beginnings in Little Burgundy to his triumphs on the international stage alongside the biggest stars of his time, Oscar explores the profound solitude of an artist constantly on tour, and the difficulty in reconciling his professional success with his role as husband and father. Set to the tunes of Peterson’s sometimes catchy, sometimes melancholy-tinged compositions, the film alternates between animated sequences and footage of radio and video interviews to tell a heartfelt story about a life in jazz.
Le rire et la liberté d’expression sont parmi les plus belles conquêtes de l’humanité
Abeille Tard
A short animated film about freedom of expression in the style of a contemporary western.
Québec, lieu de passage
Martine Asselin
Québec, ville ouverte sur le monde, tolérante et chaleureuse? Malgré les apparences, la situation est loin d’être idéale, surtout pour les minorités. Peur, préjugés, indifférence, xénophobie et racisme sont les symptômes planant sournoisement sur cette capitale, qui est l’une des plus blanches en Amérique du Nord. Conjuguant les regards d’une réalisatrice «pure laine» et d’un réalisateur «immigrant français depuis 14 ans», Québec, lieux de passage donne la parole à des gens lucides et touchants qui ont conscience des problèmes et qui s’activent pour faire bouger les choses.
Femelles
Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre
Female is an animated documentary on the difficulties of childbirth and motherhood. Anonymously, woman share their most intimate secrets of the journey towards childbirth and beyond. This film is an insight on the reality of their everyday lives as well as an exploration of the maternal condition. Sometimes surprising, funny and sad, these touching testimonies take us to the world of women that share an exceptionnal privilege, the one of being called Mom…
Jutra
Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre
This semi-animated documentary is a creative, colourful portrait of the great Quebec filmmaker Claude Jutra, director of Mon oncle Antoine and star and co-director, with Norman McLaren, of A Chairy Tale. The dimensions of Jutra’s life and work are explored through skillfully assembled archival footage and animated sequences.
Christmas at Moose Factory
Alanis Obomsawin
Released in 1971, this lyrical short documentary marked the directorial debut of legendary Abenaki director Alanis Obomsawin. Filmed at a residential school in northern Ontario, it is composed entirely of drawings by young Cree children and stories told by the children themselves. Listening has been at the core of Obomsawin’s practice since the very beginning. “Documentary film,” she said in a 2017 interview, “is the one place that our people can speak for themselves. I feel that the documentaries that I’ve been working on have been very valuable for the people, for our people to look at ourselves… and through that be able to make changes that really count for the future of our children to come.”
Flocons
Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre
This short animation was created using tests created in the production of A Chairy Tale (1957) by master of animation Norman McLaren. Flocons is set to the music of Tchaikovsky and features none other than Canadian filmmaker Claude Jutra, who plays a character imprisoned in the celluloid on which McLaren paints directly. Flocons aims to celebrate the 100th anniversary, in 2014, of Norman McLaren’s birth.
Les Négatifs de McLaren
Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre
Using the sound archives of legendary Canadian animator, Norman McLaren, this animated short recreates a unique portrait of the artist. Immersed in the intimate universe of the process of filmmaking, this visual essay takes us into the unpublished confidences of McLaren and his very personal vision of cinema, frame by frame.
Passages
Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre
I discovered with great emotion that I was pregnant with my first child. I waited with all my love for this little angel, far from suspecting that my delivery would be a real nightmare, would turn into a tragedy and that we would find ourselves, my baby and I, on the verge of death…
Mahiye sorkh shodeh (The Fried Fish)
Leila Khalilzadeh
Fish yearns to see the sea once again. He asks a cat, a mouse, a dog, and a crow for help, one after another. They each eat a part of his flesh and carry him some distance down the path to the sea. But after a while, one by one, they put him down and leave. In the end, some ants throw the fish’s skeleton into the sea. The fish happily swims away in the deep blue sea.
L’inventaire des biens meubles de Monsieur Lambert
Lucie Lambert
Que fait-on des objets laissés par les gens qu’on aime après leur mort? C’est la question que je me suis posée, suite au décès de mon père. J’ai cherché la réponse en fouillant ses journaux, ses dessins, ses photos; en interrogeant des amis et en lisant des auteurs qui m’inspirent. Je n’ai pas trouvé de réponse définitive mais j’ai fait ce que je devais faire avec les objets de mon père : un film. C’est à une promenade ludique dans les lieux de mon père que je convie les spectateurs. L’envie de prolonger son geste en y ajoutant le mien est devenu en cours de route le motif principal de ce court métrage, mélangeant animation et tournage réel, légèreté et questions existentielles.
Précis du quotidien
Lucie Lambert
A summer in the life of a mother and her two children. “Précis of the Everyday” is a tender look at the memory, passing time, imagination and poetry that make every day a unique experience. In her desire to “record every moment”, the mother is humbled by how much escapes her.
Le long cri du train qui passe se glisse au coeur des spectres et tout explose en silence
Anne-Marie Bouchard
An experimental animated film built around a single sound recording that evokes travel, the need to communicate, solitude, fragility, the desire for freedom, the arrival of fall, and our ephemeral existence.
Un trou dans la jambe
Martine Asselin
Geneviève has a hole in her leg. She reveals the story in this short animated documentary. On the theme of resilience, Un trou dans la jambe uses mixed techniques in an experimental animated flashback with a rich, evocative soundtrack.
Dixie Time!
Martine Asselin
Petit moment musical festif au Festival du Jazz de Montréal. Cette oeuvre a été produite pour l’émission Impression Jazz, produite par Amérimage-Spectra, dont elle constituait un segment. Martine Asselin y avait été invitée comme «artiste en résidence» pour produire une oeuvre lors du Festival de Jazz édition 2007.
Democracy
Martine Asselin
A rant about the way the Charest government receives the messages expressed by citizens.
Récits plastiques
Sylvie Laliberté
When the double subjectivity strikes: that causes a tension between matter and form, sensitivity and intellect. It is the terrible threat of the formlessness that hovers. A visual artist’s view of life.
Dounia and the Princess of Aleppo
Marya Zarif
Dounia was six years old when she left Aleppo with her grandparents and a few nigella seeds in her pockets. With the help of the Princess of Aleppo, Dounia makes a landmark journey to a whole new world… The path is strewn with obstacles, but Dounia will find courage and optimism in the love of her family, her grandmother’s recipes and the princess’ winks!
Dounia
Marya Zarif
Forced to leave their country, Dounia & her grandparents set off in search of a new home. As she travels around the world in search of asylum, Dounia encounters many people. When she encounters an obstacle that seems insurmountable, the wisdom of the ancient world comes to her rescue in the form of the nigella seeds of her grandmother. Season 1 is divided into 6 episodes of 7 minutes each and a 28-minute TV special. Season 2 is divided into 7 episodes of 7 minutes each.
Dans un rectangle absolu, le printemps
Sarah Seené
”In Quebec, as everywhere else on the planet, the spring of 2020 was strangely marked by the Covid-19 pandemic and confinement. So I decided to take advantage of this singular time to put the upheaval of seasonal rebirth into images in the form of a short animated film made with my scanner, flowers gleaned from my neighborhood and everyday objects. The rectangular scanning surface of the digitizer, like a symbol of the confinement between our four walls, remains the sole setting for this film. This project is the fruit of a number of experiments carried out between May and December 2020, aimed at pushing my artistic work off its beaten track, leading me to explore frame-by-frame animation for the first time and to momentarily move away from analog to a digital practice.”
Premiers jours
Clorinda Warny
An animated film created from pastel drawings, Premiers Jours (First Days) traces the complete cycle of life, from birth to adulthood, in four seasons, and through the evolution of landscapes that become human bodies.
Un trou dans la poitrine
Alexandra Myotte
In a run-down neighborhood, Zoe and her little brother Theo are left to fend for themselves. A young adolescent, Zoe is a ball of anger haunted by an intimate terror. Theo, still a child, flees reality into a fantastical world. During a scorching summer day, the two children will have to burst the abscess of their relationship so as not to lose each other.
Couper le cordon
Émilie Porry
Sarah is a young Quebec woman on the eve of her 20th birthday. Athletic, disciplined, and ambitious, we follow her reflections on the life choices she must make, torn between family expectations and values and her great need for emancipation. Cutting The Cord deals with universal issues such as the search for identity, the weight of tradition, and the courage to follow one’s own path. But it is also an example of successful integration. Sarah was born here to parents who immigrated to Quebec thirty years ago. She is particularly close to her mother, whose efforts to reconcile her attachment to her traditions of origin with her daughter’s aspirations are evident. Sarah is also fortunate to be surrounded by a circle of childhood friends, thanks to the stability offered by the social housing complex where they live as neighbors, which is designed to be a supportive living environment.