Québec Direct Cinema Movement At Anthology Film Archives in May 2016

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Tuesday, 03 May 2016 09:42

Written by Brad Balfour

Concurrent with the cinema vérité movement in France and the appearance of filmmakers like Robert Drew, the Maysles, and Ricky Leacock in the United States, the Québec Direct Cinema movement emerged in Canada in the 1950s and 60s, matches these other cinemtaic developments.

A host of filmmakers – including Michel Brault, Pierre Perrault, Gilles Groulx, Marcel Carrière, Claude Fournier, Bernard Gosselin, and others – developed and utilized new camera and sound technologies to make documentaries whose spontaneity, vitality, and formal innovations are still remarkable.

Abandoning the carefully composed, often scripted approach of earlier documentary films – in which reality was kept at a safe distance -- filtered via narration and controlled through rehearsal or even staging -- these filmmakers used the new technologies to throw themselves into the worlds they documented, and to respond in the moment to the rhythms and textures of lived experience.

Relative to their U.S. and French counterparts, and despite their proximity, these Québecois filmmakers are relatively under-recognized here in the United States.

In order to redress this, Anthology Film Archives (32 2nd Ave, New York, NY), in partnership with the Québec Government Office in New York and the National Film Board of Canada, presents 17 programs devoted to the Québec Direct Cinema from May 5 - 17, 2016.

Founded in 1970, Anthology's mission has been to preserve, exhibit, and promote public and scholarly understanding of independent, classic, and avant-garde cinema. Anthology screens more than 1,000 film and video programs per year, publishes books and catalogs annually, and has preserved more than 900 films to date.

Anthology now presents this extensive series to survey this enormously influential documentary filmmaking movement.

Featuring more than 30 films – many of them very rarely screened in the U.S. – and graced by appearances from filmmaker Marcel Carrière and scholar and curator Carol Faucher, this series represents an opportunity to explore one of the most remarkable chapters in the history of documentary cinema, and to gain great insight into the people, politics, and society of Québec from the 1950s to the early 1980s.

It all began at the National Film Board of Canada. Despite the NFB’s celebrated reputation since its foundation in 1939, its documentary production had become more conventional in the late 40s/early 50s, with its heavy equipment, scripted scenarios, and strict in-house guidelines.

The arrival of television in 1952-53, with its constant demand for films, pushed the NFB’s producers and filmmakers towards greater creativity, experimentation, and innovation.

Inspired by photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson and his artistic philosophy (“The Decisive Moment”), small crews of filmmakers set out with portable cameras and their often long-focus lenses, more sensitive film stocks, and lighter sound equipment, “to record life as it happens, unscripted, unrehearsed, to capture it in sync sound without asking [subjects] to pose or repeat [their] lines; …and to edit it into moving films that would make the audience laugh and cry…and change the world by making people realize that life is real, beautiful, and meaningful” (Wolf Koenig, 1967). 

Carrière and Faucher will be here in person for opening weekend, Friday, May 6 to Sunday, May 8.

Tickets: $11 general; $9 for students, seniors, & children (12 & under); $7 Anthology members.

For more info go to: www.anthologyfilmarchives.org

Québec Direct Cinema
May 5-17

Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Avenue
New York, NY 10003

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