Individuals. Beings made of flesh and blood who transcend the world and are transcended by it! Men, women, children, the elderly; people who dream, fulminate, provoke or contemplate, scrabble around and invent. All these individual consciousnesses, these unique and flamboyant destinies; this is the ideal material of the documentary genre.
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Il n’est pas innocent que le bonheur soit heureux
New product!Happiness is a tautological state. Why is one happy? Because he or she is happy. It’s very simple. And it smells good. Still happy than one can be happy. This video was produced for Manif d’art 2003 in Québec focussing on happiness and its representation.
Sylvie Laliberté’s work centers on self-representation and narrative, and is often delivered in a humorously faux-naïve and playful aesthetic. In her first video, _Bonbons bijoux_, the artist speaks directly to the camera about simple, trivial things, delivered in a whimsical and spirited manner. In a succession of brief vignettes, the artist, like a candid half-woman, half-child, tells stories...
"Through conversations regarding my mother’s gardening practice, we explore subjects of loss, growth, and care. Filming her as she weeds, the process of clearing out overgrowth and invasive plants, I follow her around the garden she has upkept these last twenty-five years. Slowly, I begin to realize, what grounds me here isn’t the rosebush I’ve known since infancy, but the person who planted it...
Rose G. Lévesque, an almost nonagenarian painter and poet, painted the story of her life on her house's walls to transform it into a museum.
Two Swedish men in their 60s meet for the first time to reflect on their experiences of gender transition and detransition, sharing their personal journeys and the choices that shaped their lives.
_Guidelines_ explores the world of adolescence through a series of tableaux that illustrate the occasionally trying existence of young people at a rural secondary school. Emphasizing the contrasts between the regulated environment of the classroom and the beckoning freedom of the great outdoors, the film is structured around the teens’ meetings with various authority figures in the institution ...
Over the course of a 12-week intensive training program, young adults are gradually transformed into members of the Canadian Armed Forces. For these future soldiers, the group is now more important than the individual, and the country comes before oneself. Without judgment, _First Stripes_ offers an immersion into the singular world of the military through their basic training. A mandatory step...
The Day to Come Is a Bright New Day
Duration: 1h30Early morning in a Montreal diner: filter coffee, bacon, French toast. Stories and solitudes are shared. Silences, glances, a chance encounter, and the promise of a brand-new day. A restaurant that feels like a refuge, where the chaos of the world nonetheless finds its way in, captured with tenderness and love for its characters.
Over five years, _Adolescentes_ follows Emma and Anaïs, two inseparable friends from different backgrounds and with very different personalities, through their journey from adolescence to adulthood. First loves, doubts, discoveries and profound transformations punctuate their lives, offering a rare portrait of a generation and a changing France.
Forty-year-old documentary filmmaker Ross McElwee has a penchant for filming everything around him. Following the announcement of his impending marriage, he turns on his camera to capture life as it unfolds during this new phase of his life. Both in personal and philosophical terms, McElwee reflects through self-narration on life, death, love, family, and parenthood.
Larissa faces the many hardships of post-Soviet life: poverty, an alcoholic husband, and an uncertain future. By chance, she discovers her grandmother’s diary, in which she had recorded a dream that seems strangely connected to her own life. A poetic film about memory, family, and the traces of the past.
Out-Takes From the Life of a Happy Man
Duration: 2h16"A motion picture composed of brief diaristic scenes not used in completed films from the years 1960-2000; and self-referential video footage taped during the editing. Brief glimpses of family, friends, girl-friends, the City, seasons of the year, travels. Occasionally I talk, reminisce, or play music I taped during those earlier years, plus more recent piano improvisations by Auguste Varkalis....
Filmed over fifteen years, _Deuses de pedra_ (_Gods of Stone_) paints a portrait of a rural community along the historic border between Galicia and Portugal. Through the eyes of Mariana, a young girl growing up immersed in local stories, legends, and folklore, the film explores the ties between past and present, belonging and change. As the story unfolds, the magic of tradition is confronted wi...
"My mother seemed a good subject for a portrait, (she was there), and I thought it offered a chance to do a sort of 'abstract film', in the sense that it didn’t have what you might call 'the grammar of film'. It’s mostly discontinuous shots linked just by subject, in one case by colour, only rarely by movement." – Margaret Tait
Through an intimate portrayal of the activities of the Club Deportivo Palestino fan group, _Baisanos_ builds a dialogue between two narrators representing Chile and Palestine. Together, they reflect on identity, the meaning of returning to Palestine, and the different ways of going back. In this way, the connection between two distant territories emerges within a space of celebration, where dre...
John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection
Duration: 1h35An immersive film essay on tennis legend John McEnroe at the height of his career as the world champion, documenting his strive for perfection, frustrations, and the hardest loss of his career at the 1984 Roland-Garros French Open.
Scenes from the Life of Andy Warhol: Friendships and Intersections
Duration: 37 minutesJonas Mekas, a pioneer of the film diary, portrays his friend Andy Warhol and his inner circle from the early 1960s to the late 1980s, offering an intimate behind-the-scenes look at the artist’s life and career.
After travelling the world from north to south and east to west, Johan van der Keuken turns his camera to his hometown, a welcoming city open to the world, creating a sweeping portrait of Amsterdam and its inhabitants. The peaceful circles formed by the canals of the old city inspire a structure built around lateral movements through the seasons and through time, movements interrupted by a seri...
During a puppet show, a camera captures in a single ten-minute shot the various emotions reflected on the children's faces.
Il n’est pas innocent que le bonheur soit heureux
New product!Happiness is a tautological state. Why is one happy? Because he or she is happy. It’s very simple. And it smells good. Still happy than one can be happy. This video was produced for Manif d’art 2003 in Québec focussing on happiness and its representation.
Sylvie Laliberté’s work centers on self-representation and narrative, and is often delivered in a humorously faux-naïve and playful aesthetic. In her first video, _Bonbons bijoux_, the artist speaks directly to the camera about simple, trivial things, delivered in a whimsical and spirited manner. In a succession of brief vignettes, the artist, like a candid half-woman, half-child, tells stories...
"Through conversations regarding my mother’s gardening practice, we explore subjects of loss, growth, and care. Filming her as she weeds, the process of clearing out overgrowth and invasive plants, I follow her around the garden she has upkept these last twenty-five years. Slowly, I begin to realize, what grounds me here isn’t the rosebush I’ve known since infancy, but the person who planted it...
Rose G. Lévesque, an almost nonagenarian painter and poet, painted the story of her life on her house's walls to transform it into a museum.
Two Swedish men in their 60s meet for the first time to reflect on their experiences of gender transition and detransition, sharing their personal journeys and the choices that shaped their lives.
_Guidelines_ explores the world of adolescence through a series of tableaux that illustrate the occasionally trying existence of young people at a rural secondary school. Emphasizing the contrasts between the regulated environment of the classroom and the beckoning freedom of the great outdoors, the film is structured around the teens’ meetings with various authority figures in the institution ...
Over the course of a 12-week intensive training program, young adults are gradually transformed into members of the Canadian Armed Forces. For these future soldiers, the group is now more important than the individual, and the country comes before oneself. Without judgment, _First Stripes_ offers an immersion into the singular world of the military through their basic training. A mandatory step...
The Day to Come Is a Bright New Day
Duration: 1h30Early morning in a Montreal diner: filter coffee, bacon, French toast. Stories and solitudes are shared. Silences, glances, a chance encounter, and the promise of a brand-new day. A restaurant that feels like a refuge, where the chaos of the world nonetheless finds its way in, captured with tenderness and love for its characters.
Over five years, _Adolescentes_ follows Emma and Anaïs, two inseparable friends from different backgrounds and with very different personalities, through their journey from adolescence to adulthood. First loves, doubts, discoveries and profound transformations punctuate their lives, offering a rare portrait of a generation and a changing France.
Forty-year-old documentary filmmaker Ross McElwee has a penchant for filming everything around him. Following the announcement of his impending marriage, he turns on his camera to capture life as it unfolds during this new phase of his life. Both in personal and philosophical terms, McElwee reflects through self-narration on life, death, love, family, and parenthood.
Larissa faces the many hardships of post-Soviet life: poverty, an alcoholic husband, and an uncertain future. By chance, she discovers her grandmother’s diary, in which she had recorded a dream that seems strangely connected to her own life. A poetic film about memory, family, and the traces of the past.
Out-Takes From the Life of a Happy Man
Duration: 2h16"A motion picture composed of brief diaristic scenes not used in completed films from the years 1960-2000; and self-referential video footage taped during the editing. Brief glimpses of family, friends, girl-friends, the City, seasons of the year, travels. Occasionally I talk, reminisce, or play music I taped during those earlier years, plus more recent piano improvisations by Auguste Varkalis....
Filmed over fifteen years, _Deuses de pedra_ (_Gods of Stone_) paints a portrait of a rural community along the historic border between Galicia and Portugal. Through the eyes of Mariana, a young girl growing up immersed in local stories, legends, and folklore, the film explores the ties between past and present, belonging and change. As the story unfolds, the magic of tradition is confronted wi...
"My mother seemed a good subject for a portrait, (she was there), and I thought it offered a chance to do a sort of 'abstract film', in the sense that it didn’t have what you might call 'the grammar of film'. It’s mostly discontinuous shots linked just by subject, in one case by colour, only rarely by movement." – Margaret Tait
Through an intimate portrayal of the activities of the Club Deportivo Palestino fan group, _Baisanos_ builds a dialogue between two narrators representing Chile and Palestine. Together, they reflect on identity, the meaning of returning to Palestine, and the different ways of going back. In this way, the connection between two distant territories emerges within a space of celebration, where dre...
John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection
Duration: 1h35An immersive film essay on tennis legend John McEnroe at the height of his career as the world champion, documenting his strive for perfection, frustrations, and the hardest loss of his career at the 1984 Roland-Garros French Open.
Scenes from the Life of Andy Warhol: Friendships and Intersections
Duration: 37 minutesJonas Mekas, a pioneer of the film diary, portrays his friend Andy Warhol and his inner circle from the early 1960s to the late 1980s, offering an intimate behind-the-scenes look at the artist’s life and career.
After travelling the world from north to south and east to west, Johan van der Keuken turns his camera to his hometown, a welcoming city open to the world, creating a sweeping portrait of Amsterdam and its inhabitants. The peaceful circles formed by the canals of the old city inspire a structure built around lateral movements through the seasons and through time, movements interrupted by a seri...
During a puppet show, a camera captures in a single ten-minute shot the various emotions reflected on the children's faces.