Quebec has always had a privileged relationship with documentary cinema, a tremendous melting pot of its artistic, social and political modernity. Nearly 60 years after the birth of direct cinema, juggling continuity and inventiveness, the local filmmakers are still pursuing a rich dialogue with their society. Here, you will find an anthology of contemporary films made by notorious documentary filmmakers or belonging to a new generation. Through a bright diversity of styles and viewpoints, these filmmakers all share a boundless creativity and an uninhibited freedom that question, challenge, reconcile and help to better understand today’s Quebec and the rest of the world
Visual identity created by Moïa Jobin-Paré
The THROUGH OUR LENS page lists all the Quebec films available on Tënk. It allows you to dive into an exploration of Quebec documentary cinema and discover an anthology of films made by both renowned and emerging documentary filmmakers. Through a dazzling diversity of forms and perspectives, these filmmakers have in common an overflowing creativity and an uninhibited freedom that questions, confronts, reconciles and helps us better understand Quebec and the world.
To perform a more detailed search on Quebec films, use our search engine !
Also discover fascinating interviews with local filmmakers in our Fragments section :
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_Living Here_ is a story made of solitude and wind, told with the poetry of Nunavik's stark tundra and the beauty of young Martha's words.
On the eve of an inevitable exile towards the urban centers, the youth of Temiscamingue is torn between the desire of a better future and the attachment to its territory.
Between Parc-Extension and the town of Mont-Royal, a scar in space creates a strange dichotomy between two neighborhoods.
The car of a photographer on assignment in Jamaica breaks down in the middle of a ghetto, a notoriously violent area. Forced to wait for days until his car is repaired, he retreats into himself, in shock. Then, gradually, he begins to open his eyes, relearns to listen, and accepts being elsewhere. Now, it's impossible for him to take back home photographs of a pretty woman on the beach. They wo...
Julie had her left eye removed. Soon, she will also lose her right eye. She doesn't know when it will happen, but it is imminent. All she can do is enjoy the images that still surround her. She leaves Montreal for a weekend with her good friend, Marina, in the countryside. In the calm of nature alongside her faithful friend, Julie takes the opportunity to see the stars one last time.
Through moments in the lives of three groups of girls, images gleaned from the web and live streams of young women around the world, _Bloom_ delves into the world of today's teenage girls. We delicately observe a hyper-connected but lonely generation inhabited by great lucidity, an inner struggle with self-image obsession, and a need for self-affirmation in the face of a complex sense of aliena...
Accompanied by several sound recorders, the musician Ida Toninato plays the baritone saxophone in reverberated places: the members of this musical and cinematographic group walk in sound, in space, in time. This film with few images and a lot of sounds shares these concrete and fantasized listening, from the ship's hold to the cathedral to a huge concrete building. The use of a quality listenin...
Family happiness often hinges on an unsuspected tragedy: the loss of identity of the woman who now lives only in relation to her husband and children. Faced with this "nameless discomfort," Francine (Micheline Lanctôt), a seemingly fulfilled young woman, is forced to leave her family for a while, in an attempt to find out who she is. This film, composed of a dramatized part enriched by document...
In this interview with Fernand Seguin, the famous writer reveals the main aspects of her personality by reflecting on the different stages of her life. Anaïs Nin recounts her life and the simultaneous process of writing her journal for fifty years. She talks about her youth, her complicated relationship with her father, and her pivotal encounters with many famous artists such as Henry Miller an...
Interview with the Quebecois poet, novelist, and essayist Fernand Ouellette about his book on musician Edgar Varèse. He explains how he came to write the book, talks about his love for Varèse, the role of the machine in his music, the audience's reception... All interspersed with rare excerpts from interviews with Edgar Varèse.
La charge de l'orignal épormyable
Duration: 1h41A poet struggling to cope with society seeks refuge in an institution where therapists turn him into a test subject. He resists. They persist. He succumbs to the stupidity, cruelty, and madness of men. A teletheatre adaptation of Claude Gauvreau's cult play _La charge de l'orignal épormyable_.
What value, whether radiant or destructive, does love hold in women's lives? Does marriage enable them to realize their full potential? Can motherhood be separated from a relationship with a man, or is it a choice to be refused? To shed light on these questions and many others, four women in search of their liberation, belonging to the generation of 28-30-year-olds in the early 1970s, express t...
The story of two characters we hear but never see. Like an old manuscript tucked away at the back of a drawer, the film begins as a young student films the markets of London in 1969. Twenty-five years later, she invites a man to watch the film that captures her youth. The couple engages in a dialogue about the images of that era, and a budding love emerges as the film comes to an end. Much like...
Madeleine Dansereau was the first female jeweler in Quebec. She began her career at the age of 47, just as doctors diagnosed her with breast cancer. Her daughter, filmmaker Mireille Dansereau, reflects on their relationship over the last twenty years while maintaining her film career as a backdrop.
A 15-year-old girl evokes the boredom of her bourgeois environment and brings charges against her father and mother. A walk with her dog serves as a pretext to see life through the eyes of this teenager who feels alienated from the world around her.
_The Roar of Their Engines_ is a short documentary film set in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, a territory that still bears the scars of an ongoing 50 years-old conflict, where peace talks are at a standstill. Meanwhile, the Turkish-Cypriot population is aging, silently and away from the spotlight, on disputed and over-militarized lands. This war no longer concerns them.
In a dark, ambiguous environment, minuscule particles drift slowly before the lens. The image focuses to reveal spruce trees and tall pines, while Innu voices tell us the story of this territory, this flooded forest. Muffled percussive sounds gradually become louder, suggesting the presence of a hydroelectric dam. The submerged trees gradually transform into firebrands as whispers bring back th...
This short dance film brings to the screen three duets that are both sensual and brutal. Three stories overlap to tell the memory; what remains of the nostalgic sensations of their union. The choreographies sublimate the cracks that human experience generates, which sediment in us as so many emotional vestiges.
Every year, at the beginning of the month of December, Marc-Antoine goes back to New York city in order to sell Christmas trees in the streets. From his little shack, he is witnessing the daily life of New Yorkers seeking the perfect Christmas ornament. This vantage point gives him an original view on American society and the different social class that compose it.
_Living Here_ is a story made of solitude and wind, told with the poetry of Nunavik's stark tundra and the beauty of young Martha's words.
On the eve of an inevitable exile towards the urban centers, the youth of Temiscamingue is torn between the desire of a better future and the attachment to its territory.
Between Parc-Extension and the town of Mont-Royal, a scar in space creates a strange dichotomy between two neighborhoods.
The car of a photographer on assignment in Jamaica breaks down in the middle of a ghetto, a notoriously violent area. Forced to wait for days until his car is repaired, he retreats into himself, in shock. Then, gradually, he begins to open his eyes, relearns to listen, and accepts being elsewhere. Now, it's impossible for him to take back home photographs of a pretty woman on the beach. They wo...
Julie had her left eye removed. Soon, she will also lose her right eye. She doesn't know when it will happen, but it is imminent. All she can do is enjoy the images that still surround her. She leaves Montreal for a weekend with her good friend, Marina, in the countryside. In the calm of nature alongside her faithful friend, Julie takes the opportunity to see the stars one last time.
Through moments in the lives of three groups of girls, images gleaned from the web and live streams of young women around the world, _Bloom_ delves into the world of today's teenage girls. We delicately observe a hyper-connected but lonely generation inhabited by great lucidity, an inner struggle with self-image obsession, and a need for self-affirmation in the face of a complex sense of aliena...
Accompanied by several sound recorders, the musician Ida Toninato plays the baritone saxophone in reverberated places: the members of this musical and cinematographic group walk in sound, in space, in time. This film with few images and a lot of sounds shares these concrete and fantasized listening, from the ship's hold to the cathedral to a huge concrete building. The use of a quality listenin...
Family happiness often hinges on an unsuspected tragedy: the loss of identity of the woman who now lives only in relation to her husband and children. Faced with this "nameless discomfort," Francine (Micheline Lanctôt), a seemingly fulfilled young woman, is forced to leave her family for a while, in an attempt to find out who she is. This film, composed of a dramatized part enriched by document...
In this interview with Fernand Seguin, the famous writer reveals the main aspects of her personality by reflecting on the different stages of her life. Anaïs Nin recounts her life and the simultaneous process of writing her journal for fifty years. She talks about her youth, her complicated relationship with her father, and her pivotal encounters with many famous artists such as Henry Miller an...
Interview with the Quebecois poet, novelist, and essayist Fernand Ouellette about his book on musician Edgar Varèse. He explains how he came to write the book, talks about his love for Varèse, the role of the machine in his music, the audience's reception... All interspersed with rare excerpts from interviews with Edgar Varèse.
La charge de l'orignal épormyable
Duration: 1h41A poet struggling to cope with society seeks refuge in an institution where therapists turn him into a test subject. He resists. They persist. He succumbs to the stupidity, cruelty, and madness of men. A teletheatre adaptation of Claude Gauvreau's cult play _La charge de l'orignal épormyable_.
What value, whether radiant or destructive, does love hold in women's lives? Does marriage enable them to realize their full potential? Can motherhood be separated from a relationship with a man, or is it a choice to be refused? To shed light on these questions and many others, four women in search of their liberation, belonging to the generation of 28-30-year-olds in the early 1970s, express t...
The story of two characters we hear but never see. Like an old manuscript tucked away at the back of a drawer, the film begins as a young student films the markets of London in 1969. Twenty-five years later, she invites a man to watch the film that captures her youth. The couple engages in a dialogue about the images of that era, and a budding love emerges as the film comes to an end. Much like...
Madeleine Dansereau was the first female jeweler in Quebec. She began her career at the age of 47, just as doctors diagnosed her with breast cancer. Her daughter, filmmaker Mireille Dansereau, reflects on their relationship over the last twenty years while maintaining her film career as a backdrop.
A 15-year-old girl evokes the boredom of her bourgeois environment and brings charges against her father and mother. A walk with her dog serves as a pretext to see life through the eyes of this teenager who feels alienated from the world around her.
_The Roar of Their Engines_ is a short documentary film set in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, a territory that still bears the scars of an ongoing 50 years-old conflict, where peace talks are at a standstill. Meanwhile, the Turkish-Cypriot population is aging, silently and away from the spotlight, on disputed and over-militarized lands. This war no longer concerns them.
In a dark, ambiguous environment, minuscule particles drift slowly before the lens. The image focuses to reveal spruce trees and tall pines, while Innu voices tell us the story of this territory, this flooded forest. Muffled percussive sounds gradually become louder, suggesting the presence of a hydroelectric dam. The submerged trees gradually transform into firebrands as whispers bring back th...
This short dance film brings to the screen three duets that are both sensual and brutal. Three stories overlap to tell the memory; what remains of the nostalgic sensations of their union. The choreographies sublimate the cracks that human experience generates, which sediment in us as so many emotional vestiges.
Every year, at the beginning of the month of December, Marc-Antoine goes back to New York city in order to sell Christmas trees in the streets. From his little shack, he is witnessing the daily life of New Yorkers seeking the perfect Christmas ornament. This vantage point gives him an original view on American society and the different social class that compose it.