Aux sources de la vie

A Capuchin converted to cinema, Father Venance developed a cinema of wonder in the middle of the last century, using the camera's mechanical eye to serve divine creation. Like those of his contemporary Albert Tessier, his films celebrate landscapes, forests and waterways. What sets Father Venance's films apart, however, is their use of several techniques inherited from scientific cinema, including microcinematography and time-lapse. Shot in 16mm, they also offer superb color images thanks to the Kodachrome process introduced in 1935 – at a time when most commercial films shown in cinemas were in black and white. 

Aux sources de la vie (The Sources of Life) presents marvellous color images of children and teenagers discovering the ferns, horsetails, lichens and other mosses that grow abundantly in the wilds of Quebec. His cinematography seems to evoke the work of another of his contemporaries, Brother Marie-Victorin. In fact, he is closer to the work of Marcelle Gauvreau, Marie-Victorin's collaborator who founded the _École de l'éveil_ in 1935. Despite its serial structure, Aux sources de la vie does not attempt to offer an exhaustive taxonomy of the province's plants and fungi. The portrait is incomplete, and the images scroll by too quickly to support any kind of demonstration. Nevertheless, the film succeeds in creating a sense of wonder and, probably, a few vocations in a province then undergoing a major scientific and intellectual revival. 

Louis Pelletier
Head of Heritage Film Digitisation Projects
Laboratoire CinéMédias, University of Montreal