A Vision in the Darkness

“To Léa, who will be 97 years old in the year 2000.” Thus begins Sophie Bissonnette's portrait of this luminous figure in the shadows, a Jewish communist activist in the clerical and anti-Semitic Quebec of the 1930s. Well, this great lady left us in August 2000, having lived through the century and sowed the seeds of change, solidarity, and struggle with extraordinary energy, which shines through in the film, even though Léa was 87 years old at the time. Her life story is breathtaking: born to Polish Jewish parents, raised in Quebec City in a large, poor but cultured family, she worked in Montreal and New York, then traveled extensively, settling in Berlin in 1929, where she became politically active and joined the Communist Party. She returned to Quebec in 1932, when the situation became extremely dangerous for Jews and communists, and became an activist. The economic depression continued and living conditions for the working class were terrible. Léa Broback helped establish unions in the textile industry, among others...

Here is a tiny glimpse into her life, to whet your appetite and make you want to discover the incredible destiny of this woman of many struggles. With this film, Sophie Bissonnette offers us an invaluable gift, allowing us to discover a whole side of Quebec that is little known, internationalist, avant-garde, and revolutionary, and to reveal the major roles played by exceptional women, such as Léa Broback, her friend Madeleine Parent, and the anonymous workers who fought at the time. A wake-up call for action and solidarity!


 

Naomie Décarie-Daigneault
Tënk's Artistic Director