I Remember a Time When No One Jogged in This Neighbourhood

Recently, a Parisian colleague who had just arrived in Montreal told me he was somewhat disappointed by the city. He had expected something more “interesting,” especially in terms of architecture. His comment left me puzzled. I wasn’t quite sure how to respond. I’ve always found Montreal’s architecture beautiful in its own way, but I don’t think that’s where the city’s true charm lies. So I simply said, “It’s in the little things.”

Few filmmakers since the heyday of direct cinema seem to have understood this as well as Jenny Cartwright with *I Remember a Time When No One Jogged in This Neighbourhood*, a sprawling ethnographic mosaic of a vibrant and eventful city. If the synopsis of the film presents Parc-Extension as a neighborhood ''particularly threatened by the merciless gentrification'', Cartwright does not pity its inhabitants. On the contrary, she demonstrates wonderfully with her impressionistic images and her magnificent soundtrack that the neighbourhood is anything but dead, that Montreal is not only the Olympic stadium, the Saint Joseph's oratory or the Mount Royal. That Montreal is rather two strangers playing chess in a park, being at your favorite bakery on a Saturday morning, that the multicultural neighborhood of Parc-Extension is diversity, uniqueness and richness.

Jean-François Vaudrin
Head of acquisitions at Tënk
and film critic

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