2007 Parlez-vous québécois?

Empfang zum ersten Fokus Québec

Love, Love, Lie (Feature Film Programme)

A Century of Exciting Animation (Animation Programme)

Québec is a guest at Filmfest Dresden. The vast majority of the population there speaks French. Canada's largest province is also the only one with French as its sole official language. Québec has an extremely lively film landscape, and a large number of films are produced there every year, from short films to documentaries to feature-length films.Québec cinema has attracted worldwide attention from audiences and critics in recent years with great successes. Just to mention Denys Arcand's Oscar-winning film "Invasion of the Barbarians" (2003) or Jean-Marc Vallée's "C.R.A.Z.Y. - Crazy Life" (2005). In two short film programmes, one feature film and one animation, the audience at the 19th Filmfest Dresden can discover the complexity and originality of Québec's francophone and algophone culture.

The feature film programme "Parlez-vous québécois: love, live and cheat" is about happiness and suffering in love, life and its challenges and cheating and being cheated on. Who is cheating on whom is the question in "The Rip-Off" by Kun Chang. In the film "Les derniers jours" by Simon Olivier Fecteau, an elderly gentleman is still trying to realise the things he had missed doing so far. The love of an old man for his wife who has already died is told in a sensitive way in "Les eaux mortes" by Guy Édoin.

The animation programme "Parlez-vous québécois: A century of exciting animation" was created in collaboration with the Canadian film institute ONF (Office National du Film) based in the Québec metropolis of Montréal and reflects the tradition of animated film in Québec. Among other things, the programme offers the opportunity to discover the work of Norman McLaren. His film "Caprice en coleurs", which won the Canadian Film Award in 1950, is represented, as is the 1980 Oscar-winning animated film "Chaque enfant" by Eugene Fedorenke.Also shown is the film "Ame noir" by Martine Chartrand, who has been honoured with a number of awards, not least the Golden Bear in 2001.

Québec is not only present on the big screen in Dresden this spring. In cooperation with the Québec Society for the Development of Enterprises in the Cultural Industries (SODEC - Société de développement des entreprises culturelles), the representation of the Québec government in Germany and the Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung (MDM), an exchange between young producers from Québec and Central Germany is taking place this year. The starting signal for this cooperation was the visit of Québec Premier Jean Charest to Dresden last summer. At that time, Filmfest Dresden and SODEC signed a declaration of intent for cooperation. One of the aims of this agreement is to encourage young filmmakers from Québec and Central Germany to work together. Consequently, a programme for young producers from Québec will be organised parallel to the film festival in order to familiarise them with production conditions and funding opportunities in Central Germany. In a second stage, young producers from Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia will travel to Québec in autumn.

It should also be mentioned that the director of the film festival of Abitibi-Témiscamingue (Québec), Jacques Matte, is coming to Dresden to meet filmmakers from Saxony and other parts of Germany with a view to the next edition of his festival in November 2007.

We are delighted about the first stage of this cooperation and about the discoveries in the varied film programme "Parlez-vous québécois?

Bon cinéma!

Nadia Peter

The Films

Live, Love, Lie

APRÈS TOUT (AFTER ALL), Alexis Fortier-Gauthier (Fiction, Canada 2006)

It is late in the evening. Claire has had too much to drink. She is missing Philippe. She decides to go to him. A mistake-but she has to go through with it now.

LES DERNIERS JOURS (THE LAST DAYS), Simon Olivier Fecteau (Fiction, Canada 2004)

An old man and everything he wanted to accomplish in life.

LES EAUX MORTES (CALM WATERS), Guy Édoin (Fiction, Canada 2006)

An old man tries to cope with his wife's death.

SUR LA LIGNE (AT THE BORDER), Frédéric Desager (Fiction, Canada 2006)

A misunderstanding between French tourists and young Aboriginees at the outskirts of an Indian reservation escalates after the arrival of two police officers.

THE FIRST DAY OF MY LIFE, David Uloth (Fiction, Canada 2005)

Eleven-year-old Kate doesn't understand her big sister any more. Why doesn't she come to school with her this morning? Why did she rent a room in this cheap motel?

THE RIP-OFF, Kun Chang (Fiction, Canada 2006)

At a small camera shop things aren't quiet what they seem. There is what you see and what you should have seen. "The Rip-Off" is the same story told twice from two different points of views. With the help of world renowned entertainer Apollo Robbins, award-winning Kun Chang turns all expectations upside down in his fictional debut.

SOUVIENS TOI DE M'AIMER (REMEMBER TO LOVE ME), Bertrand Weissgerber (Fiction, Canada 2006)

Love and ist dirty tricks. The alternative vision of a life which withstands ist persistant fate.

 

A Century of Exciting Animation

CAPRICE EN COULEURS (BEGONE DULL CARE), Norman McLaren (Animation, Canada 1949)

A lively interpretation, in fluid lines and colour, of jazz music played by the Oscar Peterson trio. Painting directly on film, two National Film Board artists, Evelyn lambert and Norman McLaren have created a whimsical visual expression of the music.

LA FAIM (HUNGER), Peter Foldès (Animation, Canada 1974)

Animated film satire of self-indulgence in a hungry world. Rapidly dissolving, reshaping images, made with the aid of a computer, create a stark contrast between abundance and want. A man eats, at first sparingly, but his appetite grows to gluttony, greed, and gradification of desire. The nightmare that finally haunts him is the one that hangs over our disparate world.

HISTOIRE DE PERLES (BEAD GAME), Ishu Patel (Animation, Canada 1977)

In this fascinating, innovative exercise in animation, thousands of beads are arranged and manipulated. Assuming shapes of creatures both mythical and real. They continually devour, merge, and absorb one another in explosions of color. The theme is one of aggression and inevitability, but any conclusion is left to the viewer. 

PAYSAGIST (MINDSCAPE), Jaques Drouin (Animation, Canada 1976)

This film is about an artist who steps inside his painting and wanders about in the landscape peopled with symbols that trigger unexpected associations.

LE CHAT COLLA... (THE CAT CAME BACK), Cordell Barker (Animation, Canada 1988)

Winner of the Special Jury Prize for Humir and Music at the 1988 World Festival of Animation in Zagreb, this hilarious animated short is based on the century old folk song of the same name.

CHAQUE ENFANT (EVERY CHILD), Eugene Fedorenko (Animation, Canada 1979)

This six-minute segment illustrated one of the ten principles of the declaration, namely that every child is entitled to a name and a nationality. It is the story of a baby who appears mysteriously on the doorsteps of busy executive, and who is subsequently bounced from household to household down the block. Nobody in the community is interested in caring for the baby without a name.

BALABLOK, Bretislav Pojar (Animation, Canada 1972)

Here is an animated replay of the human comedy as amusing in ist perception as in the way it caricatures humanity's prospensity to resort to violence rather than to reason. The whole area of conflict is reduced to ist simplest dimensions: Cubes and balls respresenting antagonists. Why they fight and what happens after the battle is a parody of human nature.

THE METAMORPHOSIS OF MR. SAMSA, Caroline Leaf (Animation, Canada 1977)

A film based on Franz Kafka's short story "The Metamorphosis", the story is told through the animation of beach sand on a piece of glass. An imaginative sound track and innovative artwork combine to recreate a Kafkaesque world of alienation and guilt.

AME NOIRE (BLACK SOUL), Matrine Chartrand (Animation, Canada 2000)

BLACK SOUL is an exhilarating immersion into the heart of Black culture via a whirlwind voyage through the defining moments of Black History. As an old lady initiates her grandson into his past, a series of perpetually transforming images painted directly under the animation camera unfolds before our eyes. In a mesmerizing swirl of light and colour, the boy traces his ancestry to mighty Pharaohs and to valiant kings whose praises are sung by a griot beneath the baobab tree. Suddenly the beating of drums conjures forth the slave market and far-flung exile to the Caribbean and eventually the snows of the Americas. 

TOWER BAWHER, Theodore Ushev (Animation, Canada 2004)

TOWER BAWHER is like a whirlwind tour of Russian constructivist art, and filmmaker Theodore Ushev pays homage to the movement with cascading, energetic animation. Ushev celebrates the genius of constructivist artists, while also offering a scathing commentary on art in the service of ideology.