Film director delves into archives to create stirring portrait of Quebec’s past
Celluloid collage of 1960s and ’70s leaves viewers enriched and wanting more
The National Film Board is a national treasure, to be sure.
But what to do with its decades-spanning trove other than try to — slowly but surely, dutifully or simply randomly — make your way through the thousands of documentary, fiction and animated films made over the years with the institution’s help.
Luc Bourdon had another idea: dig through the vaults and mash it all up for a patchwork snapshot of times gone by. The director follows up his 2008 film La mémoire des anges, which explored our province in the 1950s and ’60s, with a look at the Quebec of the late ’60s and ’70s.
It’s a richly evocative celluloid collage, which flits left and right, goes here, there and everywhere to look at the multiple, conflicting and conflicted identities of this place called home.
We see foundry workers, families, people on the métro and in the streets, attendees of Expo 67, Olympic athletes, loggers, farmers and artists. But Bourdon is interested in more than pretty pictures. The ’70s were a decade of deep change, and the filmmaker delves into the issues of the era, from the October Crisis through to the 1980 referendum, student protests and striking workers.
We see the politicians of the times — René Lévesque, Pierre Trudeau and a young Jean Charest, among others — reacting to real events, in the moment, highlights of which include: a confrontation between Lévesque and an anglo heckler while speaking of his dream of sovereignty; and Lévesque’s reaction to a journalist probing him for his feelings on the murder of cabinet minister Pierre Laporte.
Quebec’s Indigenous populations are not left out of the mix, from Inuit life in the north to protests for Indigenous rights in the city.
While there is no anchoring narrative per se, Bourdon does an admirable job of introducing and developing themes, making statements and imbuing his film with a rich sense of time and place.
It’s a panorama of epic proportions, woven together with passion and poetry, nuance and wit.
That the result is so effective is also a testament to the NFB and all those who have made films with its help.
In the face of such a stirring cultural self-portrait, one can only feel enriched. And want to see more.
The Devil’s Share screens with English subtitles at Cinéma du Parc.