ERASING JUTRA
Quebec movie awards to be renamed, Montreal to remove traces of filmmaker from public spaces
When Yves Lever set out to write his biography of the late Quebec filmmaker Claude Jutra, he knew he was tackling a “mythic, largerthan-life” subject.
“What I wanted to see is, who was the man behind the myth, the man behind the works of art?” Lever told the National Post.
The answers he uncovered and published this week — that Jutra was a serial sexual abuser of children — have shaken Quebec and almost overnight transformed a cultural hero into a villain.
On Wednesday, after La Presse expanded on Lever’s findings with a victim’s account of the abuse inflicted by Jutra when he was a young boy, there was a stampede by arts groups and politicians to dissociate themselves from the Jutra name.
Québec Cinéma, the industry group responsible for the annual Jutra awards recognizing excellence in Quebec cinema, announced that the name is being changed immediately. “I was, like all members of the board of directors of Québec Cinéma, profoundly upset as I read the victim’s account,” the organization’s president, Patrick Roy, told a news conference.
With the next awards gala scheduled for March 20, and the artistic community balking at strolling the red carpet at an event named for an alleged pedophile, the organization said it had no choice but to act swiftly.
Quebec Culture Minister Hélène David had called for the name change Wednesday morning. “I really think, considering the totally intolerable side of a criminal act, we absolutely have to ask that the Jutra name be changed,” she told reporters in Quebec City.
She also wants streets and parks honouring Jutra to be renamed. Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre announced Wednesday that the city will rename Parc Claude-Jutra in the city’s Plateau Mont-Royal neighbourhood, where a sculpture commemorating Jutra is installed. The mayors of Quebec City and Lévis also said they plan to change the names of streets honouring Jutra.
And the Canadian Screen Awards, which since 1993 have handed out the Claude Jutra Award to the best debut film director, announced that his name will no longer be attached to the prize.
Lever, a film critic and retired college teacher, revealed in the book that Jutra regularly had sex with boys aged 14 and 15. Jutra, who killed himself in 1986 at age 56, was open about his homosexuality, but his attraction to teens was a secret, Lever wrote. During
the shoot for Jutra’s classic Mon oncle Antoine, “certain teenagers on the set benefited from a completely special relationship with the director,” Lever wrote.
Lever did not identify or quote the victims, but on Wednesday La Presse reported that a man said Jutra began abusing him as a child, and the abuse lasted 10 years.
The alleged victim, whose parents were friends with Jutra, said Jutra began with long bedtime hugs and later would stroke his penis as he lay in bed. After he reached puberty, he told the newspaper, Jutra would masturbate him and perform oral sex.
He said the abuse ended when, at age 16, he slapped Jutra as the filmmaker tried to make the teen perform oral sex. Shortly afterward, he moved out of his home. The man, whose name was not published, said he was scarred by the abuse, turning to alcohol and drugs and committing petty crimes.
But he only told his family after Jutra’s death, and he never went public until this week. “It was probably because of the name ‘Jutra’ and what it represented,” he told La Presse.
Roy said Wednesday was a sad day, for the victims of Jutra’s abuse and for the now-tarnished memory of a celebrated artist. “This man is an icon of Quebec culture, so to discover this 30 years after his death is a dramatic event,” he said.
Ségolène Roederer, Québec Cinéma’s general manager, said learning of Jutra’s secret past has affected all of Quebec.
“I think we are truly in mourning,” she said.