Documentary gives voice to anglophones
Hudson film fest opens with exploration of the history of language in Quebec
The Hudson Film Festival opens on Friday with the première of What We Choose to Remember, a documentary film by writer and director Guy Rex Rodgers. Work on the film started in 2020, 50 years after the October Crisis. It investigates the socio-political history of language in Quebec by highlighting the diversity of anglophone communities from after the First World War until the present-day.
“A lot of the film is from the heart and very personal,” said Rogers.
Rogers, who was the founder of the English Language Arts Network (ELAN) was their executive director for 20 years, came to Montreal in 1980 to study playwriting at the National Theatre School. Born in Canada and raised in Australia, his arrival coincided with the year of Quebec's first sovereignty referendum.
“I met my wife the second week I was in Quebec. She's a francophone so I've been sort of half immersed in the French-speaking community and in the English community for all these years,” said Rogers. “Ever since, I've been trying to figure out ... what the two communities understand about each other.”
While still at ELAN, he responded to a call to anglophone organizations to develop projects that explored Quebec's anglophone communities initiated by the Secrétariat aux relations avec les Québécois d'expression anglaise.
What began as a six-part video series centred around interviews with a diverse group of immigrants and their descendants, eventually evolved into the feature documentary premièring in Hudson.
“This film was an opportunity to interview dozens of people and to get a sense historically of how the English-speaking community sees itself and also how to work with more recent immigrants and see how they see Quebec,” said Rogers.
Using the notion of various historical waves of immigration, and weaving together archival footage, interviews on the street and a series of group interviews, the film gives a voice to anglophones of a surprising number of diverse communities.
From early groups such as the English, Scottish and Irish, to large Black, Jewish and Asian communities in pre-second World War Quebec, through later waves of immigrants who came to be ipso-facto anglophones due to a school system that considered all non-catholics to be English-speaking Protestants, and to a more recent wave of immigrants whose resilience when faced with life in a new country makes them more willing to adapt, What We Choose to Remember celebrates an evolving history of anglophones that is far more complex than many Quebecers of any linguistic stripe stop to consider.
“The film is intended to promote and present real people talking about their real lives,” said Rogers. “We're beyond the point of looking in very binary terms ... and more prepared to take a more nuanced look at history.”
Intercut with a series of group interviews in which the participants sit in a circle, the creators of the film chose this format to elicit more unexpected responses and further the linguistic conversation in unexpected ways.
“The sum of the parts is infinitely greater than the parts,” said Rogers. “It created a very interesting dynamic in terms of getting their stories out ... It's a collective experience that we are trying to tell ... It's very uplifting and informative.”
Rogers, that playwriting student who arrived over 40 years ago, has created a storytelling framework that hopefully sets the stage for a present-day retelling of anglophone and francophone relations in which the addition of new characters help to change the accepted script, enabling everyone look to the future with added knowledge and heart.
Rogers will attend the 2 p.m. matinee screening with a Q&A on Friday as well as the 8 p.m. screening, which is followed by a Q&A and a reception.
For tickets call 450-458-5361, or for more information visit www. hudsonfilmsociety.ca.