Presented Tuesday evening at the opening of the 40and International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA), the new documentary by Hugo Latulippe, I rise, interferes in the artistic process of a small theater troupe. On the menu: poetry, politics and citizen mobilization.
What would happen if, for a year, a small group of keen actors began to read today’s poets in order to free up the spirit of our time and turn this material into a spectacle? What aspirations and what dreams would be revealed by reading the works of Toino Dumas, Marjolaine Beauchamp, Chloé Savoie-Bernard? What questions would be raised by frequenting the words of Rodney Saint-Éloi and Daria Colonna? What would smiles and tears be made of? What struggles would be relayed in the public square listening to the texts of Dany Boudreault and Catherine Dorion?
And what would happen if a documentary filmmaker aimed his sensitive camera at the small troupe of actor-readers, also starting to devour contemporary poetry? It would happen I lift myself upa new feature film by Hugo Latulippe, which has the honor of opening, as a world premiere and in competition, the 40and edition of the International Festival of Films on Art, Tuesday evening at the Monument-National.
“Right now, I find contemporary poetry so alive,” explains the director enthusiastically. And there was, in the theater laboratory project inspired by poetry led by Véro and Gab Côté, the idea of meshing the question of living together and politics in the broad sense, a vision that matches my documentary approach. »
If poetry is its fuel, one could say of the sisters Véronique and Gabrielle Côté, authors, directors and actresses, that they are the engine of I lift myself up, first the title of their show scheduled at the Théâtre du Trident in 2019, then that of the homonymous feature film by Hugo Latulippe. The filmmaker interfered in their artistic process to document all the stages. Audition and direction of actors, assembly of poems, staging… They lovingly hold the thread of a collective work, which comes to life before our eyes. “In terms of ideas and form, I had a framework: a story unfolding over a year, with a beginning, an unfolding and an end. And since the substance of their show was political, I knew it was going to get interesting. »
Authenticity hunt
Mobilized by the Côté sisters to participate in the creation of the show, some twenty actors, including Anne-Marie Olivier, Ariel Charest (who became the queen of lip sync), Maxime Beauregard-Martin, Elkahna Talbi and Leila Donabelle-Kaze, put their guts and their hearts on the table. “As a documentary filmmaker, I’m used to working with non-actors and preparing the ground well for filming. There, with actors, it was different. On the other hand, they did something that they are not often called upon to do: they agreed to give themselves up to the camera, to go into what they are, with all that is destabilizing, confides the director . Going to places where you can’t go if you show up for five minutes with a Kodak, tracking down those moments of pure authenticity in which humans speak from their hearts and putting them together to make a film, that’s documentary: a hunt for authenticity. »
Uncompromising, modest in its means, yet bright and engaging, I lift myself up is one of those works that have the power to overwhelm and move. “I rise up” are also the words of the École de la montagne rouge, a group of graphic design students from UQAM who created many striking visuals for Spring 2012, such as the iconic red squares. A turning point in Hugo Latulippe’s civic journey? “I experienced this as the fact of a society that questions itself and places education at the center of its thinking. The people I filmed are quite a bit younger than me; some were on the street at that time, others, like the young activist Sara Montpetit, who plays Maria Chapdelaine in Sébastien Pilote’s film, have more recently embarked on an activist journey in connection with climate concerns. At one point, I understood that I was filming people who carry a Quebec and a world that are not necessarily those of my generation. Through Printemps érable, we also witnessed the rise of Québec solidaire, which is a bit like the political vehicle of these ideas…” This film is also an opportunity to return to the arrival of Catherine Dorion in the political arena.
Have the concerns of the new generation surprised, even destabilized, the 48-year-old director? “When they say ‘we won’t have children’, it confronts me because it’s about our faith in the future. They can sometimes have a radical side, but I think we have a duty to ask ourselves, in our turn, if this is a sign of the times. The firmness of their demands in terms of gender equality, gender diversity, the place of indigenous nations and the urgency of reacting concretely to climate change… They assume that this is where we are is going, and I think that my job as a human being and as a citizen is not to give up. »