May the fan be with you | With Star Wars enthusiasts to Tunisia

The films of the Star Wars saga have marked the cinema of the last 45 years, giving birth to a veritable army of enthusiasts. Many of them being in Quebec, the filmmaker Marc Joly-Corcoran testifies to their unconditional love in his documentary May the fan be with youwhich will be screened Saturday night at the Cinémathèque québécoise.

Pierre-Marc Durivage
The Press

May the fan be with you follows Christian “Malgus” Lorin, Steeve Gros-Louis, Jef Bérard and Kim Martineau, for whom Star Wars is a true religion. Touched from early childhood by the films of the original trilogy, the protagonists became collectors before starting to participate in costumades, notably within the Quebec garrison of Legion 501^e, the largest imperial re-enactment group in the world. “It developed quite organically,” explains director Marc Joly-Corcoran.

This is how he first came into contact with Jef and Kim, a couple from Blainville who love costumes. Himself a great fan of Star Wars, the director did not want to pass judgment or propose any hypothesis about the passion of the couple. “I didn’t want to feed the clichés about the cosplay where we see sexy pin ups or overweight men dressed as Superman, Marc Joly-Corcoran tells us with a laugh. Jef and Kim were therefore an ideal starting point; they have children, a mortgage, everything that is most normal, very far from the image conveyed by the media. »

Jef then put the director in touch with Christian “Malgus” Lorin, who was to later befriend Steeve Gros-Louis during the filming of the documentary. “I started to follow Malgus a lot, everything happened organically, explains Marc Joly-Corcoran. Even Steve’s participation was organic; these two knew each other, but I captured on camera their first meeting where the passion really emerged between the two. In fact, Steve wasn’t even supposed to be in the documentary to begin with. But it quickly became a no brainer to include it. »

To Tozeur

Then an idea germinated: to go to Tunisia. The film indeed ends where the passion of all these beautiful people was born, in the desert of Tozeur, where the first scenes of the original film by George Lucas were shot. “It was really moving to see them return to the origin of their passion,” says the director, who has already shot a documentary on pilgrimages to India.

“Setting your feet next to Owen Lars’ house, where the first tap dance was given, that, I admit, was special, recognizes Marc Joly-Corcoran. But I must say that I always had to keep my director’s eye, I had no worries. I lived that a little rough as fan, I confess. I had to stay alert like an animal filmmaker, while seeing people tripping in front of my camera. I would like to go back there one day with my girlfriend to enjoy it…”

For Marc Joly-Corcoran, this is a second major project after his film The mirror, a fiction starring Normand Daneau, Bénédicte Décary and Lise Roy which won awards abroad as well as at the Montreal Independent Film Festival in 2021. He will be present this Saturday to discuss with film lovers at the Cinémathèque québécoise, the last opportunity to see the film in theaters, before it begins its second life on the small screen. “At the moment, I would very much like to convince the distributor to go with a physical Blu-ray release, because I believe that fans and collectors will want to have it, he argues. In 2023, I imagine it will go to video on demand, we don’t know on which platform yet, but I would see it on Netflix or Amazon Prime. ” U.S. too.