For lack of a crystal ball to consult for the year of grace 2023, my little finger tells me that the year started will grow seeds sown upstream. Unless we shake our fleas. After all, there is still time to bend worrying statistical curves in cultural matters and to combat the gloom of the day. For now, Hollywood is further expanding its empire on the big screen. Must understand. After the pandemic years, under the joys of cocooning with films and series served at home, only Hollywood mega-productions, Avatar, Top Gun and company, could attract crowds to the cinema. It would be a shame to leave the field to them while staying hidden at home for the rest. Some predict it: this year, spectators will finally put their noses outside. We want to hope so.
But, far from it. On the list published this week by the Cinéac agency, only two Quebec feature films in 2022 (December 23 and confessions) raked in the million dollars at the box office. Among the 20 most popular films in our country, 19 were offshoots of the big American studios. So let’s get out of the only paths marked out by the behemoths of entertainment. Let us call for the return to favor of less commercial works. After all, many will come from our breeding ground. And why deprive yourself of going to see Breathe by Cinemania-winning Onur Karaman,The plunger by Francis Leclerc, the cobbler by Francois Bouvier Borders by Guy Edoin, the coyote of Katherine Jerkovic, honored at Whistler? So many other inspiring national proposals are jostling at the winter or spring gate.
Having already seen two pearls of the seventh European art, I highly recommend them. Close by the Belgian Lukas Dhont, Grand Jury Prize at Cannes, luminous and melancholic adolescent chronicle, as well as the hilarious Smoking makes you cough by Frenchman Quentin Dupieux, in an original period trial, are worth the detour a hundred times over.
One thing is certain, in all cultural fields, the offer abounds, on the themes of openness to others, of the family in all its forms, of female and social struggles, of the ambient anxieties offered in satires and dystopias. Let’s add the classics to revisit to anchor your feet somewhere. Technological change threatens human foundations. Never mind ! At the Phi Foundation, a group exhibition, from March to July, will ask the killer question: “Will technology dictate our ways of life?” “Hey! But yes.
One thing is certain, artificial intelligence has become the seven-hour man of the visual arts and the worlds of video games and animation. Where to stand in the face of the talent of these infernal machines? Big existential question that torments the industry. I vote for the creators against the robots, but find out the outcome of the final fight. We are a small thing, come on.
It remains to question the wise minds of the great ancestors. It is in the wake of the centenary of the painter from L’Isle-aux-Grues that Robert Lepage will stick to the Riopelle Project at Duceppe. Similarly, to music by Serge Fiori and Blair Thomson, the multimedia show Symphonic Riopelle will ignite Montreal in light in February. Other reasons are added to these projects. Many artists feel the need to cling to the past to define the future. This season, on stage, Brigitte Haentjens, at Usine C with Romestages five Roman plays by the great Shakespeare, while Alice Ronfard takes on Balzac’s theater with the maker. At the Green Curtain, a sequel to A doll’s house by Henrik Ibsen, imagined by the American Lucas Hnath, recalls the memory of the Norwegian master. Twelve authors have even undertaken to offer a contemporary version to the Faust by Goethe, soon to be shown at Prospero.
If the masters of the past accompany our evaporated times in culture, it can’t hurt, we say to ourselves. But will they provide all the answers to the game of Ouija ? After all, they weren’t living in our broken times. It’s brewing so hard, what to do? So, in humor, Boucar Diouf at the Grand Théâtre de Québec proposes to tackle the vast projects of human intelligence and stupidity. As for Daniel Lemire, with his usual acumen and that of his alter egos, at the Albert-Rousseau hall in Quebec and at the St-Denis theatre, he intends to throw the most crisp facts of the news to the public in a salad of season.
Similarly, on a Tohu dance step, Circa confronts immanent quests with Humans 2.0 by exploring the contemporary challenges of the human species. An entire program ! We hope that these artists will really show us the light at the end of the tunnel this year.