The camera, slow and floating, hovers over the workshops it films. The images seem to come out of a dream, a beautiful dream. Works and pots of paint abound, floors and walls bear the traces of years of work and the light, with its warmth, envelops it all. Something is wrong, however, as in any good dream. Where are the artists?
The documentary 305 Bellechasse focuses on nine of them, rather on the workshops of nine of them, all located at the address mentioned in the title (305, rue Bellechasse, in the Montreal district of La Petite-Patrie). Nothing trivial: the building is the emblem of the fight to save affordable and central workspaces. Fight, in this case, lost.
Maxime-Claude L’Écuyer, director until then of short films, did not feel sorry for the fate of the artistic population. If there is little doubt about his business – denouncing the harshness of the real estate sector – the manner is rather subtle. Instead of a miserable or militant tone, L’Écuyer preferred a positive, luminous approach – hence the shimmering lighting.
Except for the shots shot outside, the camera is constantly moving, in a sort of endless tour of the premises. She enters the workshops, lingers over the details, the tools here, the furniture there, observes the works with meticulousness. And captures, through bird’s eye views, the general organization.
If the artists do not appear in the image, they are present in voice-over, in voice. We hear them, in turn, talk about their arrival at “305 Bellechasse”, about their creative process, about their inspiration, about the need to accompany themselves with music (or debates on the radio).
For David Elliot, the studio is “a psychic space” to which we become attached. Christine Major sees it as a place of her own, outside her home. While for David Lafrance or Sylvain Bouthillette, the workshop represents stability in a life marked by moving, romantic breakups and other hazards.
Despite a semblance of repetition and a real impression of going in circles (we constantly come back from one workshop to another), the film manages to convey a message. The workshop is not only essential, it is also a personality trait. There is more than one kind of artist, chaotic or orderly, exuberant like hardcore or melodious like a sonata. It is not without reason that the soundtrack varies according to the workshops visited.
L’Écuyer only retained painters. If we can blame him for it, his choice to limit himself to one discipline nevertheless makes it possible to bring out the differences between the artists, from the wall serving as a palette for Alexis Lavoie to the small pots of color, well classified, by Nicolas Grenier.
Le 305, Bellechasse has been a hive of creativity for more than 20 years. The documentary opens with the origins of this former Catelli pasta factory and closes with the spaces abandoned by its occupants in 2020. Between these two parentheses, the place vibrates, lives — the artists talk about it in the present tense. Like a dream, still in progress.