Like the letters of yesteryear, but with today’s tools, Cinéma Public offered five duos of Canadian filmmakers the opportunity to send filmed correspondence. Cinepistolary therefore wants to be a window on the intimacy of these artists of varied origins who tell stories that are just as important.
This first original creation of the Public cinema does not seem to have imposed any particular criteria, except that each episode has six capsules, so three matches per filmmaker. If some of them speak directly to the camera and to their correspondent, others use narration, use subtitles, without voice, or nature images, sometimes with sound, sometimes without. In short, the style is fragmented, so that it can sometimes be difficult to find your way around.
The experience – because it is one – does not, however, ask the public to understand the reason behind every word and every image. Rather, you have to let yourself be carried away by the episodes of varying lengths. You have to listen, in the same way that filmmakers listen to and respond to each other through their filmed letters. Vietnamese, Anishinabemowin, French, English, Spanish. Many are the languages used in the series, but this does not impose any barrier to the understanding of the other.
Inherent to the pandemic, this project is proof that art is born everywhere and in many forms. This is not necessarily a guarantee of accessibility and quality, but it is nonetheless interesting.
To see in video