While, this year, fiction feature films are stealing the show at the Festival de cinéma de la ville de Québec (FCVQ), many nuggets of experimental Quebecois cinema, more discreet, are also to be discovered. The event has even become one of the only local platforms for this art, which is struggling to find an audience in the capital.
“The word ‘experimental’ is scary, but experimental cinema can be playful, touching and popular. It depends on how we position it, ”explains Paul Landriau, new programming director of the FCVQ. So that the event can better “recover” from the pandemic and encourage Quebec cinema, he says, he has chosen this year to only present Quebec films. A good number of short films from here in more experimental forms are worth seeing.
Anne-Marie Bouchard, multidisciplinary artist and resident of Quebec, will be the subject of a retrospective screening of her work not to be missed. “Anne-Marie will be studied in Canadian cinema classes in 20 years, in the same way as Norman McLaren. His practice is one of the most interesting at the moment,” says Paul Landriau.
Nine of his films will be presented on Sunday evening at the Circuit Beaumont, a new cinema located in the Saint-Roch district and run by the Antitube organization. Although formally very different from each other, the films all bear witness to the artist’s interest in mixing the arts and sciences, his attachment to archive images, as well as his great sensitivity to his environment.
The word “experimental” is scary, but experimental cinema can be playful, touching and popular
With Atoms in search of immateriality, for example, she is interested in the magnitude scales of the cosmos. With Echoesshe transposes into music a signal used in underwater acoustics under the St. Lawrence River.
“I often have the same obsessions, I work a lot with science. Right now, I’m trying to shoot on biodegradable material, other than traditional film. I try to think about the ecological impact of my practice. I tried seaweed, but it didn’t work,” says Anne-Marie Bouchard with a smile.
Like a rock concert
Another experimental program, a favorite of Paul Landriau, is called From earthearthland to the moon. Presented Friday afternoon at the Musée de la civilisation, it consists of two films of around thirty minutes, two bewitching and textured cosmic journeys: earthhearthby Daichi Saito, and Sadovnikfrom Primordial Dismemberment.
“Daïchi Saïto is a major filmmaker in experimental cinema. You have to see his film, it’s like a rock concert, a sensory experience that anyone can enjoy,” says Paul Landriau. Daïchi Saïto also co-founded Double Negative, a collective that has been working on the production and distribution of experimental cinema in Montreal since 2004.
The FCVQ will also present, for the first time in theaters in the capital, the first short films by the illustrious Denis Côté, more experimental than his recent works. Although they are available online on Le Panopticon, the journal’s new platform Panorama-cinemaa theatrical viewing is well worth the effort, given the slow pace and often contemplative nature of these films.
Paul Landriau, a former Montrealer who notably worked on the programming of Rendez-vous Québec Cinéma and Plein(s) Ecran(s), stresses “the importance” of presenting “the most diversified programming possible”, and of make it “as accessible as possible”.
“We have to stop thinking that the public doesn’t like experimental cinema. If you never offer it, it’s certain that people won’t have the reflex to see it, ”adds the programmer.
He regrets that the FCVQ remains “virtually the only means” of theatrical distribution of this genre in Quebec, even if experimental cinema is far from being the main component of its programming.
Anne-Marie Bouchard is of the same opinion: “Experimental cinema remains too centered in Montreal. We want to create sparks in the eyes of people here, to tell them that what they do doesn’t have to be marginal. »