David Cronenberg and Atom Egoyan admire him. The illustrious CBC critic Gerald Pratley hailed “her innate dynamism and poetic imagination.” But nowadays, in Quebec, even the biggest moviegoers seem to have forgotten Vancouver’s Larry Kent, who is considered Canada’s first independent filmmaker.
The Fantasia festival pays tribute to him this year by devoting a retrospective of five films to him spanning 52 years. He will also take part in an audience discussion, moderated by his friend and Concordia film professor David Douglas. We wanted to talk to the main interested party for the occasion.
“I’m 90 this year. You will excuse me, I am much less eloquent than when I was 89, ”he says from the outset, before bursting out laughing. Either way, the director accurately recounts how controversial his early career was. His movies The Bitter Ash (1963) and Sweet Substitute (1964) divided critics and aroused passions in universities across the country.
The “Cassavetes of Canada”
While Quebecers Gilles Groulx and Claude Jutra were ostensibly inspired, at the same time, by the French New Wave and Jean-Luc Godard to make their respective films The cat in the bag And All things ConsideredLarry Kent has often been called “Canada’s John Cassavetes” by critics.
With their jazzy soundtracks and their stories of rebellious youth with a political subtext, Kent’s first two films are certainly reminiscent of those of his contemporaries in Quebec. However, the comparison with Cassavetes is more necessary when one considers its realistic dialogues (less literary) and its more dramatic use of lighting and depth of field.
The Bitter Ash, which intertwines the love lives of two marginalized Vancouver couples, was banned from commercial cinemas after a critic denounced its flippant depiction of nudity. The film was only shown at universities, including McGill, where a minor riot reportedly broke out when the administration tried to limit ticket sales.
“I didn’t expect this film to be so controversial, but I knew it wouldn’t be unanimous,” says Larry Kent. I didn’t take any risks: when I found out it had been developed in the laboratory, I took it back without their knowledge, before they could see it, to make sure it wouldn’t be not censored. You had to be crazy to make films like that, without funding. Nobody was doing it back then. »
It is therefore to applaud this stubbornness to make films at all costs all his life, and this, without ever obtaining public funding, that Mitch Davis, artistic director of Fantasia, organized the retrospective. “He paved the way for so many local filmmakers. It was the right thing to do, as a duty of memory, to pay homage to him. »
A lover of Quebec
Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1933, Kent moved to Vancouver at age 19. He studied theater at the University of British Columbia. The success of his first independent productions then allowed him to settle in Montreal and land a job at the National Film Board.
“It was very long and complicated, climbing the ladder in such a big company. I left after a few months, he laments. I preferred to work as a printer at the Gazette from Montreal to earn enough money to make my own films, before returning to Vancouver years later. I still loved Quebec, where the artistic environment was very stimulating. »
It is also in the Belle Province that Kent made his most famous film, Blue flower, in 1971, starring none other than Susan Sarandon and Carole Laure, on images by Jean-Claude Labrecque, director of photography. Upon its release, critics assassinated it for its simplistic screenplay and the uneven acting of the actors. Always considered a turnip, the film remains fascinating from a historical point of view.
In this bilingual feature film, one of the only ones of the time to focus on the tensions between the two solitudes, a French-speaking Quebecer from the working class dates a separatist activist and has an affair with an English-speaking model (Sarandon). “Montréal was much more bilingual in the 1970s than it is today,” explains the filmmaker. I wanted to be able to represent the city with my point of view as an English speaker who was steeped in both cultures. »
His last movie, She Who Must Burn, released in 2015, depicts the misfortunes of an abortion clinic owner who tries to continue her practice while her American state prevents her from doing so and a strange family of evangelists promises to make her pay. “I was very influenced by the horror of the 1960s and 1970s,” says Larry Kent. I myself experimented with genre cinema in the 1980s.
The filmmaker remained proud of his films until the end, even if they did not always please the critics. His only regret? Having run out of money to complete his most recent projects. “At the same time, I’ve always done what looked like me and I assume it,” he says. At least I will be able to find the public in Montreal this summer, a city that has always welcomed me. »