Taking the pretext of new appointments to the Order of Arts and Letters of Quebec, The duty invites you into the imagination of men and women whose exemplary work makes culture shine.
“In Abitibi, a country that was new, my family were farmers,” explains Louis Dallaire, co-founder in 1982, with Jacques Matte and Guy Parent, of the International Film Festival in Abitibi-Témiscamingue. “My parents worked hard. They first settled in La Reine, near La Sarre. It was a country of practicing Catholics… There was something of the Klondike there, of the Wild West. They wanted to live off their products, sell butter, milk… But to whom? There weren’t many people around! »
“One day, they left, in the middle of winter. Two or three animals accompanied them, explains Louis Dallaire. They joined Rouyn. This was the beginning of the Dallaire dairy. It is this great cinema, that of a family epic, that Louis Dallaire first projects when he is asked to tell his story.
To speak in particular of the origins of the International Film Festival in Abitibi-Témiscamingue, Louis Dallaire is especially in the habit of repeating that the event was attended by Denys Arcand, Claude Lelouch, Paule Baillargeon and Sophie Deraspe as well as by Denis Villeneuve. and Serge Gainsbourg. But what stands behind these floods of images?
Dressing up a world of images
“My father corresponded with my mother, who was in Roberval. They exchanged letters for eight years before getting married. I always tell myself that, in a way, my parents made a city: Rouyn-Noranda. Yes, they made his streets, all that. In Rouyn, the streets were muddy. The sidewalks were wooden. But the basis, he says, was there. It remained, according to Louis Dallaire, “to go further, to dress up this world, to develop culture”. The development was not really planned.
The former director of Duty, “Lise Bissonnette repeated, again recently, that there was no culture in this country. It was true, in a way… Then, names appeared. Several. Jocelyne Saucier, Richard Desjardins, Jeanne-Mance Delisle, for example. »
Cinema captivated me. It made a country directly visible.
Faced with the hopes of Abitibi, after the Second World War, the government made a 180 degree turn. It was soon decided to close ranks, to forget villages, to tilt a world on the side of silence. “It gave us the image of a pioneer like Hauris Lalancette, in A kingdom awaits you, the film by Pierre Perrault. In his return to the hopes of these thousands of settlers evicted from their dreams, in the midst of the silence and the ambient gloom with regard to our own history, Pierre Perrault had plunged his nose into Abitibi to inform the world, at its manner, from the word of the humble. Other filmmakers than him also believed, rightly, that a major reference was there.
In 1977, for the first edition of Regional Cinema Week planned by Louis Dallaire and his friends, they invited Father Maurice Proulx, precursor of our documentary cinema, to present his films on the colonization of Abitibi. These films, made in the 1930s, were unknown to the public. They hadn’t been seen for years. “The room was full at the Rouyn theatre,” recalls Louis Dallaire. “People, standing, applauding. They discovered something about themselves, about their world. They had never seen this before. At that time, these films were dormant in the archives. They were not easily accessible, like today. We thought there was no point in that! Pierre Perrault, he saw that this was not the case. He saw everything that this world of Abitibi carried. He reworked all that, this material. »
To want
To move forward, observes Louis Dallaire, “we first need people who want to”. And Louis Dallaire obviously wants a lot… “I was a little hyperactive around the edges,” he laughs. “I was interested in everything related to regional development. The Abitibi region has always had to fight, to defend itself, to claim. »
He remembers a time when 25-cycle electric current powered Abitibi, unlike what was the norm elsewhere in Quebec. This earned this corner of the country the odiousness of having to pay more for the slightest electrical appliance. The standard 60 cycles did not arrive until 1965 in Rouyn.
“Think that we even had to demand that Télé-Québec be accessible throughout the Abitibi region! Louis Dallaire also took a close interest in the question of the accessibility of the mobile telephone network. “In several places, there was simply no signal. Telling Bell Canada that it must absolutely serve a bled of 222 people is not easy. However, this type of preliminary development is necessary for there to be development on a larger scale! You need specific basic projects. Even today, he says, you have to know how to fight in Abitibi.
Jack-of-all-trades, Louis Dallaire has used, for years, both his love of bees and his knowledge of administration and his sense of communication. Through his commitments, the cinema in particular has never ceased to interest him. “Why cinema? We were TV kids. Cinema captivated me. It made a country directly visible. We wanted to show Abitibi. What does Abitibi look like? This is the Film Festival. We animate a world. »
Change the world
The Film Festival will be the occasion for major discussions on Abitibi as much as on the world. “We often chatted over a beer until 3 a.m. In the first editions of the International Festival, the beer was free, thanks to a sponsor. But the source of beer has dried up. Some of the public too. “That was the way back then…I shouldn’t tell you this, but when we cut free beer, we lost our male audience for two or three years! Then he came back, quietly. His habits have changed. People are curious. »
In 1982, the Festival saw itself submitting a hundred films at most. Now there are at least ten times more. “I have 172 to watch this month,” drops Louis Dallaire.
Over time, thanks to the trio formed by Louis Dallaire, Jacques Matte and Guy Parent, supported by volunteers and employees, more than 3,500 filmmakers and performers have presented their works of fiction, documentaries or even animated films at the International Film Festival in Abitibi-Témiscamingue.
Of the thousands of guests who stayed at the festival, Louis Dallaire has a special memory of Serge Gainsbourg. “He had come to present at the opening Stan the Flasher. Gainsbourg had two characters. Between interviews, he was completely normal, composed. And afterwards, in an interview, he played Gainsbourg. After thirteen interviews, one after the other, he told me he didn’t want to do any more, that he couldn’t. Then he pulled himself together and went to the bar, to do the fourteenth interview of the day… He’s a master of promotion, Gainsbourg. He was an exceptional being. »
The Abitibi-Témiscamingue International Film Festival has never claimed to play the frog wanting to become bigger than the beef. “We are probably a kind of regional cinematheque. Marcel Jean [le directeur de la Cinémathèque québécoise] came to the Festival. He said that what is important, basically, in Rouyn, is that we discover films that would go unnoticed in Montreal. It’s true. »