This sinister news story on a volcanic island in the Caribbean seems like something out of a bad film noir. In the foreground: a quarrelsome American neighbor blocks passages on his property, despite court notices. In his sights: a couple of eco-responsible hoteliers of Quebec origin who are driving that day on a sunny road. Daniel Langlois and Dominique Marchand, benefactors of Dominica, patrons and investors, were not just friends. Fence chicanes can drive you crazy! Enough for this neighbor to hire a hitman who shoots them dead, before setting the car and its passengers on fire. Here are the convicted culprits. Since Sunday, we have watched the morbid images of the charred vehicle over and over again. At least, on Thursday, a ceremony will pay tribute to them there between sea and mountains. Cut!
Or rather stop ! Let’s not let visionaries be summed up for posterity as a B-movie death! Let’s burn candles in their living memory!
Without knowing his partner, I followed and interviewed Daniel Langlois so much at the time when he wanted to transform Montreal into a global techno-cinematographic center that his profile and his psyche remain imprinted on my retinas.
Always dressed in black, with bright eyes, gifted, idealistic, Daniel Langlois spoke and thought quickly. This shy and reserved perfectionist had a sense of ethics that honored him. Few entrepreneurs truly fight for the common good. Did we deserve this builder, of crazy generosity, paid little in return, in advance of his society, often betrayed by it, and the powerful visions of his mind?
His dreams, his disappointments float between the gables of Boulevard Saint-Laurent and the jungles of Dominica. He believed others were as thirsty as he was for a better world to build. Utopian, yes. But let’s keep its beacon lit under the ambient fog. We wish him many followers.
The founder, in 1986, of the Softimage house with 3D animation software allowed Spielberg’s dinosaurs to populate the Jurassic Park. It was after the sale of his company to Microsoft in 1994 that his dreams were fulfilled. He predicted the fall of the welfare state and the emergence of very culturally active private patronage. Montreal would become a port of openness, a core of unbridled creativity. His mind planned, created, set his projects in motion, sometimes at the wheel, sometimes at the mill.
Daniel Langlois remained marked by his childhood in Saint-Canut on a poultry farm: “At five years old, my father could tell me: “I’m going away for an hour, take care of the henhouse.” A farm gives you a sense of responsibility,” he confided to me in 1997. Later, he would try his hand at the factory before studying design, then learning on the job how to draw ideas from the computer. revolutionary effects.
His origins haunted him. To the point of feeling remorse for having made a fortune thanks to Hollywood. “Too much money is indecent. With success comes social responsibility. If I kept all my millions sloppily, I wouldn’t be worth much! »
The man in black felt a debt to repertory cinema after having demolished the Élysée to create his Softimage premises. By founding the Excentris complex in 1999, he fulfilled this in part. According to him, this museum place, of creation and projections would become a lively center, of the Andy Warhol Factory type with a seventh art vocation. Daniel Langlois believed in vain in an independent cinema capable of injecting its life into new technologies before the American majors took control. In his complex, to keep his rooms ultra-creative and multifunctional, he organized promising events, sorry in the end to have to exploit the screens mainly for commercial purposes. Excentris was sold.
Daniel Langlois joined the Festival du nouveau cinéma in 1997 (after having paid off his debts). Then he dreamed of linking it to a new unifying film event which was a hit. Another hard blow! His private club 357c, founded in Old Montreal in 2002, in the hope of bringing together cultural and financial elites, was associated a decade later with the name of a few corrupt members cited in the Charbonneau commission, which gave him bad press . When Daniel Langlois left Montreal, he did so without resentment, propelled south under the spur of environmentalist ideals. Murderers took his life. But let no one speak of him as a loser, if not a magnificent one. More like a modern-day prophet whose convictions are always challenged, never crushed.