Gilles Groulx
202124 heures ou plus
Gilles Groulx
This feature film made during an exceptionally feverish period of popular revolt that saw the coming together of Quebec’s 3 main unions (CSN, FTQ, CEQ) is a cinematic tract by socially engaged filmmaker Gilles Groulx. Propped against the backdrop of the 1970 October Crisis, the film is a frontal assault denouncing a “consumer society” viewed as the ultimate embodiment of evil.
24 Hours or More
Un jeu si simple
Gilles Groulx
This short 1964 documentary depicts the national sport of French Canadians: hockey. Seen "from the inside" this seemingly simple game turns out to be not so simple. Hockey is dream of mythic proportions that mirrors the aspirations of an entire people. Its heroes are national figures. At the Montreal Forum, there is total symbiosis between the crowd and the Habs. In 1955, idol Maurice Richard is suspended for striking a referee. The people take to the streets in unison and the riots begin... - NFB
Such a Simple Game
Golden Gloves
Gilles Groulx
A classic NFB documentary about the Golden Gloves boxing tournament, the Canadian amateur's hope for success in the boxing world. This Gilles Groulx film shows three Montreal boxers in training. In behind-the-scenes interviews they talk about their ambitions and what prompted them to take up the sport. - NFB
Golden Gloves
Normetal
Gilles Groulx
Filmed in the town of Normétal in northern Québec, this short documentary provides a first-hand introduction to life in a frontier mining community where all roads lead to the pithead. Dweller of two worlds, the copper miner's life is one of contrasts. A mile underground are the rock face, the clattering drills, the dust of explosions; above ground, all the familiar activities of a small town. - NFB
Normetal
Voir Miami...
Gilles Groulx
A cinematic allegory of the modern U.S. at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Gilles Groulx’s masterfully poetic montage essay evokes Quebecers’ simultaneous aversion and attraction to the El Dorado that is Florida—both a giant nursing home and an ideal of progress, American style.
Seeing Miami...
Tentatives de se décrire
Boris Lehman
Mirèse Aerdts, Nathalie André
Trying to describe oneself is a movie about representation. How it is possible, through film, to describe oneself and describe others. With the camera as mirror and third eye. At first, a collage-like combination of letter-writing, investigation and journey, something between documentary and feature film. Finally, a portrait of Boris Lehman from 1989 to 1995, part II of BABEL.
Trying to Describe Oneself
Où êtes-vous donc?
Gilles Groulx
Jean-Claude Bernard, Diane Bernatchez
This experimental feature-length drama by Gilles Groulx follows three main characters who embody different attitudes about consumerism. A window onto Quebec in the late 1960s, this protest film explores these characters’ daily lives, their trials and aspirations. Where Are You? is an innovative and militant work, buoyed by hard-hitting film language that includes subtitles and intertitles, quotations, offscreen voices and songs and references to advertising.
Where Are You?
La France sur un caillou
Claude Fournier, Gilles Groulx
The 4,000 inhabitants of the archipelago of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon describe it as a caillou—a tiny rock on which they live, lost in the shadow of Newfoundland. There is something mysterious and inexplicable about this extension of faraway France. In broad strokes, the film paints a picture of this insular population, revealing their history, daily lives and singular character.
France on a Pebble
Les raquetteurs
Michel Brault, Gilles Groulx
Maurice Richard
This short documentary records the celebration and ritual surrounding a snowshoe competition in Sherbrooke in the late 1950s. The film marked the beginning of a new approach to reality in documentary and prefigures the trademark style of the NFB's newly formed French Unit. Today, Les raquetteurs is considered a precursor to the birth of direct cinema.
The Snowshoers
Au pays de Zom
Gilles Groulx
Joseph Rouleau, Françoise Berd
A film-opera divided into nine segments, Au pays de Zom tells a day in the life of Mister Zom, a capitalist infatuated with his own person, whose conformism is only matched by his artistic velleity. A thematic sequel to his movie filmed with Mexican peasants, here Groulx asks, by making a business man sing, a second question on happiness: this time about the ones for whom happiness is linked with the possession of overabundance. He delivers, by developing the theatrical dimension with great emphasis, a social pamphlet with a strong satirical charge that he himself qualified as a "neo-surrealist fantasy".
Au pays de Zom
