SPRING 2007
CLANDESTINE TRUTH: The Canadian New Wave
APRIL 3-25
Sponsored by Canadian Studies Center
Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of
Washington
and the Canadian Consulate
CLANDESTINE TRUTH captures the mood of an era when feelings counted more
than reason. In the 1960s, most national cinemas were undergoing major
transformations. It was an era of rebellion and questioning of identity.
Many great European films were created in this era, including THE 400
BLOWS, BREATHLESS, and LA DOLCE VITA. Closer to home, Canadian
filmmakers, inspired by many of these classics, created their own
distinctive, innovative films. Their work, with its focus on a
distinctly contemporary mood, life, and conditions, represented a sharp
departure from the country’s rich cinematic history of documentary
filmmaking. CLANDESTINE TRUTH provides an overview of four rarely seen
films by filmmakers who defined modern Canadian cinema. Originally
intended as a documentary but transformed into a feature-length
narratives, Gilles Groulx’ LE CHAT DANS LE SAC and Don
Owen’s NOBODY WAVED GOODBYE both feature disaffected youth, one in
Anglophone and the other in Francophone Canada. These works are
juxtaposed with two independently financed films: Michel Brault’s
ENTRE LA MER ET L’EAU DOUCE and seminal documentary filmmaker
Allan King’s A MARRIED COUPLE. All four films stand as landmarks
in the creation of Canada’s contemporary national cinema.
APRIL 3-4 Tues-Wed at 7, 9pm
LE CHAT DANS LE SAC
(Gilles Groulx, Canada, 1964, BetaSP, 74 min.)
Seminal to the development of Quebecois and
Canadian cinema, LE CHAT DANS LE SAC is seldom seen outside Quebec. The
film recounts the problematic romance between intellectual journalist
Claude and his Anglo-Jewish actress girlfriend, Barbara. Combining
Brechtian techniques via Godard and a quasi-documentary feel, LE CHAT is
visually beautiful, intellectually incisive and probing. Not only does
the film clarify the relationship between the emerging Qu̩b̩cois cinema
of the early Sixties and the French New Wave, but it also pre-figures
many of the debates that would consume Quebecois intellectuals for the
coming decades, presenting them in an irresistibly innovative framework.
No wonder LE CHAT is revered by younger Quebecois filmmakers and
everyone else who's ever seen it. With a score by John Coltrane.
In French with English subtitles.
"Essential...as important to le Qu̩b̩cois as its contemporary NOBODY WAVED GOODBYE was to English-Canadian filmmakers." —TAKE ONE
APRIL 10-11 Tues-Wed at 7, 9pm
NOBODY WAVED GOOD-BYE
(Don Owen, Canada, 1964, 35mm, 80 min.)
Young filmmaker Don Owen's assignment from the National Film Board of Canada was to make a half-hour docudrama on juvenile delinquency. On the sly, he turned the project into a feature that helped launch modern Anglo-Canadian cinema. Peter Kastner is Peter, a middle-class suburban Toronto teenager whose youthful rebellion against adult values lands him in trouble at home, at school and with the law. Julie Biggs is Julie, his likeminded girlfriend. Owen's rough and ready film, shot with a lightweight, hand-held camera, had a fresh, improvised, intimate feel and a documentary-like immediacy that charmed audiences.
“A remarkable film you should not miss!” NEW YORK
HERALD TRIBUNE
“A marvelous movie! A story commensurate with
THE CATCHER IN THE RYE!" NEW YORKER MAGAZINE
APRIL 17-18 Tues-Wed at 7, 9pm
ENTRE LA MER ET L'EAU DOUCE
(Michel Brault, Canada, 1967, 35mm, 85 min.)
During the late 1960s,
Montreal underwent a transformation from a provincial capital to a
vibrant urban center that became a magnet for Quebec youth. Michel
Brault’s (cinematographer for Jean Rouch) ENTRE LA MER ET
L’EAU DOUCE (BETWEEN SWEET AND SALT WATER) brilliantly captures
this distinct moment with a simple story of a young musician who leaves
his North Shore fishing village for the city. Once there he experiences
the everyday poetry of late-night coffee bars, early-morning
conversations with new friends and devastating love for a waitress
played by an incandescent Genevieve Bujold. A low-key take on
BREATHLESS—with echoes of the scandalous Swedish film I AM CURIOUS
(YELLOW)—Brault’s work is a meandering snapshot of Montreal as it
existed in 1967.
In French with English subtitles.
“ENTRE LA MER ET L’EAU DOUCE is, to my mind, one of the unqualified masterpieces of Quebec cinema. It deserves to be seen as one of the finest works ever produced in this country.” Piers Handling, TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
APRIL 24-25 Tues-Wed at 7, 9pm
A MARRIED COUPLE
(Allan King, Canada, 1969, DV-CAM, 96 min.)
Exploring the emotional devastation of a modern marriage in conflict, this extraordinary and controversial documentary was first released in 1969. The film presents the lives of Billy Edwards, an upwardly mobile advertising copywriter, his wife Antoinette, who craves individuality and fame and their three-year-old son Bogart. By turn exquisitely painful and hilariously funny, this uniquely intimate portrait reveals the deep sense of loneliness at the heart of the couple’s relationship as well as the daily power struggles between them. The film delicately balances fiction and direct cinema and raises basic aesthetic issues about both. In fact, King calls it an "actuality drama"— not a bad term given the skill with which King records Billy and Antoinette’s dramatic flair.
“Quite simply one of the greatest
movies I have ever seen” Clive Barnes, NEW YORK TIMES
WATCH THE TRAILER
