La terre à boire
La Cinémathèque québécoise is co-organizing with UQAM a colloquium dedicated to the French-Quebec writer, radio personality and iconoclast Patrick Straram (1934-1988). On the occasion of the launch of the publication at PUM of a book edited by Sylvano Santini, recounting the correspondence between Guy Debord and Straram, we will also propose a round-table discussion on the book, as well as two films with Straram and a film by Debord.
The film is composed of a tangle of images (comics, identity photos, images diverted from other films) that follow one another, overloaded with numerous subtitles and supertitles that are difficult to read.
The excesses of a group of young Montrealers tempted by despair. Famous for its run-ins with the censors, the film is a testimony to a certain intellectual community.
Patrick Straram
In 1963, Patrick Straram co-founded the magazine Parti pris, and in 1974, he co-founded the magazine Chroniques. He writes for various newspapers and periodicals, among others on cinema and jazz: La barre du jour, Les herbes rouges, Le jour, Cité libre, Liberté, Maclean's, TV hebdo, Écrits du Canada français, Le Devoir, Sept Jours, Point-de-vue, Hobo-Québec, as well as Parti pris and Chroniques. Patrick Straram is a member of the Association québécoise des critiques de cinéma. At the end of the 1960s, he was invited to California where he wrote Irish coffees at the no name bar & red wine valley of the moon. In the 1970s, he began publishing at L'Obscène nyctalope, L'Aurore and Les Herbes rouges. In 1975, his novel La Faim de l'énigme, inspired by the works of Boris Vian, was published by L'Aurore. From 1978 to 1979, he hosted the program Blues clair (a name he would use for all his later writings) on Radio-Canada, under the pseudonym Bison ravi (an anagram of Boris Vian).
