Matimekush
The mission of the Centre d'art et essai de la Cinémathèque québécoise (CAECQ) is to primary program Quebec-made documentaries and independent fiction, as well as international documentaries, animated and foreign films, while encouraging opportunities for meetings between the public and the artists. Its programming is presented in conjunction with the Cinémathèque québécoise’s under the label New releases.
The May 6 & 7 screenings will be followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker Guillaume Sylvestre
Matimekush is landlocked in the former mining town of Schefferville, 700 km north of Sept-Îles. It was founded in the 1950s, when the Canadian government and Iron Or forced the Innu to settle down. In Canada’s Far North, there is a dire labour shortage. At Kanatamat School, the heart of the community, most of the high school teachers are from Africa.
Guillaume Sylvestre
Born in 1977 in Montreal, Guillaume Sylvestre began studying philosophy but left his studies unfinished to work as a chef in several restaurants across the United States. In 2006, he directed Durs à cuire, a documentary that takes viewers behind the scenes of Quebec’s two top restaurants, exposing the intense and excessive lives of their chefs. The film opened the 2007 Festival du nouveau cinéma in Montreal. He went on to direct an adaptation of Turgenev’s First Love (1er Amour, 2013), along with five documentaries presented at various festivals, all in the spirit of observational cinema: Sauvage (2010), Secondaire V (2014), Steakhouse (2015), Le prix du paradis (2017), and DPJ (2017). His socially engaged documentaries, which he shoots alone, camera in hand, over a long period of time, lift the veil on Quebec society, offering a raw, unflinching portrait of Quebec society that consistently provokes strong reactions.
