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Quebec Experimental Short Films

Courts expérimentaux québécois (No dialogue and English)
Location
Main screening room
Date
December 2nd, 2024
Duration
79 min
Cycle
Contemporary experimental cinema

Curated by Sylvano Santini, this evening of experimental films showcases the contribution of current Québécois filmmakers to this unique cinematic form. A tribute to filmmaker Robert Lapoujade, directed by Pierre Hébert, will be screened for the very first time in Montreal.

Presented by Sylvano Santini

Quebec Experimental Short Films
Directed by
Multiple
Language
No dialogue and English
Origins
Quebec
Duration
79 min
Genre
Experimental
Format
Digital, 35 mm
Synopsis

Triptyque 2 by Pierre Hébert
[Qué., 2012, 10 min, num., no dialogue]

Palimpseste sur « Prison » de Robert Lapoujade by Pierre Hébert
[Qué., 2021, 14 min, num., no dialogue]

Trees of Syntax, Leaves of Axis by Daïchi Saïto
[Qué., 2009, 10 min, 35 mm, no dialogue]

Engram of Returning by Daïchi Saïto
[Qué., 2015, 18 min, 35 mm, no dialogue]

Quiet Zone by David Bryant, Karl Lemieux
[Qué., 2015, 15 min, 35 mm, English]

L'entre-deux by Karl Lemieux
[Qué., 2014, 04 min, num., no dialogue]

Bye Bye Now by Louise Bourque
[Qué., 2022, 08 min, 35 mm, no dialogue]

Quebec Experimental Short Films

Pierre Hébert

Director of more than forty films, including three features, Pierre Hébert worked at the National Film Board of Canada from 1965 to 1999. Since then, his filmmaking work has taken a multidisciplinary scope (live animation performances with musicians, video installations, collaboration with choreographers, drawing, and actions on the web). In additions to his three feature films, La plante humaine (1996), Bazin’s film (2017) et Mount Fuji seen from a moving train (2021), he wrote several books and articles about cinéma. He received the Albert Tessier Award for his lifetime achievement in 2005, a Cinema Career Grant of the Art Council of Quebec in 2012, and an honorary doctorate by the Emily Carr University of Art and Design of Vancouver in 2018. In 2024, he also received the René Jodoin Award for an exceptionnal contribution to canadian animation, given by the Sommets du cinéma d’animation.

Karl Lemieux

Karl Lemieux is a Canadian film director best known for his collaborations with Montreal-based post rock band Godspeed You! Black Emperor and his film Shambles. He joined the band in 2010, when it came back after a seven-year hiatus, providing film projections shown at live concerts. Those projections largely consist of expressionist tapes shot at empty roads in Canada. In 2015, together with his bandmate David Bryant, Lemieux co-directed the experimental documentary short Quiet Zone, which was nominated for Best Short Documentary at the 4th Canadian Screen Awards. His feature film debut, Shambles, premiered at the Venice International Film Festival in 2016. In 2019 he was one of seven directors, alongside Kaveh Nabatian, Juan Andrés Arango, Sophie Deraspe, Sophie Goyette, Ariane Lorrain and Caroline Monnet, of the anthology film The Seven Last Words.

Daïchi Saïto

Originally from Japan, Daïchi Saïto is a filmmaker based in Montreal, where he co-founded the Double Negative collective, a group of filmmaking artists dedicated to experimental cinema. His film Trees of Syntax, Leaves of Axis (2009) was named one of the "150 Essential Works in Canadian Cinema History" by Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in 2016. At Rotterdam, Saïto won a Tiger Award for Short Film with Engram of Returning (2015). His book of short prose Moving the Sleeping Images of Things Towards the Light has been published by Le laps in Montreal.

Louise Bourque

Louise Bourque is an Acadian French experimental filmmaker born in Edmundston, New Brunswick. She has made over a dozen films that have made a lasting impact on Canadian experimental cinema. Since the late 1980s, she has been one of the few women exploring this cinematic form. Bourque taught film studies and production at Emerson College, Concordia University, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, and Boston University, where she lived for over a decade. She returned to Canada in the 2000s and now resides in Montreal. Her career was celebrated with a retrospective at the Cinémathèque québécoise in 2021, along with a monograph from the Canadian Film Institute. Bourque's work dives deeply into human psyche, exploring themes of memory, and the enduring influence of the past on the present. Her films, steeped in a sense of nostalgia and melancholy, portray the complex interplay of alienation and tenderness within the intimate silences of family life.

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Courts métrages expérimentaux québécois

La Cinémathèque québécoise propose le 2 décembre un programme de sept courts métrages expérimentaux signés par des cinéastes québécois contemporains : Louise Bourque, Karl Lemieux, Daïchi Saïto et Pierre Hébert. Un film réalisé par ce dernier sera présenté en première montréalaise : Palimpseste sur « Prison » de Robert Lapoujade (2021). Une programmation imaginée par Sylvano Santini, professeur de littérature à l’Université du Québec à Montréal.