The Sower
The farming world is often torn between age-old traditions and industrialisation, the passing of the torch and technological change, family-run businesses and corporate conglomerates, the rural communities it inhabits and the cities it feeds, environmental challenges and the drive for profitability... All these issues are reflected in this program, which highlights how many recent films from Québec and France have looked at the agricultural world, capturing its essential, resilient, and sometimes painful aspects.
Canadian Grand Jury Prize, Les Percéides 2014
In Quebec’s Kamouraska Valley, Patrice Fortier is putting down roots at his seed company, La Société des plantes. Like a copyist in the Middle Ages, he is meticulously preserving rare and forgotten cultivars with the goal of breeding the “heirlooms of the future.” As Patrice gardens, he daydreams and transforms his harvests into art projects. The seasons come and go, his patience and care express his passion and knowledge, and his seed bank grows. His tiny storehouses of life will eventually sprout in thousands of vegetable gardens around the world. At the centre of this paean to plant biodiversity and agricultural heritage is a unique, genetically motivated seed producer. Watch: the impossible is underway.
Julie Perron
Born in Montreal, Julie Perron earned a Bachelor’s degree in cinema at Paris 7 University and a Master’s degree in Educational Technology at the Université de Montréal before beginning her career as a filmmaker at the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) in 2000. Her first film, Mai en décembre (Godard en Abitibi), is a look back at Jean-Luc Godard’s TV experience in Northern Quebec in December 1968. Her filmography also includes Lucie de tous les temps (2003), an intimate portrait of French Resistance heroine Lucie Aubrac, Pierre Gauvin, un moine moderne (2007), an exploration of the daily life of the Montreal-based photographer, and Henri Labonté, homme et martyr (2013), a short fiction film made to mark the 15th anniversary of Les Films de l’Autre. Her film, The Sower (Le semeur), an immersive look into the fascinating world of an unconventional, genetically driven seed breeder was selected for the 2014 Berlin International Film Festival. Widely screened at film festivals, the film won four international awards.
Photo: Daniela Zedda | Collections de la Cinémathèque québécoise
