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Why Havel? (VOSTA)
Location
Main screening room
Date
April 12th, 2022
Duration
100 min
Cycle
Rock Demers (1933-2021)

Rock Demers has been a key figure in the history of cinema in Quebec since the 60s, for his involvement in the promotion, creation and production of films. A co-founder of the Cinémathèque québécoise, he is best known to the public as a producer on the series he initiated, the Contes pour tous. However, we wanted to show with this program the extent of his involvement in cinema that goes beyond Canadian borders, marked by his interest in auteur cinema (he bought the Canadian rights to Charles mort ou vif by Alain Tanner, immediately after its screening at Cannes), in animation (he wrote the screenplay for Faroun, the little clown, directed by Bretislav Pojar), with a predilection for directors from Central and Eastern Europe (Why Havel? by Vojtěch Jasný).

In presence of guests

Why Havel?
Directed by
Vojtěch Jasný
Language
Czech with English subtitles
Origins
Québec, Czechoslovakia
Year
1991
Duration
100 min
Genre
Documentary
Format
35 mm
Synopsis

A feature length documentary on the public and private life of playwright and President of Czechoslovakia Vaclav Havel.

Why Havel?

Vojtěch Jasný

Vojtěch Jasný (30 November 1925 – 15 November 2019) was a Czech director, screenwriter and professor who has written and directed over 50 films. Jasný made feature and documentary films in Czechoslovakia, Germany, Austria, USA & Canada, and was a notable figure in the Czechoslovak New Wave movement of the 1960s. He is best remembered for his movies The Cassandra Cat and All My Compatriots, both of which won prizes at Cannes Film Festival. In addition to his film career he taught directing at film schools in Salzburg, Vienna, Münich and New York.

(Wikipedia)

Rock Demers

Amazed cinephile, great traveler, Rock Demers left its mark on Quebec’s cinema landscape in addition to children's cinema. Born in Sainte-Cécile-de-Lévrard, he studied pedagogy in Montreal, already showing an interest in knowledge transmission. He then turned to cinema and participated, in 1963, in the founding of the Cinémathèque québécoise along with Guy L. Côté. Shocked by his discovery of Eastern European filmmakers and his meeting with Bretislav Pojar, he worked in the distribution of children’s films by creating the Films Faroun distribution company in the mid-1960s, and a youth section at Montreal’s international film Festival. He then began a career as a producer with Le martien de Noël (Bernard Gosselin, 1971). In 1980, he founded Les Productions La Fête, which saw the birth of his most famous project: the Contes pour tous, a series of films that began with the huge success of La guerre des tuques (André Melançon, 1984). However, Demers does not limit himself to children's cinema, producing works such as Why Havel? (Vojtěch Jasný, 1991) and Le silence des fusils (Arthur Lamothe, 1996).

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About Vojtěch Jasný
Filmography
About Rock Demers
Filmographie | productor
Filmography | actor
Filmography | scenarist
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