Dossier

JF: Also, when we first moved to Du Roi Street, the premises were all separated. Distribution occupied two rooms, and there was another big room. Hélène’s festival, the Mondiale, later had its own offices. The editing rooms were further away. So physically, we were no longer in one big open space. Once the Festival des Filles des Vues came to an end in 1988 and several of our members moved to Montréal, there was a bit of a disorganized period where we all did our own thing, although we remained very close. But starting in 1991 and 1992, a sort of renewal took place for a few years, until 1995. Lise and I went in search of funding to make La soif de l’oubli. Not long after that, the Atikamekw and Montagnais Council approached me to do Montagnaises de parole, and then Ceux qui restent.

Lise Bonenfant: I made Toujours vivantes. The film was quite a big hit because it was about violence against women. Do you remember that, Ginette? It was a success.

JM: Why did you choose to stay when everybody else left? You told me financing was difficult. What did it mean to you to stay in Quebec City and make films there, at that time?

JF: Because we had stopped holding the festival, we had lost one of the sources of income that covered some of our salaries. So there was a gap in our finances. Lise, Lynda, and I started taking on contracts outside of Vidéo Femmes. I made the brochure for the 25th anniversary of the Grand Théâtre de Québec, authored a book for the Musée du Québec, and did some advertising work. I should also point out that, from those years onward, institutional forms became more complicated to fill out and the requirements became more stringent. They were nothing compared to what they are today, but they were heading in that direction. We attended a number of consultations to discuss the future of regional cinema. We were very much involved in that kind of thing. We believed in it.

Lynda Roy: For me, since I wasn’t really making movies anymore, my income had decreased. The employment support initiatives we used to get didn’t really exist anymore. So I coordinated the street arts at the Festival d’Été de Québec until 1998. So I no longer worked at Vidéo Femmes during the summer months. I worked at all of Quebec City’s major cultural events: the Québec Carnival, the international theatre festival, the New France festival, the 3 Americas cinema festival . . . I continued working at La Mondiale to help Hélène, who organized one-off events about famous people such as Herménégilde and Richard Lavoie, 60 ans de cinéma à Québec; a film about you, Lise, entitled Une dame aux cameras; and another on Nicole Giguère and Helen Doyle. I also remember an event called “Créer sans Compromis,” which was a debate/meeting featuring screenings and discussions with filmmakers Paule Baillargeon, Catherine Martin, and Léa Pool.

LB: Hélène organized a beautiful tribute to the museum, Fragments de génie. I was on the program. It was very well done! The rooms were always filled to capacity at all those events.

LR: She used the structure of the festival to organize those events.

JF: We held a lot of screening events, which we hadn’t had time to do when we were organizing the festival. At the Grand Théâtre de Québec, in 1989, we took part in “Le Grand Théâtre aux créatrices,” where I gave a talk on my profession. During those years, holding events aimed at women in the big cultural institutions was a new concept. There was a lot going on in Montréal, too. And although the girls’ departure to Montréal had left a void where we were, the fact that they were in Montréal did make it easier for us to hold launch events there.

GG: Yes, those were the years when the Rendez-Vous du Cinéma Québécois had a video component. For several years, I took part in planning the programs. Our name was mentioned regularly. Those were the years of Michel Coulombe. We usually met at the Cinéma Parallèle. There were also members of Vidéographe and Groupe Intervention Vidéo. There was a variety of genres, including fiction, documentary, and video art.

I went to Montréal once a week for a variety of reasons: for meetings with the Canada Council for the Arts, for example, so that people wouldn’t forget about us. In those years, there wasn’t a lot of movie production in Quebec City, other than Spirafilm and us. I was a member of the Conseil de la Culture de la Région de Québec [Cultural Council of the Quebec City Region], which had dance tables, theatre tables, and all that. The atmosphere was a bit gloomy. There weren’t that many venues in Quebec City. They were all closing. The Museum of Civilization helped us a lot. And later on, there was a resurgence of cultural activities. Things started changing in ‘95, and even in ‘98.

Also, we organized a lot of regional tours. Almost every year, with Status of Women Canada. Johanne, do you remember when we met with them and they asked us to write a paper on “What is feminism?” I remember going to Sept-Îles and to Gaspésie with you, Lise. We sure did a lot of tours! We showed up with our videos, which we showed on huge television screens in all sorts of venues. The participants would share all kinds of secrets with us, it was quite something. Especially when we showed videos on violence. Some of the things we heard gave us chills . . .

LB: It was very enriching. We visited the North Coast [of the St. Lawrence], Indigenous communities.

GG: The Outaouais region, Trois-Rivières. We covered a lot of ground in the ‘90s!

LR: We also travelled to international destinations. The end of the ‘80s was a very important time, with the Créteil women’s film festival . . .

LB: Twice at Le Point. We weren’t expecting that. A beautiful article by Nathalie Petrowski was published in the press. When you see your name in one, it makes you want to hide under the bed! People appreciated the simplicity of the film, with the music. And Sylvie at the end: “Love, keep me strong for life” [direct translation]. Everyone always started crying. It’s still a beautiful phrase. We received standing ovations every time we showed it.

GG: And the women recognized themselves, too.

LB: The first one had caught it from her drug-addicted boyfriend. The second one, the one with the hat, had had little romantic flings when she travelled. The third one’s boyfriend was bisexual. They all died.

GG: Yes.

JM: What made you decide to tackle that subject? An article you read? Something you witnessed?

LB: It was through talking to Marie Fortin. Marie is very intelligent and well-informed. The topic was starting to make people talk. We said, “Let’s do it.”

GG: At that time, people still thought only gay men could catch it.

LB: We had to shoot the segments with Chantal after those with the woman with the hat in Montréal. And Judith, who was the first one to die, at Marc-Simon House in Quebec City. A lot of my friends died of AIDS.

JM: How many people were on your crew?

JM: And how did you manage your emotions?

LB: You had to be very humble. You had to just listen, and let them speak. It took a lot of compassion. A lot of openness. But not too much. You couldn’t appear complacent.

JM: Your films dealt with very difficult subjects. How did you feel once the shoots were over?

LB: I heard some really horrible things. I won’t even tell you what they were, so that you don’t get stuck with them in your heads. The subjects I filmed included children, violence, women who had been raped. I didn’t include everything in the films! I left out things that were too much to handle, or too extreme. But I sure heard things. So many things! Incest, as well. It gets into your head. I would go lie in my bed in the fetal position. I often went and walked around in the mall until the feeling subsided. That was my anti-depressant.

LR: Those weren’t light topics! Really not light topics.

LB: I can’t even tell you. I remember doing a film about sexual harassment called Bas les pattes. There was an immigrant woman who was being harassed. When she told me everything she had been through, I started crying. That’s how things were in those days. All the things women had to put up with. It was unbelievable.

JM: After Le sida au féminin, you made Comme une tempête.

LB: Yes. I wrote the whole screenplay. It was beautiful, but I still have trouble watching it, even today. It ends with a child on a cross and a voice-over saying, “My God, don’t ever tear me away from my tears” [translation].

JM: La soif de l’oubli is a film about alcoholism. An excerpt was shown during Vidéo Femmes day at the Cinémathèque in 2018. Johanne and Lise, can you tell me about that movie? You chose to use a poetic narrative once again. Why that choice?

JF: La soif de l’oubli was an idea that Lise and I had. We had all sorts of connections with women who were alcoholics. We thought it was important to tell the story from an insider’s point of view. To learn to understand the disease, the pain that exists in the soul, the “thirst for oblivion.” It was important to us not to film women in sordid locations or decrepit apartments. So we did the shoots in beautiful locations.

JF: Yes. Once again, alcoholism in women wasn’t a subject that was talked about very much. There were some night scenes featuring a fictional character played by Agnès Maltais. She would walk and walk along the streets of the city. We wanted to include a great song by Marjo called “Aide-moi.” But obviously, we didn’t have the budget to pay for it. I remember approaching the record company about it. And it worked. We obtained the rights.

LB: The ending is beautiful. “Aide-moi, aide-moi . . .”

JF: “Aide-moi à me retrouver. Je suis perdue” [Help me, help me, help me find myself again. I’m lost].

LB: She yells, “Aide-moi!” The women who were in it needed help. If they were in our film, it was because they had asked for help.

LB: It was gorgeous!

JF: My boyfriend at the time was the one who created that poster. It really got people talking.

JM: What was so scandalous about it?

JF: It showed an arm on someone’s neck, entwined in fabric. But it was open to interpretation. You could imagine it to be a hand in a person’s sex. It was a bit ambiguous, which was fine with us.

JM: The public was angry about that?

LB: Yes.

JF: It was a big festival. [Reading an excerpt from the catalogue’s introductory text out loud] “The Mondiale is an opportunity for us to build on the experience acquired over the eleven years of the Festival des Filles des Vues. Thanks to the involvement of several players from Quebec’s cultural scene, the festival will take place on a very large scale. Ten days, five venues, 20 countries, and more than 100 productions. The festival will be punctuated by special events to pay tribute to creations from India and Belgium, to Delphine Seyrig and the pioneers of cinema, and closer to home, to Aline Desjardins, the unforgettable host of the TV program Femmes d’aujourd’hui, who marked the lives of a generation of women in Quebec. A Belgian-Québécois jury. Discussion groups, video installations, and special programming devoted to dance and ethnography.”

LB: It was big. It was huge.

JF: All of us were involved. Lynda was the technical director. There was someone in communications and media relations. It was a true team effort, and we all held specific positions throughout the organization of the festival. And both editions did very well. People enjoyed them.

LR: We held the opening ceremonies at the Odeon Theatre. It was a big room that could hold 700 people, and people who had formerly attended the Festival des Filles des Vues were happy to see us again.

LB: It was extraordinary. What incredible work by Hélène Roy! That woman has impressive cinematic knowledge.

LR: At the end, there are descriptions of all the videos Hélène Roy made, including Une Nef...et ses sorcières, Une chambre à soi, Traces, and Demain la cinquantaine.

JF: What’s amazing about Hélène is her love for movies. Her knowledge, and the immense enjoyment she gets out of creating connections between people and publicizing people’s works. She’s an organizer of festivals. In fact, that’s how she started out! That’s her true passion. Organizing things, showing movies, presenting works.

JM: Ginette, were you part of the Mondiale team?

GG: No. At that time, the distribution division was very busy with shipping out the productions and organizing our tours. So it didn’t affect my life all that much. But I remember that when Agnès was working with me, she was reassigned to help out during the festival.

And we had a rental network that was very involved with schools and women’s centres. We shipped videos out to a lot of women’s centres across the province. Every day, the mail carrier left with a big pile of envelopes filled with cassettes. Francine was in charge of the festival registrations, as well as the shipments. Those two tasks took up a lot of her time. And we also had to continue running the Rendez-Vous du Cinéma Québécois, and keep the day-to-day operations running smoothly. So I took part in the Mondiale only as a spectator.

JM: And regarding the shipments, it was all physical copies of the films, right?

GG: Yes. We had to take advantage of the big demand when a new film was released. We would try to gauge the demand and make 15, 20, 30 VHS copies. We’d organize a launch and prepare press releases to sell to the TV stations. We made up technical data sheets for most of the documentaries. The school boards would sometimes buy large quantities of certain films.

LR: At one point, you also drafted some discussion guides.

GG: Yes, that’s right. We sold—I can’t remember what year it was—some videos in British Columbia because the discussion guides helped the teachers with their lessons.

JM: In terms of format, you’re talking about VHS. We know that in video, there were a number of different formats!

JM: Johanne, I’d love it if you could tell us about Montagnaises de parole, which is one of the big works in your filmography. Could you tell us about your collaboration with the Atikamekw and Montagnais Council? How did that come about?

JF: We had just finished La soif de l’oubli. I was working for the Musée du Québec. Three women showed up: Marie-Jeanne Basile, Jenny Rock, and Rollande Rock. They worked for the Council of the Atikamekw and Montagnais. It was a political advocacy organization. They were conducting a major survey of all the Atikamekw and Montagnais communities—we didn’t call them Innu at the time—on the realities of women of all generations. It was in the form of a questionnaire. In each community, they had selected a woman who was to meet with the elders, the younger women, and the young girls to ask them questions about family life, marriage, partner relationships, sex, working women, alcohol, drugs, violence, abortion, money . . . all the big subjects. In those days, women didn’t have much of a place in politics or the public arena. It was the first time that type of research was being done on such a large scale, and it resulted in a book called Montagnaises de parole. It was a compilation of all the stories they had collected, and they wanted to make a movie about it. They had heard of Vidéo Femmes, and of me. And somehow they got in touch with me. So we started to work on it. We had to decide which communities we would visit for the shoots. We wanted to feature women from five generations. I knew nobody there. They were the ones who did all the research, and who first contacted people. The first shoot took place in Matimekush and Schefferville in the middle of January. It was -35 degrees out. The camera kept freezing. I hadn’t done any location scouting, nothing. Lynda also took part in that shoot.

JF: We did it in two parts: Matimekush-Schefferville in the winter, and Ekuanitshit-Mingan in the spring. We were in each location for seven to ten days. The reason we went to Schefferville at that time was because the carnival was taking place. And it turned out to be one of the most powerful and shattering scenes in the film. In those communities, there were carnivals, with “Bonhommes Carnaval,” just like the Bonhomme Carnaval in Quebec City. There was a competition. The Duchesses were the community elders. You wouldn’t see that these days! Never! That’s how much things have changed. Before this video, there had been films by Arthur Lamothe, but they were mostly about men. And there were Alanis Obomsawin’s films too, of course. But other than that, there were no films in which Indigenous women spoke about their realities, violence, all that. The interviews had been done in Innu because the grandmothers didn’t speak French, and Rollande had done the interviews. So I had no idea what they were saying! It was a bit unnerving. I didn’t want the shoots to take place in the living rooms of prefabricated houses. I wanted to find locations. For one scene, for example, at the top of a high hill, there was a longhouse and a big tent. We decided that the following day, we would shoot there because it was beautiful and the lighting was magnificent. But there was a blizzard overnight, and the next day, the hill was blocked off. The driver didn’t want to go any further, and we didn’t have our own car there! We were at the mercy of the locals and their pickup trucks. They drove us everywhere.

JF: With most of the main characters, we spoke French. But I couldn’t communicate with the people who only spoke Innu, the older ones. But Rollande was always the one who asked the questions. If I had something to add, or if I wanted to ask more questions at the end of the interview, I asked them then. That’s how we proceeded. Really, it was their film. When I edited it, I made an initial montage, by theme, with the visual design I had imagined. When the dialogue was in Montagnais and I didn’t know where the sentences ended, I called Marie-Jeanne and played the clip to her over the phone. She would tell me where to make the cuts.

LR: Johanne, do you remember the oldest woman we filmed? I don’t remember her name. JF: Mrs. Ashini.

LR: There was that party that ended with a Makushan, the traditional Innu dance, which we filmed, and Mrs. Ashini was voted Queen of the Carnival.

JF: That was truly a gift. There were all sorts of touching moments.

JM: I said to myself, “They must not be used to being filmed like that, in such a short space of time, in so few days.” I wondered how they felt about that shoot.

JF: They were prepared. They wanted to be part of that survey. They wanted to be heard. There were a few younger ones who were a bit shyer, but they were just as generous as the elders. Truly. We released the film at the Mondiale.

JM: The second one.

JF: I think so. The theatre was at capacity. Our Montagnais friends had prepared a buffet of all sorts of delicacies.

GG: There was bear, beaver, caribou.

JF: It was an incredible buffet. And seeing themselves on the big screen, and hearing what the women had to say, they had chills.

LB: It was very beautiful.

JF: At one point at the end of the evening, Pauline Marois and Louise Harel showed up. They had just gotten out of the ministers’ council meeting. “We know it’s late, but we just got out of a meeting, and we would have loved to see the film.” It was 10:30 p.m. I went to get Albert the projectionist, and we showed the film again!

JM: You did?

JF: We did a screening for Pauline Marois and Louise Harel! And some other people also went back into the theatre to watch it again.

JM: Amazing!

JF: That film was very, very widely viewed. At Sylvain Garel’s Festival du Cinéma Québécois de Blois, for one, which later became the Cinéma du Québec à Paris. We went there to introduce it with a delegation of Innu women: the three protagonists with whom I had made the film, plus Jenny’s mother and another woman. A big delegation of five Innu women. That year, Helen Doyle was also presenting Je t’aime gros, gros, gros. I remember a round table with Jean Rouch, Michel Brault, Jean-Claude Labrecque, and a few others. We were the only two women there, surrounded by the history of documentary filmmaking! So that’s it.

JM: Yes. One last question on this subject. In the closing credits, you can see that a lot of collaborations took place, but did you want to be the sole director of the film, even though it was a collaboration?

JF: It was those three women’s original idea. They were the ones who did all the research. Rollande Rock conducted all the interviews. And Johanne Fournier did the producing and the editing. It was clear from the start. I had received a grant from the Council of the Arts for that film.

JM: Did it cover everyone’s salaries?

JF: No, it was for $10,000. The other women were paid by the Council of the Atikamekw and Montagnais. The Council had invested some money in the film. And I went around scrounging up whatever I could get: from Indian Affairs in Ottawa, from the Aboriginal Affairs Secretariat in Quebec. All over the place. Sponsorships from Air Roberval, sponsorships from the hotels, all sorts of sponsorships. So there you go.

LB: While Johanne was in Blois, I was in Nantes with the two Catherines, for a retrospective. As a filmmaker, I really enjoyed seeing all my work presented like that. There were some wonderful speeches. There was a newspaper in Nantes. When I got back to Paris, I was in a newspaper stand, and I saw myself on the front page of that newspaper. “Vidéo Femmes in Nantes.” There was a photo of me with Catherine de Grissac and Catherine Cavalier.

GG: I remember one time, when I went through London to get to the festival in Nantes. Those were the days when they went through all your luggage at the airport. They came across the film La peau et les os, and they thought I was transporting erotic films.

LB: When something comes to an end, you feel sad, but you sometimes also feel relieved. For us, it was both.

LR: Some changes were made in 1993 in response to the difficulties of continuing to finance the production, distribution, and screening of works by Vidéo Femmes. The hiring of a general manager, Marie-Josée Lagacé, contributed to changing our way of doing things.

Initiatives to improve Vidéo Femmes led to a new collaboration with Pauline Voisard, who later became Vidéo Femmes’ official director. We also considered creating a new corporation, Vidéo Femmes Inc., to benefit from the production tax credits we couldn’t access as a non-profit collective.