Flouting Taboos!
Affiche du film Comme jeunesse se passe, Michèle Pérusse, 1983.
JM: We’ve discussed Tous les jours, tous les jours, tous les jours, C’est pas le pays des merveilles, and Les Mots/Maux du silence, but there are some other films we should talk about, such as Michèle Pérusse’s Comme jeunesse se passe!
NG: I was on camera for that one. I remember a challenge at one point: There was a young couple, the girl was Black and the guy was very blond and very pale. Adjusting the lighting so we could see both of them well was a technical challenge. I also remember that we’d just gotten the ¾-inch U-matic camera and were just getting to know it, and we’d noticed that in the middle of shooting, when we pressed STOP, it produced all sorts of colours before fading out. So we used that “special effect” in several sequences! It was technical experimentation. We did it all the time, with each new camera we tried. Michèle must have edited that film, too. I don’t remember anything about editing that film. Too bad she can’t be here to tell us about it!
JM: I was happy about it, because it touched on another taboo subject: sexuality among young people. You also got a sense that people were speaking their truths, and I was touched to see that the topic of homosexuality was addressed. For reasons of confidentiality, no faces were shown, but you got a sense of the accountability involved in speaking out.
NR: In those days, speaking that openly about sex was kind of a big deal. It was news to me that young people started being sexually active around the age of twelve.
Contenant du film Comme jeunesse se passe! de Michèle Pérusse, 1983. Collection de la Cinémathèque québécoise. ID161883.
JF: Nicole was on camera for that one, too. You were on camera for a lot of our productions, Nicole.
JM: At the same time, you were making films like Poing final, which tackled another subject that was taboo at the time: domestic violence. Johanne and Nicole, can you tell us about the making of that film?
JF: In Poing final, it was Pierrette Robitaille who played the main fictional role. It wasn’t a particularly original process, but she played a journalist who was surveying the community to find out what services were available, the problems faced by abused women, and so on. Pierrette was the actress, but she also asked questions of the other participants, which was a bit uncomfortable for her, but she enjoyed the process.
NG: Questions we had prepared for her.
Johanne Fournier et Nicole Giguère à la caméra sur le tournage de Poing Final, 1983. Collection personnelle de Johanne Fournier.
NG: Yes. I specifically remember an interview with a police officer from Lévis who said that women who were victims of violence often returned to their husbands, so they must have liked it! He told us that in his police car. That was in 1983.
JF: During that whole period, in the 1980s, I was the only one who had a child. Catherine. During Poing final, she was seven years old. During a meal scene, she was supposed to say, “Why do some men beat their wives?” We were shooting in the evening, and there were still a lot of shots to be done, but Catherine didn’t want to say that. So after a long negotiation, she finally agreed to say, “Why do some men hurt their wives?” Catherine also appeared in C’est une bonne journée, Le sourire d’une parfumeuse, and in the clip Je voudrais voir la mer. She also did some technical work. In fact, there’s a great photo from the shoot of On fait toutes du show business showing Nicole on the camera—we were in Quebec City’s Old Port, filming a show by Chantal Beaupré—and Catherine holding the boom.
Catherine Vidal sur le tournage de Poing Final de Johanne Fournier et Nicole Giguère, 1983. Collection personnelle de Johanne Fournier.
Nicole Giguère (à la caméra) et Catherine Vidal (au son) lors d’un concert de Chantal Beaupré pour le film On fait toutes du show-business, Nicole Giguère, 1984. Collection personnelle de Nicole Giguère.
JM: The crazy life of a filmmaker mother!
JF: Yes, those were some pretty hectic years! But Catherine remembers all the women from Vidéo Femmes. She still calls them her aunties. Catherine sleeping on the couch at Nicole’s house in Saint-Nicolas, Catherine at the Festival des Filles des Vues . . . She became a documentary filmmaker and has worked in television and radio ever since. So I guess the time she spent on the sets made an impression!
JM: Coming back to the more serious subject of Poing final. It also addressed another subject, one that is still very relevant today: femicide. It’s being talked about a lot these days, and I’d like to know how you prepared for the film, what it was like to work with battered women. How did you approach that experiment in fictional writing, Johanne?
JF: We worked closely with groups that worked with abused women. We did a lot of listening, we asked a lot of questions, and then we wrote the screenplay and determined what the roles would be, including the police officer Nicole mentioned. We wanted men to be involved too. We wanted to shed light on the prejudices and give a voice to the women who were stuck in that hellish dynamic. As with our other films, we approached it as delicately as possible. Poing final was widely viewed. And the topic is still very relevant today. The word femicide didn’t exist at that time.
NR: And I would add that the film did meet a certain need in terms of broadcasting and distribution. It was truly a tool for intervention. And I’ve always felt that the title was powerful.
Developing the Distribution Division
Johanne Fournier, Lynda Roy, Nicole Giguère, Louise Giguère et Nathalie Roy (de gauche à droite) sur le tournage d’Histoire infâme, Nicole Giguère, 1987. Collection de la Cinémathèque québécoise. 2023.0032.PH.18.
JM: In addition to your early productions, your distribution network was booming. We’ve talked a bit about it. How did you develop that division?
LR: Before Lucie and Nathalie arrived at Vidéo Femmes, each member of the collective took turns answering calls, making reservations, arranging for copies, sending out shipments, and organizing screenings. But what we, the members of Vidéo Femmes, really wanted to be doing was making movies! Doing the research, writing the screenplays, directing, filming, doing the sound, editing the films. In short, we needed reinforcements.
LG: I was the new girl in 1980. When I first started, they told me, “No one wants to take care of the distribution, so if you work here, you won’t do any editing or camera work, and you won’t become a director, either. We need someone to take care of the distribution.”
NG: “There are already enough people here who want to be directors. We need someone to do the distribution.”
LG: That was also clear when Danièle Martineau, the accountant, first started. She said, “The girls told me I wouldn’t become a director here. They needed an accountant.”
NR: Same for me. My job was to be the office clerk. That was my title. I had to answer the telephone. I would say, “Vidéo Femmes, good morning!” They wanted to have one person assigned to distribution, in order to free the other girls up a bit, but really, it was a team effort.
JM: In what year did you start, Nathalie?
NR: In the fall of ‘81.
Répertoire de Vidéo Femmes datant de 1981. Collection de la Cinémathèque québécoise.
LG: I had been there for about a year by then. When I first arrived, there wasn’t even any Vidéo Femmes letterhead paper. I’d also been working part-time at the Canadian Institute for two years. As everybody knows, libraries are very organized. So I contributed a certain methodology. At Vidéo Femmes, I answered calls from people who wanted to reserve videos. There was a notebook for the person who took the call, and when we were off shift, the next person took over, kind of like in a hospital emergency department. We would read what had taken place in the hour before we started our shift. There were a lot of phone calls. Vidéo Femmes was very busy.
NR: Also, the on-site screenings were very popular. There were groups that would come to our premises!
JM: The other day, on the phone, Nathalie was telling me that the atmosphere within the collective was very friendly, and that you were all very close. What were your days together like? How did you choose your projects? Did they come about spontaneously, or were they in response to calls for tender?
JF: At the time, videos and films were being used as tools for mobilization, discussion, and facilitation in community groups, schools, universities, women’s groups, unions, and even government departments. They were very useful tools. People would get together to watch a film, and then they would discuss it. This took place all throughout the province, as well as in Francophone groups outside of Quebec. There was a great need for works centered around feminism and women’s issues. We often selected our own subjects, but sometimes Nathalie and the staff in distribution would get requests. “Do you have a video about such-and-such topic?” We would then look at who could make it and how we would finance it.
NR: That was an extremely busy time. We were in the right place at the right time to meet the demand. Sexual harassment affected everyone, in every part of society, and people used Tous les jours, tous les jours, tous les jours as a launching point for social discussion. We made Six femmes à leur place because we saw that there was a demand for something about women in non-traditional trades. I found that one of Vidéo Femmes’ strengths was that it was connected to the community and it responded to certain needs.
HD: I think what helped us become well-known were our catalogues. At first, they were just small leaflets that we distributed, but after a while, we started adding films by GIV and other places, and we produced a first directory in the early ‘80s, which we made available at our events.
NR: We also made spec sheets for each film, which contained the summary, the credits, and, in some cases, a discussion guide.
JF: We updated our directories every four or five years. We made one in ‘81. That was our first extensive one. Then there were others in ‘84 and ‘89, and another one in the ‘90s. Later, we had the website. The directories contained our productions, as well as the history and development of Vidéo Femmes. I’m telling you about them because I was the one who wrote up almost all those texts, which reiterated our commitment to both production and distribution, while also conveying our ongoing zeal in those years.
Cassette (sous-master) Betacam du film Six Femmes à leur place, Louise Giguère et Louise Lemay, 1981. Collection de la Cinémathèque québécoise.
Répertoire de Vidéo Femmes datant de 1984. Collection de la Cinémathèque québécoise.
JM: Were several of you involved in designing the directories, or was it just you, Johanne?
JF: There was a committee that took care of the directories. There was a technical aspect that consisted of compiling the list of films and including photos, running times, and summaries, along with what we had available in distribution. There were other films that had been made by women from all over Quebec, as well as from elsewhere in the world. We invited female directors to present their films at our festival, and when we felt a production was relevant to our network, we took it on for distribution, and we made French versions when necessary. In other parts of the world, the reverse was also possible. Some of our films were acquired and translated elsewhere.
NR: One of our busiest periods for distribution was around March 8. It was a busy time for us. I can still see myself surrounded by envelopes. We sent shipments, made copies, a lot of things. That was one of the things that raised our profile. Everyone helped during that week. We met the demand as best we could. Everyone was bustling, from community groups to institutions! In terms of rental rates, the rate for community groups was $35, and double that, $70, for institutions, which had bigger budgets.
JF: We made two or three copies at a time. We made sub-masters so that we wouldn’t wear out the original recordings. After a certain number of copies, the sub-masters had to be replaced, because they were worn out from having made 100 copies. We had a kind of home-built system that took a very long time. We’d say, “All right, you just started making a copy?” So we’d look at the time. “We’ll come back and check it in an hour.” “Oh, great! The copy is done. Let’s start another one.”
LG: Or “I can’t make any copies. We need the editing room, but it’s booked between 5:00 and 8:00 this evening. But we need copies.” “All right, we’ll make them overnight.”
LB: We also had to unwind our master copies, so the tapes wouldn’t stick. At one point, I found myself with a stack of tapes and all I was doing was rewinding them one way, then the other, because otherwise the tapes would have become damaged!
HD: With the open reels, our biggest concern was that they would become “spaghetti.” We were very careful to avoid that, but it could happen on our editing tables or during our shoots, because if the reel became destabilized, it would start spinning around, and then we’d end up with a big pile of “spaghetti,” as we called it. The reel would then become unusable, and we would lose all our edits or the footage we had shot.
From Black and White to Colour
Lynda Roy et Louise Giguère (de gauche à droite) sur le tournage de Tous les jours, tous les jours, tous les jours, Johanne Fournier et Nicole Giguère, 1982. Collection personnelle de Nicole Giguère.
JM: I’d now like to ask you about the technological evolution of video, because for people today, it’s a bit abstract. I know changes occurred during that period. I’m thinking specifically of the introduction of colour into your films. Do you have any specific memories of that? You’ve told me about the distribution side of things, but in terms of production, what kind of equipment did you have at that time?
JF: With Tous les jours, tous les jours, tous les jours, we made the transition from black and white reel to colour cassettes. That’s if you don’t count C’est pas le pays des merveilles, which was shot on 16mm film.
NG: For a good part of the ‘80s, we shot and edited in ¾ inch, with big cassettes. I still have boxes and boxes of my productions on big cassettes. The shooting cassettes were 20-minute reels, and the masters were 60 minutes. The boxes of cassettes took up a lot of space, plus you had to replace them every 20 minutes. We recycled and reused them often, because they were expensive. We kept the main shooting tapes, but we often reused them, too. I don’t remember switching to Betacam at that time. I remember that Betacams were being used in television when I was in Montréal, but I don’t remember using them at Vidéo Femmes. So we kept using 3/4, at least until the mid-80s.
JF: For editing, we made copies of all the shooting tapes, to use for pre-editing. We’d write down the timecodes and then draw up an editing roadmap. Then, for the final edits, we used the originals. There were piles and piles of cassettes in the editing room!
JM: When you shot films, how many of you were there? For the sound, the camera work, etc.?
JF: Normally, there was the director, the cinematographer, and the assistant, who was also in charge of lighting. And there was the sound operator. So usually, there were at least four of us. Sometimes there were interns, so then there would be five of us. They were pretty good-sized crews.
NG: It depended on the production. For On fait toutes du show business, there were only three of us: Lynda on the camera, Johanne on sound, and me doing the interviews, as well as the second camera when we filmed the shows. But for Je voudrais voir la mer and Histoire infâme, our collaborators Alain Dupras and Pierre Pelletier were also part of the team. They were involved in several productions.
Nicole Giguère en salle de montage dans les années 1980. Collection personnelle de Nicole Giguère.
Lynda Roy, Lise Bonenfant et Louise Giguère (de gauche à droite) à l’Experimental Television Center, Owego, NY.
JM: How did you learn to do the editing? Did anyone help you edit your own movies?
NG: No, we never received any help with that.
JF: We learned how to do it. I don’t know how. Probably by watching a lot of movies.
NG: Johanne did a lot of the editing, and I did some, too. Lise, did you do any? Helen Doyle, Hélène Roy, and Michèle Pérusse, also. We all did some. But we were all self-taught.
JM: And did it take several of you to do the editing? What was it like? Apparently, it was very difficult. Did you have to cut the tapes by hand?
NG: No. In video, you transferred it, you didn’t cut it. It was non-linear editing.
JM: What is non-linear editing?
JF: Basically, you couldn’t replace one image with another, nor could you insert anything. It was like writing things by hand. To make any changes, you had to start all over. It took an extremely long time. But we didn’t realize how long it took. We just did it.
Creators First and Foremost!
JM: Beyond the community and film scene, you were very much involved in the feminist arena, with things like La Vie en Rose magazine and Les Folles Alliées. Do you remember collaborating with other feminist groups? Or socially engaged artists?
HD: Several groups in Quebec contacted us about screening our films or to ask us to lead discussions. There were also academics doing research on feminism, but they weren’t really our target audience. For example, the Council on the Status of Women, along with the Ministry of Health, had published a study on the appalling number of electroshock treatments undergone by women, and the fact that women were more heavily medicated than men. We used that for our research, but we didn’t interview those women. We went out into the field to meet other women who had undergone those psychiatric treatments.
NG: To add to that, last week we had a discussion with some French women—Jacquie Buet from the Créteil International Women’s Film Festival and Nicole Fernandez Ferrer from the Simone de Beauvoir Audiovisual Centre—where we compared our methods. It made me realize that our productions didn’t stem from an “intellectual” process. They were more organic, and things came about the way we described them earlier, as a function of the subject matter. Either because there was an opportunity, or because one of us had an idea, or because we received a request for distribution . . . At first I worked with Helen, then later with Johanne, depending on our availability and our interests. Lise and Louise often worked together.
Couveture du quatrième numéro du magazine féministe, La Vie en rose. Décembre 1980. ©CDÉACF, Bibliothèque virtuelle, 2008.
La troupe de théâtre Folles Alliées : Agnès Maltais, Christine Boilat, Lucie Godbout, Jocelyn Corbeil et Hélène Bernier (de gauche à droite) lors d’une représentation dans les années 1980. Collection personnelle de Nicole Giguère.
JM: At that time, did you consider yourselves to be “feminists?”
NG: Maybe not at the beginning. I don’t think we used the word “feminist” in our early catalogues. It was more a case of films made by women, for women.
ST: If I may explain further, that doesn’t mean we weren’t angry about things in the same way as people who called themselves feminists. We were feminists in that we wanted equal pay for equal work. And with Lucie Godbout, I remember very well that neither of us could understand why women weren’t allowed in taverns. Nor could we understand it when a man said a woman was less intelligent than he was. We had the exact same feminist thoughts, and we still do today.
LG: We were less about theory. First and foremost, we considered ourselves to be creators who could take on any subject we wanted. Of course we were feminists, but we didn’t openly call ourselves that in the beginning.
LB: At the time, there were also more radical feminists who felt that we weren’t radical enough. We were in the middle of all that. Depending on people’s points of view, we were either too radical, or we weren’t radical enough. Just like nowadays, in fact.
JF: The word “feminist” appeared in the 1984 directory. It said [reading], “Vidéo Femmes is pleased to offer you its new directory, in which you will find information and references on a large number of films and videos produced in Quebec in the wake of the feminist movement.”
JM: It’s interesting because of course, looking back, I found a lot of archives with the word “feminist” in them, so in my head I assumed you were a feminist collective, but that’s not necessarily the case, if I understand correctly? Were there any disagreements about it within the group?
NG: First and foremost, we were creators, not activists. We documented activist groups and their activities, but we were filmmakers before anything else. Later on, there came the distribution and the festivals, because we had films to distribute and show, but more than anything, we were a team that wanted to produce and direct videos!
LR: I agree. I’m convinced that we were feminists, but that if we had declared it too loudly, we’d have been identified as radical activists who had to serve the cause. Not that that wasn’t necessary, but what we really wanted to do was assert our freedom to be creative and to forge our own paths in production and direction. We wanted to choose our own destinies.
Lise Bonenfant, Louise Giguère et Pierre Pelletier (de gauche à droite) sur le tournage de C’est pas parce que c’est un château qu’on est des princesses, Lise Bonenfant et Louise Giguère, 1983. Collection personnelle de Nicole Giguère.
Image de l'article « Vidéo Femmes » par Michèle Pérusse, dans OSE, octobre-novembre 1980.
Article sur les 25 ans de Vidéo Femmes. Desautels, Vincent. « L’impact de Vidéo Femmes », Le Devoir, 3 octobre 1998, p. B8.
JF: At first, there was no place for women in the cinematic trades. They were completely closed off. So it was completely due to circumstance that we first met, made our first films, and then developed Vidéo Femmes.
LG: In the theatre as well. There wasn’t much room for women, apart from the young leading roles. At Les Folles Alliées, we searched for directors. We brought in Pierrette Robitaille, but it was her first time directing. When we went on tour, people would ask us, “Who’s the sound guy?” “Christine.” “Who’s the set guy?” “Geneviève.” They were used to having guys do the lighting, the sets, the orchestra. And we made a point of hiring women. The guitarists, the bassists, the electric guitarists . . . they were all women. The drummers were women. All the positions were held by women. That was very, very important to us. That’s very feminist, as well.
NG: Definitely. It’s all a bit hazy in my mind, but do you remember us ever discussing it at a Vidéo Femmes meeting? Did we discuss whether we should say we were feminists, or did we call each other feminists? I don’t recall ever discussing that.
LG: I’d say that in the 1980s, Les Folles Alliées and Vidéo Femmes were feminism incarnate.
NR: I think you hit the nail on the head on the question of activism. I very much agree, and that’s how I saw it for the five years I was at Vidéo Femmes. It was first and foremost a collective of creators. What I found so transformational was the fact that everything was run by women, and that it was a collective. The work was done on an equal footing, and the tasks were distributed according to people’s skills and abilities. It was a truly formative experience, and I’ve never come across anything like it anywhere else. Vidéo Femmes was an incredible laboratory, where everything had to be invented, everything had to be done, and it was all done harmoniously. Because there was no rivalry or power-seeking. It was always about creating.
Because I was younger than you, I watched you in your early thirties. I was amazed to be able to grow in that environment. You were there at a very important time, when a lot of changes were taking place. You were a part of that evolution, and I got to observe it.
Répertoire de Vidéo Femmes datant de 1989, p. 11. Collection personnelle de Nicole Giguère.
Nicole Giguère, Hélène Bernier, Lucie Godbout, Jocelyne Corbeil, Christine Boilat, Agnès Maltais et Pascale Gagnon (de gauche à droite, de haut en bas) dans les années 1980. Collection personnelle de Nicole Giguère.
JM: Did you have any links with Anglophone feminist artists or groups? In your films, you dealt extensively with Francophone culture in Quebec from the 1970s onward, but did you have any links with Anglophone culture?
JF: We had relationships with V-Tape in Toronto, Women in Focus in Vancouver, and the NFB’s English Studio D, in particular Dorothy Todd Hénaut. And we showed the films of Bonnie Sherr Klein, so yes, we were definitely open to all productions by women.
NG: But of course, we showed the French versions of the films whenever possible. There weren’t any French versions of the videos we saw in New York, but there were French versions of the NFB’s films. Because Quebec City was much more Francophone than Montréal, and our audiences weren’t at all Anglophone. Some of the Japanese films had been translated into English but not French. So once in a while, we would show a film in English, but most of the time, they were in French.
JM: I’m going to ask you this question because in those years, the movement for independence was more active. Did you have any political affinities with those groups? Did you take a position on that? NG: In our personal lives, yes, I think each of us did, but not as a group. We didn’t get involved in politics. Our area of interest was social issues.
LR: I think we were more feminist than nationalist.
Article : « Vidéo Femmes et le G.I.V. : l’émergence de nouvelles pratiques engagées », Brigitte Filion dans* Le cinéma québécois des années 80*, Montréal, Cinémathèque québécoise / Musée du Cinéma, 1989, p. 86-96.
JM: You sometimes worked with women from completely different social backgrounds. How did you first get in contact with them? How did the shoots go, and the screenings?
LB: I remember doing a film on alcoholism with Johanne, called La soif de l’oubli. A woman told her story, and she mentioned that she had attempted suicide. Afterwards, she called me and said, “I don’t want that part to appear in the film, because my son doesn’t know about it.” So we took it out. That’s how we did things. I did a film about prostitution, and I spent several nights in a shooting gallery, just observing. We spent a lot of time with the people [in our films], and we built up trust with them. They were always the first ones to see the film, and if there was something in it that didn’t work for them, we took it out.
JF: Also, we didn’t just drop them afterwards. I’m still in contact with some of the people who were in our films. Because those people shared some of the most crucial moments of their lives with us. We demonstrated the issues through personal accounts, without involving “experts.” It was one of the first times women had spoken out about such deeply personal issues. So we tried to be there for them, both during and afterwards.
HD: We addressed very serious subjects, but the mood was generally good. That was thanks to Les Folles Alliées, but also to the team; we were able to keep laughing. I’m thinking of the song “Aujourd’hui c’est le 8 mars, tu m’as quittée pour une plus radicale.” Songs like that had us in stitches.
LG: Jocelyne Corbeil was a delinquent. She loved everything that wasn’t “normal.” She’d had some traumatic experiences and she wanted to live in total freedom, especially when it came to writing. That’s where the lyrics to that song came from. “I’m alone on March 8, my poster has been abandoned, ( . . .) radi, radi, radical” [translation]. We killed ourselves laughing!
HD: We laughed a lot about ourselves, our adventures, our misadventures, things that happened with our boyfriends or our girlfriends. When we say we weren’t intellectuals or academics, that’s in part because there was all that camaraderie, that teasing. We learned to laugh at our own flaws. Had we not, we would have been sad all the time! I think that helped us a lot.
L'équipe de Vidéo Femmes lors de la célébration des dix ans du collectif. Lise Bonenfant, Lynda Roy, Hélène Roy, Johanne Fournier, Nathalie Roy, Louise Giguère et Nicole Giguère (de gauche à droite). Collection personnelle de Lynda Roy.
JM: You say you “weren’t academics, etc.” But the reason why academics are so interested is that you covered a lot of subjects that were truly well-researched. There was a lot of in-depth work, which is very valuable today. So, for me, it does feel like a work of research . . . and of creation, of course. That’s what was important. But also, there are all these subjects that today, the younger generation doesn’t have any images of. We don’t know what things were like. Nowadays we can take a lot of photos with our phones, but we have no idea how things worked in those days. But you did a tremendous job by covering so many subjects at once, and making it possible for us to access them today.
NR: Even the film Une nef...et ses sorcières is still in circulation, and it came out in 1977. Hélène is still receiving royalties for it, because I think it was shown again recently. Was that you, Julia?
JM: Yes, I showed it on Tënk. And yes, it’s often because of me! [Laughs]