Urban Footage
Two archival films chronicling the city of
Montreal
INTRASTEVERE CINEMA – Room 2, May 30, 10 a.m.
Introduces by the curator
Filmmaker Luc Bourdon has created a diptych that allows him to recount a chapter of Québec’s cultural and social history through moving images. His source material is the plethora of films produced by the National Film Board of Canada between the 1950s and 1970s. Each film has a distinct tone, even if the eras occasionally overlap. La mémoire des anges (The Memory of Angels) showcases, in a way, the golden age of the NFB’s French studio, depicting Québec’s metropolis, Montreal, in all its facets. It is a cinema of exploration, primarily in black and white, achieving the remarkable feat of bringing the city to life with breadth, in a kaleidoscope of films addressing a wide range of subjects. The art of composition and editing, and the resulting rhythm, are the key to this success.
The Devil’s Share, meanwhile, is a film that addresses the Quebecois “Years of Lead,” marked by the application of the federal War Measures Act in October 1970. Luc Bourdon skillfully recreates this era and its currents, beginning with the Québec self-determination movement, but also broader social movements that reached their peak in the challenge to conservative forces. This distant era, however, confronts us with the new challenges of our time.
Guillaume Lafleur
Director of Programming, Circulation and Publications
Cinémathèque québécoise
The Memories of Angels
La mémoire des anges / Luc Bourdon / Québec / 2008 / 80′
A documentary, poem and essay in one, The Memories of Angelsis a unique lesson in Montreal’s history of famous people, symbolic places and ordinary people. With no voiceover, the film ranges from the red-light district to Jean Drapeau, from Jacques-Cartier market to downtown department stores, from textile factories to the construction of Place Ville-Marie. We meet Geneviève Bujold, Oscar Peterson, Monique Mercure, and Igor Stravinsky. We listen to Raymond Lévesque, Jean Drapeau and René Lecavalier.
A loving tribute to Montreal’s vitality and a joyful experience for all generations.
The Devil’s Share
La part du diable / Luc Bourdon / Québec / 2017 / 103′
Quebec, on the threshold of the 1960s. The province is on the brink of momentous change. Masterfully selecting clips from nearly 200 films from the archives of the National Film Board of Canada, director Luc Bourdon reinterprets the historical record, giving us a new and original perspective on the Silent Revolution.
Luc Bourdon
A prolific director, Luc Bourdon is one of the leading figures in video art in Canada.
He has made more than fifty works in various genres-documentaries, fictions, experiments-many of which have art and culture as their theme(Ne retenez pas votre souffle, 1986; Question de bande, 1998; De la parole aux actes, 2000; La Grande Bibliothèque, 2005; Classes de maîtres, 2009; Un musée dans la ville, 2011).
These productions have in common the preponderant role they attribute to history and memory. Concepts that are also at the heart of the first feature film he made at the Office national du film du Canada, La Mémoire des anges (2008), and its historical sequel, La Part du Diable (2017), a scholarly documentary collage tracing the history of modern Québec from the 1960s to the turning point of the 1980s.
Throughout his career, Luc Bourdon has established himself as a tireless experimenter, offering a playful approach to the treatment of image and sound. In addition to his work as a director, Luc Bourdon has collaborated with figures in the theatrical world such as René-Daniel Dubois.
Guillaume Lafleur
Guillaume Lafleur has directed programming, distribution and publications at the Cinémathèque québécoise since 2017. He has supervised several reuse film works. Since 1999, he has published about a hundred articles and essays on contemporary cinema, Québec film history, experimental cinema, and film aesthetics. In 2015 he published, for Varia, Pratiques minoritaires, fragments d’une histoire méconnue du cinéma québécois (1937-1973), and then co-curated, together with Ralph Elawani, in 2020, the opera XPQ, traversée du cinéma expérimental québécois. (Somme toute/Cinémathèque québécoise). His most recent book is. Va voir ailleurs, essays on new century cinemas (Somme toute, 2024). He has been a programmer in North American and European festivals and institutions (New York, Winnipeg, Vienna, Toulouse, Barcelona, Rome, Bologna, London).