The Sex of the Stars

Trente tableaux is a 2011 autobiographical feature documentary by Quebec film director Paule Baillargeon, made during her two-year film residency with the National Film Board of Canada. It is an anthology film composed of 30 short portraits—or tableau vivant—of her 66 years of life to date, reflecting her experiences as a woman in Quebec's changing society.

Poetry and cinema merge as 11 filmmakers bring to life 21 poems by Quebecois poets.

A woman deals with her mother, an arts professor, plunging into chaos due to Alzheimer's.

On a wedding day, women are confined to the kitchen to prepare the meal while the men wait to be served. While men talk politics and sports, women talk about their condition. A teenager observes the gap between the sexes. Co-directed by two actresses, Paule Baillargeon and Frederique Collin, The Red Kitchen is the birth of the Quebec women's cinema. The birth of the film was difficult, and funding has been largely achieved through donations from friends and a benefit concert. This war of the sexes takes place in a demanding formal research, based on the improvisation of the actors, whose preparation took place over long sessions in the workshop. The end result mixes black humour, horror and a very expressive fantasy that gave rise to heated debates.

A revealing look at the great Quebecois director who gave us such classic films as Mon Oncle Antoine, A toute prendre and Kamouraska: Power of Passion. Amidst the rise of French-Canadian identity and the political struggles of the '60s, Jutra was at the forefront of a group of artists dedicated to social change and attacking taboo.