Jean Pierre Lefebvre
Montréal, 1959. In the classroom of Sister Cecilia, Leonie (aged 11) first met Father Malachy, a young Dominican father who has come to visit his school. It is love at first sight for this lonely and dreamy child who took refuge in religion to escape a mother who is emotional and too worried. But there is also love at first sight between Sister Cecilia and Father Malachy. Between human love and the love of God, which will prevail? Written by
Jean-Paul is a public servant, tired of toiling at his soul-destroying job. As a writer, he feels out of touch with the times and longs for inspiration.
Commissioned by the Toronto International Film Festival to mark the event's 25th anniversary in September 2000, the "Preludes" program consisted of ten short films by Canadian directors which were inspired in some way by the festival. Each film screened as a prelude to a feature film in the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival program. The full "Preludes" anthology was screened on the web in November 2000, and was given theatrical retrospectives at the TIFF Lightbox in the subsequent years.
Jean Pierre Lefebvre’s short comments on history and film’s role in it.
A pilot who has not flown in years due to an accident has to deal with unexpected visitors and financial woes on the day he decides to return to the sky.
One day Jean-Baptiste Beauregard (Pierre Curzi) does not go out to face work or daily activities, instead he daydreams about the women in his past, about his teenage years, his failed marriage, and even his boyhood desires. His mental images follow each other across the screen, revealing that the women in his life are all the same (different wigs and costumes on the same actress), and his love life never changes either. This sameness can have a dulling effect on the viewers, indicating that if Jean-Baptiste's reminiscences were trimmed and his daydreams more varied and exciting, he would hold interest a little longer.
Three generations of a family struggle to be open with each other during a week of summer vacation at their country cottage.
A teenager rebels against an oppressive ideology enforced by the authoritarian administration of his school and is committed to a mental institution.
A middle-aged man travels to France and is discouraged by the attitudes of the people concerning his native land until he meets and begins relationships with two lonely women.
A situationist fable centered around Roger Cantin as a young artisanal filmmaker looking to find solace by making pictures.
A lonely divorced woman spends her evening in her apartment listening to a phone-in radio show. As she listens to strangers talk candidly about their personal problems, she has to come to terms with her own.
The unexpected return of his ex-wife and the assembly of a group of protesters both threaten to wreck a corrupt contractor's inauguration party for his new superhighway.
After another cardiac arrest, Armand knows he don't have long to live. But after more then 70 years in the same house, he doesn't want to die somewhere other then home. His wife Rose has secretly decided she will die as she lived: with him.
The true identity of an undercover RCMP narcotics agent is discovered by the criminals he is investigating and his family pays the price.
A meditation on society's attitudes and beliefs, as explored through a New France fur trapper's relationship with a Native woman that spans centuries.
A chronicle of the lives of a couple and the gradual dissolution of their relationship.
In this satire of sexuality in the entertainment industry and voyeurism, a woman maintains 3 romantic relationships simultaneously: with her husband, with her boss, and with her lover.
A young man and his girlfriend visit his parents at their lake house for the weekend. While there, the couple meets an eccentric artist who comes between them.
This plodding piece of cinematic ambiguity finds a married couple engaged in boring conversation in a window as scenery changes behind them. When they manage to talk about love, some of the tedium is lifted in the wake of their amorous verbiage. This black and white effort from Jean Pierre Lefebvre depends on symbolic impressionism rather than plot.
An unemployed man with individualist and pacifist values is inevitably brainwashed by society and the mass media to conform to the dominant ideology and embrace war. His soul is destroyed but his heart cannot be conquered.
A carpenter is asked by his boss to serve as a guide for the new secretary, a young woman just arrived in Montreal from France. Both of their lives change as he shows her around the city.
A 30-year old man is forced out of his inert and absent-minded existence when it's complicated by the three women in his life.
A group of young men train to be revolutionaries and plan an insurrection of the Canadian government.
