Paule Baillargeon
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.
Jean-Marc is a man without qualities living in times that are out of joint. His wife and children ignore him; he's a mid-level government functionary in Montreal doing his job without care. He has an active imagination of sexual conquest, but his only real feelings come when he visits his aged mother, whose health is failing. When his wife leaves abruptly to work in Toronto, Jean-Marc sets out to reorder things with his daughters, his social life, and at work. In a world that at best is a farce, does he stand a chance?
Poetry and cinema merge as 11 filmmakers bring to life 21 poems by Quebecois poets.
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.
Lost Worlds looks at untouched aspects of nature in parts of the world where humans rarely tread. From plants, to animals, to geology, this artfully photographed documentary presents facets of the biological world that you are not likely to see anywhere else.
The film consists largely of a series of interviews with female filmmakers from several different countries and filmmaking eras. Some, such as Agnès Varda and Catherine Breillat (both from France), have been making films for decades in a conscious effort to provide an alternative to the male filmmaking model; others, such as Moufida Tlatli (Tunisia) and Carine Adler (England), are relative newcomers to directing, and their approaches seem more personal and less political. The film as a whole manages to cover some important topics in the feminist debate about film -- how does one construct a female gaze, how can one film nude bodies without objectifying the actors (of either sex), what constitutes a strong female role -- while also making it clear that “women’s film” comprises as many different approaches to filmmaking as there are female filmmakers.
After escaping unscathed from a car accident, photo model Simone decides that having a baby is the only way to give her vacant life some meaning. She asks her best friend Philippe to get her pregnant, and he reluctantly agrees, on the condition that they conceive somewhere in a desert, so they leave Montréal on a 24-hour round-trip to Salt Lake City to find a suitable spot.
A 12-year-old girl faces a father she hardly remembers after his sex change.
Six stories about Montreal. 1: A young housewife from Toronto samples the nightlife using basic French. 2: The tale of a painting of Montreal's first mayor, Jacques Viger. 3: During a hockey game, Madeleine tries to tell Roger she wants a divorce after forty years of marriage. 4: A visitor to a conference on pictographs arrives at the airport, where the female customs officer steals a momento from each person. 5: As she is being driven to the hospital in an ambulance after an auto accident, Sarah recalls her life. 6: At a diplomatic reception, an older woman reminisces about her grand love in Montreal.
A day in the life of a Quebec magazine writer - his fortieth birthday - from his dream before waking to his last act before sleeping. He looks back over his life, his thoughts, and his loves.
A group of actors putting on an interpretive Passion Play in Montreal begin to experience a meshing of their characters and their private lives as the production takes form against the growing opposition of the Catholic church.
Awkward, shy and delightfully funny, Polly Vandersma is an "organizationally impaired" temporary assistant who finally gets her first permanent job at the age of 31. While she works for the curator of an art gallery, Polly narrates her own story, sharing the comical and bittersweet pretensions of the art world. At the same time, she reveals a special part of her own private world, taking the viewer to enchanted places in this quiet assault on the notion of authority everywhere.
In Quebec 40s, orphans or abandoned children are placed in a gigantic psychiatric hospital where children were locked. Were they sick? No, they simply had no family. To escape this oppressive universe, they created a parallel world: the institution's basement where, in a maze of tunnels, they founded an independent company, with its rituals, spells. A young girl, Agnes, reigns over this underground world that adults seem to tolerate.
Even though the protagonist of the Canadian Femme De L'Hotel is a female filmmaker, one would think twice before suggesting that this effort by Swiss-born director Lea Pool is autobiographical. Paule Baillargeon portrays a well-known director who returns to her home town of Montreal to film a high-budget musical drama. At her hotel, Paule has a brief but unsettling encounter with a suicidal elderly woman (Louise Marleau). This element of the plot is briefly forgotten as we get to know the actors in Paule's current project. Then she meets the old lady again, and with mounting incredulity Paule discovers that the actual events in the woman's life mirror the fictional events in the director's film.
Anna Hart was always an odd child, a genius, a shoplifter, desperately afraid of flickering lights, with strange prophetic dreams. Simultaneously, several strange things begin to happen. A strange, mysterious neighbor, by the name of MacKayla moves in next door to the Harts. And, most frightening of all, Anna sees her exact double on the television one night. As her investigation of the other Anna, Anna Smithson, progresses, she begins to learn the truth. The truth about a woman named Anna Zimmerman that has been dead for twenty years, and most importantly, the truth about herself
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.
30-year-old Quebec City native Gisèle (Rita Lafontaine) lives a quiet life as a secretary without happiness with her parents and siblings. One day, tired of being teased by her office mates, she decides to consult a marriage agency to find her soul mate.
Robert decides to drop everything and go back to his homeland, accompanied by his daughter and a couple of friends.
Hélène (Luce Guilbeault) is a woman who already has, in her view, quite enough children. For some time she has secretly been taking birth control pills, but now she is too old to use them safely. When her husband Gabriel (Jean Mathieu) discovers the pills, he is distressed, since he wants a large family. The two of them discuss their differing attitudes and desires but come to no resolution.
Although he is something of a layabout, and is still living with his mother, her death comes as something of a shock to Louis Pelletier (Gilbert Sicotte). Still, he has hopes of some sort of legacy and believes that his relatives will help him find a job. All his hopes are dashed when, before the funeral, his three aunts come to Quebec City to settle their sister's estate. As grasping and efficient a crew as ever strode a parlor, by the time they leave, the estate has been cleaned to the bones, as if by vultures.
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.
Set on an ice-encircled island in the St. Lawrence, this is a drama of passion and violence. An old man, attached to his ancestral home and traditions, is confronted by his son, an immature young man who has no time for these values. The outcome is tragic as the father refuses to let his home fall into the hands of outsiders.
A chronicle of the lives of a couple and the gradual dissolution of their relationship.
