Montreal – Documentary Field Notes and Flashpoints

The Interrupters at Cinema Politica

Ameena Matthews in "The Interrupters" by Kartemquin Films

The other night I went to see The Interrupters at another full-house Cinema Politica screening at Concordia University in Montreal, with the filmmaker in attendance. Cinema Politica regularly gets hundreds of people out to see socially and politically relevant documentaries – in this case 650 people on a Monday night! Kudos to organizers Ezra Winton and Svetla Turnin.

The Interrupters is a terrific film by veteran filmmaker Steve James. Initiated thanks to an article by Alex Kotlowitz, it tells the story of three ‘violence interrupters’ who intervene in violence-ridden, mainly black neighbourhoods in Chicago – the ones which became a national symbol of urban violence in the U.S. a couple of years ago.

It’s a classical ‘vérité’ film, tracking the main characters in many tense and emotionally raw encounters with both victims and perpetrators. The director is also the DOP, and the film is beautifully shot – and has excellent sound recorded in often difficult situations. James’ views on documentary making and the relationship between filmmaker and subject are very close to my own. For example, he spoke about the impact of the camera on the subjects as being sometimes negative, sometimes positive.

Steve James directed Hoop Dreams, a truly impressive and inspiring film. There was a controversy about Hoop Dreams not being nominated for an Oscar, something it definitely deserved. Hopefully that mistake will be made up for by an Oscar nomination for Interrupters.

At IDFA in Amsterdam Steve was given a carte blanche to show his top list of documentaries, see here.

The Interrupters was produced by a truly excellent company called Kartemquin Films. Last year I met Gordon Quinn, one of the founders. I remember asking him whether he felt that the new digital environment had any negative implications for filmmaking ethics.

Quinn said: ‘It’s true that the context is changing, but I think the underlying sets of responsibilities are still there. You owe ethical consideration to your subject and to the intended viewer, and these things can be in contradiction. We spend months or years with our subjects, and so our concerns for them have to be greater than if we were just parachuted in for an hour, or worse just grabbed something from the net. I do worry that pieces of our films could be used out of context and portray our subjects in a dishonest light.”

Thanks to Tobi Elliott for her help with the blog.

Hommage à Garry Beitel

Bonjour/Shalom film poster — Poster pour le film 'Bonjour! Shalom!' de Garry Beitel.

Heureusement la Québec a une politique culturelle et s’est donné le cadre institutionnel nécessaire pour la mettre en pratique. La semaine passée, le Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ) remettait des bourses de carrière à quatre cinéastes : Jean-Pierre Lefebvre, Mireille Dansereau, André Gladu, et Garry Beitel. Ma collègue Helene Kladowsky et moi avons eu l’occasion de dire quelques mots sur l’impressionnant carrière de Garry, que voici.

MAGNUS:
Le contexte de production du documentaire est difficile, les fenêtres de diffusion et opportunités de financement se font rares. Dans ce contexte, les bourses de carrière du CALQ sont fort apprécieés. Nous sommes honorés d’avoir l’occasion de rendre hommage à Garry, un collègue inspirant et prolifique. J’ai l’impression que chaque année il sort un nouveau film, film qui raconte toujours une histoire touchante qui nous fait réfléchir sur la condition humaine.

HELENE:
À la fin des années 80, quand je suis arrivée à Montréal de Toronto, j’ai très vite entendu parler de Gary, ce grand cinéaste anglophone qui a exploré toute la richesse culturelle du Québec. Enraciné dans la culture anglophone et la communauté juive, Gary est aussi parfaitement bilingue et amoureux de la culture francophone de Montréal. En tant que cinéaste engagé, Gary a été un modèle pour moi.

MAGNUS:
Durant trente années, Garry a documenté des rencontres passionnantes entre des individus qui représentent différentes communautés, différentes sensibilités et différents points de vue. Des individus qui – comme Garry lui-même – tentent de construire des ponts et trouver un terrain commun, un langage commun.

Il a documenté des rencontres entre jeunes et personnes âgées – dans par exemple Livraisons Aigre-Douces…

entre citoyens de souche et nouveaux arrivés – comme dans Aller-Retour ou Asylum.

Entre juifs et non-juifs – Helene vous mentionnera plusieurs titres –

Entre Anglophones et Francophones – comme dans Rien de Sacré…

Entre gens en santé et gens malades et souffants – dans Endnotes par exemple, ou The Man who learned to fall.

Ces rencontres, il les documente toujours avec beaucoup de respect, avec de la compassion, avec un sens de l’humour. Ses films nous font découvrir des voisins que nous ne connaissions pas, ou pas asssez, et de comprendre les défis auxquels ils font face.

Je trouve ses films sur les gens qui sont gravement malades et sur les gens qui tentent de les aider maintenir une dignité et à donner un sens à la vie très touchants.

Ses films ajoutent des couches de profondeur à des gens et des lieux que nous pensions connaître. En voyant ses films nous nous aperçevons que cette connaissance était superficielle et qu’il y avait bien plus à savoir, sur le restaurant smoked meat a coin de la rue, sur l’artiste local que nous avions entendu à la radio, ou sur les caricaturistes des principaux quotidiens – anglais et français bien évidemment, qui nous font rire et réfléchir tous les jours.

Les films de Garry sont appréciés sur les écrans, grands ou petits, ici et ailleurs. Ils enrichissent notre mémoire collective, et demeurent pertinentes pour des années, voir des décennies, après leur sortie.

HELENE:
Garry s’est intéressé dans ses films à des communautés, à des individus en transition et à des artistes. Des films qui sont merveilleux.

Il a aussi fait vivre à l’écran la communauté juive du Québec dans toute sa diversité. Dans Bonjour! Shalom!, il a posé un regard sur les rapports parfois tendus, parfois harmonieux entre les juifs hassidiques et leurs voisins francophones et non religieux. Ma chère Clara raconte une histoire d’amour juive qui se déroule pendant la deuxième guerre mondiale à Montréal, en Pologne et en Russie.

Chez Schwartz nous fait pénétrer dans l’univers multiethnique des personnages et Socalled, le film, nous fait découvrir un artiste qui fusionne la musique traditionnelle klezmer, le hiphop et le funk. À plusieurs reprises, la communauté juive de Montréal a honoré Garry pour son travail et pour sa contribution humaniste.

En yiddish, une autre langue que Gary possède, on dirait de lui qu’il est un véritable « mensch », c’est à dire un être humain d’exception. Toutes mes félicitations Gary.

Merci a Tobi Elliott pour son aide avec le blogue.

Salut Ti-Guy!

This past weekend I attended a memorial service for Guy Tremblay, a sometimes-homeless singer and volunteer worker affectionately known as ‘Ti-Guy’ in the shelters and soup kitchens in downtown Montreal.

The service, at the Notre Dame des Lourdes chapel on St. Catherine street East was warm and unpretentious, marked by the social context of an area that has a lot of marginalized people. The testimonies to Guy were touching, describing him very candidly as a sometimes-manipulative guy with addiction problems, but sensitive, generous and talented.

Guy was one of the main characters in my film Les Enfants de Choeur/The Choir Boys, about Montreal’s homeless choir, La Chorale de l’Accueil Bonneau, released about ten years ago. My terrific editor Louise Côté really liked Guy, and all his good and not-so-good sides were much in evidence in the film. People sometimes ask me – with a critical tone in their voice – why I included a scene were Guy, under the influence, pointedly tells me “Magnus, if you film me now I will…” He didn’t say #*$#@#, but it’s clear what he meant. Well, we showed him the fine cut, and he graciously accepted it without requesting any changes.

Guy was 47 when he died, one week after participating in his last concert. The homeless choir has come back to life, under the name ‘La Chorale sous les étoiles,’ the Choir under the Stars. They sang at the service – not a funeral, because Ti-Guy had been buried already in his hometown of St. Siméon.

The producer of ‘Les Enfants de Choeur’, Paul Lapointe, as well as the editor Louise Côté and DOP’s Martin Duckworth, Andrei Khabad and François Beauchemin join me in saying: Salut Ti-Guy, you enriched our lives and we are grateful for it.

Thanks to Tobi Elliott for her help with this blog.

The Yes Men bring the house down

This week I went to a sensational Cinema Politica screening at Concordia University here in Montreal.

Cinema Politica is now, according to programmer Ezra Winton, the biggest community- and campus-based documentary screening network in the world! And Concordia, its home base and launching pad, continues to be the scene of weekly screenings often attended by more than 500 people – quite an achievement!

This time, after several years of efforts, Winton and CP Director Svetla Turnin had succeeded in bringing the Yes-Men to Montreal. Do you know who they are? They are surely the world’s leading impostors of the serious-humorous kind. They have pulled off some incredible hoaxes, and always at the expense of governments and corporations who should have reasons to be ashamed of their doings.

The Yes-Men modus operandi is to create false websites which lead people to invite them to conferences as representatives of the ‘bad guys.’ Once there, they push the envelope, taking corporate and government strategies to absurd levels, announcing outrageous schemes. The most incredible thing about their stunts is that people usually take them seriously, even when they propose, for example, human remains as a new energy source or human waste as a protein source for the poor.

On behalf of Dow chemicals, they apologized for the Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal and promised compensation for the victims. They got terrific coverage on BBC news around the globe, forcing DOW (the new owner of the UC assets) to strenuously deny that they had done something good! The Concordia crowd saw these feats in the film The Yes Men Fix the World, produced by Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonnano themselves, as a follow-up to the 2003 film The Yes Men.

I found the film a little uneven but full of brilliant ideas. For example, some arch-conservative U.S. climate-change deniers and free-market apostles are shot against a blue screen and are asked what they would like to see as a background for themselves. They then take the interviewees’ suggestions to heart, in their own humorous fashion, and use the backdrops as an ironic backdrop to their comments. Talk about giving people the rope to hang themselves. And most of all, the footage of the Yes Men’s stunts is priceless.

In the discussion afterward, Andy and Mike (actually Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos) explained that they are anti-capitalist, that they take advantage of opportunities to expose fraud and ill-doing, that they haven’t generally had problems with lawsuits, and that they encourage people everywhere to follow their example.

In response to the many activists who inevitably wanted to know if they had done something on their pet issue, they gave the sound advice: why don’t you do it yourselves!

Congrats to Cinema Politica for an exceptional last-screening-of-the-year!

With thanks to Tobi Elliott for her help with this blog. Photo credit: Thanh Pham

Super-Grannies – and two shorts

The normal progression for a budding filmmaker has generally been from student films and shorty shorts towards longer shorts, and then medium-length films and finally feature length ones. Working on the short films, he or she would learn the ropes, learn how to use equipment and tell a story. Later on, with more resources, would come a bigger crew and competent technicians or co-creators.

Not so in my case. When I started making audiovisual stories for television, I already had many years of storytelling behind me as a radio producer. And as a television ‘producer’ (meaning actually director) at CBC and Radio-Canada television, I didn’t have the right to touch the equipment. I remember the editors saying to me, “You can screen the cut again while I’m on my break, but close the door and don’t tell anyone.” It was a co-conspiracy by the bosses and the union.

Things have changed a lot since then! Now, in the digital world, many television journalists and directors do their own shooting and editing.

And for my part, I am looking after the beginnings I never had as a filmmaker. Over the last couple of years, I have made my first short films. And they will be screening at the Park Cinema in Montreal, before my film Super-Grannies (subtitled version of ‘Les Super-Mémés’) from Oct. 18th to 22nd.

Here is a brief description of the three films – with apologies for the PR language!

Letter to Béthièle. (8 min. 2010) In French with English sub-titles.

In a touching visual letter to his adoptive daughter Béthièle on her 10th birthday, Montreal filmmaker Magnus Isacsson reflects on her roots in Haiti and his own in Sweden, drawing some surprising conclusions.

Sonny Joe & the casino. (22 min. 2004)

Sonny Joe Cross collects used clothes from the residents of the Mohawk territory of Kahnawake. He sells some in his store and gives the rest to the homeless and poor in nearby Montreal. A former hard-drinking gambler, Sonny Joe leads a suspense-filled campaign against a casino promoted by the band council.

Les super-mémés. (45 min. 2010.)

Decked out in gaudy shawls and outrageous hats brimming with a cacophony of colours, «Raging Grannies» defy the invisibility so often experienced by older women. They are a colourful presence at most demonstrations and grassroots meetings promoting peace, social justice and environment.

On the surface, they are amusing, even hilarious. But underneath that humorous veneer, they are deadly serious. The film does more than portray of the movement and its members. It raises universal issues very seldom addressed by the current media, such as the role of senior citizens in our society. “With this documentary film, I wanted to accomplish myself what these exceptional women do so well: entertain while forcing us to reflection,” says the filmmaker.

Production: Island Filmworks

Distribution: Vidéo Femmes

Thanks to Tobi Elliott for her help with the blog.

Marcel Simard’s last film

MARCEL SIMARD, filmmaker — Director Marcel Simard

There is a reason why I write this in English. Most francophones in Quebec who take an interest in cinema will already be aware of what I’m about to tell you.

“There are adults who have antennas for the secret pain of our little ones – forms of suffering that are often taken to be unimportant.” Those are the opening words of Marcel Simard’s last film, spoken by himself. ‘Last film’, because Marcel is no longer with us.

Like the people he portrayed in his films, Marcel was incredibly sensitive. The sometimes overwhelming challenges of being alive and people who were close to the edge were not only his subjects, they were also an inescapable part of his own life. As he said in a statement read at his funeral, this suffering had become unbearable, and he wasn’t able to face it one more day. He isn’t here to enjoy the success of his film.

Le petit monde d’Elourdes, the title of Marcel’s beautiful film, is a play on words. It means Elourdes’ children, or Elourde’s little world. It follows the first- to third-grade students of a special Montreal school, and their incredible teacher Elourdes Pierre over a period of a year.

Elourdes Pierre, Montreal teacher — Montreal teacher Elourdes Pierre

A woman of colour, Elourdes is beautiful, sensitive, intelligent and caring. With infinite patience she attends to all the seemingly small dramas that play themselves out among the children. Many of them revolve around the conflicts between the girls who often seek exclusive friendship (a father of two daughters, I am very familiar with this. Margaret Atwood has written about it…), but others have to do with the aggressiveness of some of the boys.

For the children these are deadly serious issues, and Elourdes – just like Marcel – understands this. Her interaction with the children is beautifully filmed by Arnaud Bouquet – and kudos to sound man Pierre Duplessis who doesn’t miss one word of what the children say, or sometimes whisper.

In a very moving scene Elourdes explains her agenda: if she can teach these children to resolve their conflicts here, at this age, without violence or residual resentment, they will have learned a skill for life, and our world will be better for it.

In following the class for a year, this film resonates with other French-language films like Être et Avoir and La classe de Mme Lise. In its study of human motions as expressed at an early age, it is reminiscent of Claire Simon’s La récréation.

I made three films with Marcel Simard and his wife Monique Simard, at Les Productions Virage. (For titles see my web site.) Virage produced many of the best social-issue documentaries in Quebec. I loved Marcel’s understanding of people (he seemed to see right through any kind of façade or disguise, seeing people’s soul…) and of cinema.

Like a lot of Quebec filmmakers, social workers and people involved in fights for social justice, I will miss him enormously.