Denys Desjardins

Looking for a long lost friend, Madeleine talks to a Stalker so that he can take her to «the zone» and help her look into her memories to find him at last. Essay-film hommage to Chris Marker.

Animator Jacques Drouin looks back on his career.

Animator Jacques Drouin looks back on his career.

Animator Jacques Drouin looks back on his career.

Animator Jacques Drouin looks back on his career.

Animator Jacques Drouin looks back on his career.

Monique Fortier was one of the few women to make her way in the male world of the NFB in the 1950s. But make her way she did. Beginning as a secretary, she graduated to editing and in 1963 she became the first francophone woman to direct her own film, À l'heure de la décolonisation. Her NFB colleague Anne Claire Poirier would make her first film the same year. Fortier subsequently returned to editing, quietly labouring at the Steenbeck, shaping films that helped define Direct Cinema.

This distinctly personal journey into the artistic possibilities of independent film is not to be missed. Jonas Mekas, Jean-Pierre Gorin, Robert Kramer and many other visionaries and mavericks of the silver screen – as well as a book seller, a critic and a psychoanalyst – discuss what cinema has meant to them, what it is and what it could be and, implicitly, how it has changed over the 18 years in which this film was shot. Director Boris Lehman leads the charge, drawing in moments of absurdist humour and inventive camera work; he keeps things raw and spontaneous. His encounters with the now much-missed Jean Rouch and Stephen Dwoskin are particularly touching and stand testament to their personal playfulness and candour. An engaging, absorbing, epic odyssey of a movie.

Thanks to the development of techniques and the adventurous spirit of pioneering filmmakers, among whom Michel Brault occupies a central place, a new way of making cinema was born at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s. This film relevantly retraces the history of a collective movement which revolutionized production and filming methods in Quebec and the world.

Thanks to the development of techniques and the adventurous spirit of pioneering filmmakers, among whom Michel Brault occupies a central place, a new way of making cinema was born at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s. This film relevantly retraces the history of a collective movement which revolutionized production and filming methods in Quebec and the world.

Zoom-out from a too-tight focus on problems like dropout rates, loss of motivation among students, and depression among teachers. Entering the daily lives of "problem cases" at a Montreal secondary school that sits at the bottom of the school performance rankings, Denys Desjardins sweeps away preconceptions about the quality of teaching in disadvantaged neighbourhoods and the alleged delinquency of the kids who live there. A far-reaching examination of student life that stimulates reflection on the role of school in our society and asks how willing we are to support and finance the school system so that it will not be merely a factory churning out parts for the social machine.

A filmmaker, fascinated by the power of the camera and obsessed with the theories of Russian film pioneer Dziga Vertov, decides to get a camera eye to replace the real eye he lost as a child. The visionary quest begins on the operating table, where a surgeon grafts a prototype ocular implant into his eye socket. Seeking a microscopic camera that could be incorporated into his artificial eye so he could secretly film whatever he sees, the filmmaker explores the futuristic technology that could make this possible, while revisiting chapters of his own past.

A filmmaker, fascinated by the power of the camera and obsessed with the theories of Russian film pioneer Dziga Vertov, decides to get a camera eye to replace the real eye he lost as a child. The visionary quest begins on the operating table, where a surgeon grafts a prototype ocular implant into his eye socket. Seeking a microscopic camera that could be incorporated into his artificial eye so he could secretly film whatever he sees, the filmmaker explores the futuristic technology that could make this possible, while revisiting chapters of his own past.

A filmmaker, fascinated by the power of the camera and obsessed with the theories of Russian film pioneer Dziga Vertov, decides to get a camera eye to replace the real eye he lost as a child. The visionary quest begins on the operating table, where a surgeon grafts a prototype ocular implant into his eye socket. Seeking a microscopic camera that could be incorporated into his artificial eye so he could secretly film whatever he sees, the filmmaker explores the futuristic technology that could make this possible, while revisiting chapters of his own past.