Friday, April 06, 2007

MY FAVORITE QUEBECOIS FILMS

THIS IS MY COMMENT IN GIRISH SHAMBU’S BLOG:
http://www.girishshambu.com/blog/2007/04/quebecois-cinema.html

Thank you very much for your useful information about Quebecois cinema.

Living in Bangkok all my life, I have very limited experience with Quebecois films, but my favorite ones are:

1.SOUS-SOL (NOT ME) (1996, Pierre Gang)
I posted a comment on this film in IMDB here
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117701/usercomments

2.TU AS CRIE “LET ME GO” (1998, Anne Claire Poirier)
This is a documentary film about the director who tried to come to terms with losing her daughter. I gave it A- just after watching it. (The grade implies how much I like it, not how good the film is.) But strangely, after a while, I find myself crying every time I think of its ending. So now this film is one of my most favorite documentaries of all time.

3.TWO SUMMERS (2002, Bruce Lapointe)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0329701/
It is an English language film, but was filmed in Quebec.

4.DOSSIER SANS TITRE (UNTITLED FOLDER) (1998, Benedicte Ronfard)
A short film about children and violence. Very powerful and shocking.

5.LES MARCHES DE LONDRES (LONDON’S MARKET) (1996, Mireille Dansereau)
I can’t remember much about it. I saw it in January 2000. This is a 24-minute film. If I don’t remember it wrong, this film shows a documentary image of London’s Markets in 1969, but the film also presents some dialogues between two unseen people, which make the film seem like a hybrid between fiction-documentary. Maybe this film should be shown together with LONDON (1994, Patrick Keiller).

The Quebecois films which I would like to see very much are

1.A SCREAM FROM SILENCE (1979, Anne Claire Poirier)
From what I have heard about it, I think the film might be like THE ACCUSED + ADAPTATION. The film is about ‘a film about a rape victim’, the (fictional?) filmmakers’ reactions to the film, and the (true?) story which inspired the filmmakers to make this film.

I think Ron Burnett wrote a very good article about this film in the book “CULTURES OF VISION: IMAGES, MEDIA, AND THE IMAGINARY”

2.POSSIBLE WORLDS (2000, Robert Lepage)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0222293/
Tilda Swinton is in it, and I think it might be as weird as her other films which I would like to see very much, such as FRIENDSHIP’S DEATH (1987, Peter Wollen), or THE PARTY: NATURE MORTE (1991, Cynthia Beatt). Someone should organize a Tilda Swinton retrospective.

No comments: