Quebec Cinema In The 21st Century

This collection of ten chapters and three original interviews with Québécois filmmakers focuses on the past two decades of Quebec cinema and takes an in-depth look at a (primarily) Montreal-based filmmaking industry whose increasingly diverse productions continue to resist the hegemony of Hollywood and to exist as a visible and successful hub of French-language - and ever more multilingual - cinema in North America. This volume picks up where Bill Marshall's 2001 Quebec National Cinema ends to investigate the inherently global nature of Quebec's film industry and cinematic output since the beginning of the new millennium. Through their analyses of contemporary films (Une colonie, Avant les rues, Bon cop, bad cop, Les Affamés, Tom à la ferme, Uvanga, among others), directors (including Xavier Dolan, Denis Côté, Sophie Desrape, Chloé Robichaud, Jean-Marc Vallée, and Monia Chokri) and genres (such as the buddy comedy and the zombie film), our authors examine the growing tension between Quebec cinema as a "national cinema" and as an art form that reflects the transnationalism of today's world, a new form of fluidity of individual experiences, and an increasing on-screen presence of Indigenous subjects, both within and outside the borders of the province. The book concludes with specially conducted interviews with filmmakers Denis Chouinard, Bachir Bensadekk, and Marie-Hélène Cousineau, who provide their views and insights on contemporary Quebec filmmaking.

Since the defeat of the pro-sovereigntists in the 1995 Quebec referendum, the loss of a cohesive nationalistic vision in the province has led many Québécois to use their ancestral origins to inject meaning into their everyday lives. A Cinema of Pain argues that this phenomenon is observable in a pervasive sense of nostalgia in Quebec culture and is especially present in the province’s vibrant but deeply wistful cinema. In Québécois cinema, nostalgia not only denotes a sentimental longing for the bucolic pleasures of bygone French-Canadian traditions, but, as this edited collection suggests, it evokes the etymological sense of the term, which underscores the element of pain (algos) associated with the longing for a return home (nostos). Whether it is in grandiloquent historical melodramas such as Séraphin: un homme et son péché (Binamé 2002), intimate realist dramas like Tout ce que tu possèdes (Émond 2012), charming art films like C.R.A.Z.Y. (Vallée 2005), or even gory horror movies like Sur le Seuil (Tessier 2003), the contemporary Québécois screen projects an image of shared suffering that unites the nation through a melancholy search for home.

This collection of ten chapters and three original interviews with Québécois filmmakers focuses on the past two decades of Quebec cinema and takes an in-depth look at a (primarily) Montreal-based filmmaking industry whose increasingly diverse productions continue to resist the hegemony of Hollywood and to exist as a visible and successful hub of French-language – and ever more multilingual – cinema in North America. This volume picks up where Bill Marshall’s 2001 Quebec National Cinema ends to investigate the inherently global nature of Quebec’s film industry and cinematic output since the beginning of the new millennium. Through their analyses of contemporary films (Une colonie, Avant les rues, Bon cop, bad cop, Les Affamés, Tom à la ferme, Uvanga, among others), directors (including Xavier Dolan, Denis Côté, Sophie Desrape, Chloé Robichaud, Jean-Marc Vallée, and Monia Chokri) and genres (such as the buddy comedy and the zombie film), our authors examine the growing tension between Quebec cinema as a “national cinema” and as an art form that reflects the transnationalism of today’s world, a new form of fluidity of individual experiences, and an increasing on-screen presence of Indigenous subjects, both within and outside the borders of the province. The book concludes with specially conducted interviews with filmmakers Denis Chouinard, Bachir Bensadekk, and Marie-Hélène Cousineau, who provide their views and insights on contemporary Quebec filmmaking.

Quebecois cinema, too long neglected and too long unknown by American viewers, and often not appreciated on its own terrain, receives its well-deserved defense in Janis L. Pallister's The Cinema of Quebec: Masters in Their Own House.

Publisher Description

This acknowledgement of their dramatic origins has often led to criticism that these movies remain too rigidly anchored to the stage; too "stage-bound." Stage-Bound, the first extensive study of feature film adaptations of English Canadian and Québécois drama, challenges this reductive interpretation. André Loiselle demonstrates that theatricality is central to the meaning of these works. In the process, he reclaims these stage-bound films, which have generally been ignored by scholars.

This collection contains a selection of papers presented a the very First All-European Canandian Studies Conference that took place in The Hague, October 24-27, 1990. This unique meeting took place for the first time in the history of Canadian Studies. The focus of the papers is on the future rather than the past and it took place at a moment in time when Canada went through major crises that raised serious doubts about the country’s future. The papers of this volume explore the main issues and problems that Canada faces. The volume contains sections on demography, environmental problems, economic transformations, Canadian identity, political power structure, aboriginal issues and Canada’s international relations. As a whole the book takes stock where Canada stands and where it is going.