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archives

2019 Edition

Preview – Cinéma Moderne

Tuesday, March 26 – 18h

TOUROU AND BITTI
(the drums of the past)

by JEAN ROUCH, 1967 (in Niger)

France | 12min | French

Filmed in one long take, Tourou and Bitti captures a possession dance taking place in the concession of Zima Dauda Sido in Niger. During this festival, participants request the genie of the bush protect the crops against grasshoppers; the archaic drums of Tourou and Bitti will beat. The orchestra comprises a fiddle player, three turkey calabash drummers and a biti-diaphragm drum player.

Tuesday, March 26 – 18h15

LITTLE BY LITTLE

by JEAN ROUCH, 1971 (in France and Niger)

France | 96min | French

In charge of Ayorou (Niger) with Lam and Illo, Damouré eventually decides to construct a “big building” in his village. He goes to Paris to see how one can live in multi-storey houses. In the capital, he discovers the oddities of Parisian life and describes these comical exchanges in letters until the recipients, believing Damouré has gone mad, send Lam to join him on site.

OPENING NIGHT – Nomad Life

Thursday, March 28 – 18h30

RESEARCH / SOUVENIR
(DIALOGUES)

by ROGER HORN, 2018 (in South Africa)

South Africa | 18 min | English subtitles

Research / Souvenir (Dialogues) utilizes found Super 8mm footage from Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and audio from ethnographic research gathered among Zimbabwean migrant women in Cape Town, South Africa.

Thursday, March 28 – 18h50

A DREAMED LOVE

by ARTHUR GILLET, 2018 (in Belgium)

Belgium | 77 min | English subtitles

As a child, Arthur is fascinated by the idyllic love story of his grandparents: a beautiful Congolese married to a Belgian settler. But shortly after the death of his grandmother, the young director discovers family archives that jostle his childhood memories.

JEUDI 28 MARS – 21h20

TSHWEESH

by FEYROUZ SERHAL, 2017 (in Lebanon)

Spain | 25 min

The World Cup is about to begin and Beirutians are eagerly awaiting the first match until, on this otherwise normal day, the signal is disturbed by strange audio waves. Frustration starts to build giving way to an even bigger event.

Friday – MCCORD MUSEUM

Friday, March 29 – 18h

WAMIN

by KATHERINE NEQUADO, 2018 (in Canada)

Canada | 2 min | English subtitles
WAPIKONI MOBILE SHORT FILM

Wamin means apple in atikamekw; red on the outside, white on the inside. The term is used an insult toward people who leave their community to live in the city. A young Atikamekw shows that living outside of her reserve does not betray her true nature.

Friday, March 29 – 18h05

KA USSI TSHISHKUTAMAHUHT

by RACHEL, BEATRICE ET GISELE MARK, 2018 (in Canada)

Canada | 4 min | English subtitles
WAPIKONI MOBILE SHORT FILM

A group of women from Unamen Shipu embark on the task of forming a choir but not everything goes to plan.

Friday, March 29 – 18h10

QUILLIQTU

by KEVIN TIKIVIK, 2018 (in Canada)

Canada | 5 min | English subtitles
WAPIKONI MOBILE SHORT FILM

Inspired by his own story, Quilliqtu’s (Shining Object) narrative reminds viewers of past and present Indigenous realities while celebrating the relationship to the land.

Friday, March 29 – 18h30

THOSE WHO COME WILL HEAR

by SIMON PLOUFFE, 2018 (in Canada)

Canada | 76 min | English subtitles

Supported by archives and in-depth exploration, the film allows us to better understand the musicality of indigenous languages and reveals the cultural and human importance of these millennial traditions by nurturing a collective reflection on the consequences of their disappearance.

Languages: abenaki / atikamekw / innu / mohawk / naskapi / inuktitut / french / english.

Saturday – UNIVERSITÉ DE MONTRÉAL

Saturday, March 30 – 10H

BEFORE FALL

by SARAH BARIL GAUDET, 2019 (in Canada)

Canada | 15 min | English subtitles

On the eve of an inevitable exile towards the urban centers, the youth of Temiscamingue is torn between the desire of a better future and the attachment to its territory.

Saturday, March 30 – 10h15

BOLI BANA

by SIMON COULIBALY GILLARD, 2017 (in Burkina Faso)

Belgium | 60 min | English subtitles

At night, the young boy Ama and his companions travel through the bush of Boli Bana. A herd of huge and at the same time benevolent cattle accompanies them. By day, the young girl Aissita is the centre of attention of Boli Bana village. A witch has arrived for a ritual: For Assista this is the beginning of adulthood. It is a nomadic and mystic world that comes into being through the eyes of these children. A Fulani childhood in Burkina Faso.

Saturday, March 30 – 11h35

THE CHILDREN OF CONCRETE

by JONATHON PHANHSAY-CHAMSON, 2017 (in France)

France | 6 min | English subtitles

Am I French or Chinese ? I wander in my identity questions. I face words from media people with words from children of the “second generation,” trying to see more clearly. I recall France, my France.

Saturday, March 30 – 11h45

34 METERS IN HEIGHT

by KENZA AFSAHI, 2017 (in France)

France | 57 min | English subtitles

34 Meters in Height, is an ethnographic and poetic essay on a Northern village in France – adjacent to Hénin-Beaumont – directed by a Moroccan filmmaker. For more than three years, Kenza Afsahi shared the locals’ daily life, went to the pub, joined hunting parties and the village festivals and traditional celebrations as the Our Lady of Grace procession. Among the issues that punctuate the film belonging or not to a community takes on a special significance.

Saturday, March 30 – 13h

TO THE GHOST OF THE FATHER

by MARIE-LAURENTINE BAYALA, 2018 (in Burkina Faso)

Burkina Faso | 52 min | English subtitles

Claire is of mixed descent; her mother is Burkinabé while her father, who left when she was six years old, is French. Thirty-five years later she is struggling to find him, a quest for identity which grows into an obsession and sends her back to a painful past…

Saturday, March 30 – 13h55

BE’JAM BE ET CELA N’AURA PAS DE FIN

by CAROLINE PARIETTI & CYPRIEN PONSON, 2017 (in Malaysia)

France & Switzerland | 85 min | English subtitles

In Sarawak, one of two Malaysian states on the island of Borneo, those “upstream of the rivers” are the first affected by deforestation. The Penan, once a nomadic people, are today in the center of the whirlwind: how to live when everything is crumbling around you, when the landscape disappears taking with it language, practices and spirits?

Saturday – Cinéma Moderne

Saturday, March 30 – 17h

IN PRAISE OF CHIAC

by MICHEL BRAULT, 1969 (in Canada)

Canada | 27 min | English subtitles

Presented in the form of conversations between a young teacher and her students at a French school in Moncton, New Brunswick, the film depicts the difficulties francophones have in safeguarding their language in a society where English has prevailed for centuries.

Saturday, March 30 – 17h30

THE THINGS I CANNOT CHANGE

by TANYA BALLANTYNE, 1967 (in Canada)

Canada | 55 min | French subtitles

Filmed over the course of three weeks, The Things I Cannot Change offers a glimpse into the daily life of the Bailey family. Run-ins with the police, begging for stale bread and the birth of another child are just some of the issues they face. Although set in Montréal, the film offers an anatomy of poverty as it occurs throughout North America.

Saturday, March 30 – 20h

THE DEVIL’S SHARE

by LUC BOURDON, 2017 (in Canada)

Canada | 102 min | English subtitles

The Devil’s Share offers a singular and new look at the Quiet Revolution in the 1970s. In an act of rare poetry and with the assistance of his accomplice, the editor MICHEL GIROUX, Luc Bourdon (The Memories of Angels) looks back on our history, piecing together a large number of excerpts taken from nearly 200 films from the National Film Board collection, during a decade of profound transformation in Québec.

Sunday – Université de Montréal

Sunday, March 31 – 10H

TRACES D’HIVER

by MATHIEU GERMAIN, 2018 (in Canada)

Canada | 14 min | English subtitles

On the frozen St. Lawrence River, the undeterred brave the cold to practice their favourite winter activity, smelt fishing. Through this icy ritual humans interact with and embrace their natural environment.

Sunday, March 31 – 10h15

THE ARCTIC PORTRAITS

by NICOLAS MINGASSON & VINCENT GAULLIER, 2018 (in Russia)

France | 48 min | French subtitles

The Taimyr Peninsula is located in the far north of Siberia, beyond the Arctic Circle. This is where the Dolganes live. The young ethnologist Yann Borjon Privé went to study them. Pavel, reindeer breeder, Alexsandra, retired veterinarian, Mickail, a fisherman, Zoïa, nurse…all in all, eight Dolganes tell him about their current and past lives. A serial of portraits where archival photographs summon the word. Changes with cultural, environmental, social and economic changes in this most northerly nomad population of the globe.

Sunday, March 31 – 11h20

AFTER PRAYERS

par SIMONE MESTRONI, 2018 (in India)

Italy | 60 min | English subtitles

In Indian Kashmir, between calls to prayer, daily life mixes with separatist politics, Islam and routine violence. From traumatic memories of a guerilla’s funeral to the current anti-Indian riots on the streets, to the story of a mutilated mujahideen, the fate of the people seems to be shaped by hope and anger, love and sorrow, poetry and brutality.

Sunday, March 31 – 12h30

WHAT THE WIND TOOK AWAY

by HELIN CELIK & MARTIN KLINGENBÖCK,  2017 (in Turkey)

Austria | 75 min | English subtitles

What The Wind Took Away is a deeply poetic approach to the very personal stories of these Yazidi women and a lyrical journey through their everyday lives in a refugee camp.

Sunday, March 31 – 13h50

LE MONUMENT DE LA PLAGE

by DORIAN DEGOUTTE, 2018 (in Senegal)

France | 10 min | French

In Cape Skirring, like elsewhere throughout Africa, bricks are made directly on site with a mixture of cement, water and even sand from the beach. With the scene set and a camera over the shoulder, the filmmakers question the symbolism of the brick wall and the ecological as well as urban impact of development on the shared spaces that are, still, the beaches.

Sunday, March 31 – 14h

HOA

by MARCO ZUIN, 2017 (in Vietnam)

Italy | 20 min | English subtitles

This documentary follows the daily life of Hoa, a Dao ethnic minority healer living in a rural village in North Vietnam. Hoa collects medicinal plants in the forest, safeguarding its biodiversity, and she heals the community with the help of her daughter Chiem and her family. While the forests are under threat of deforestation due to rapid development, Hoa continues transmitting the ancient female tradition of herbal medicine practices.

Sunday, March 31 – 14h45

SNOWBIRDS

by JOANIE LAFRÈNIÈRE, 2018 (in the United States of America)

Canada | 48 min | English subtitles

With tenderness and humour, this sociological documentary goes to the heart of the daily lives of Canadians living out their golden years in Florida during the winter season by painting a human portrait of this social phenomenon. Welcome to the French District of Florida, Snowbird’s paradise.

Dimanche – Université Concordia

Sunday, March 31 – 16h

WINDSWEPT

by CAHYO PRAYOGO, 2017 (in Indonesia)

Indonesia | 5 min

Looking at the world through a racing pigeon’s body, framing a suburban landscape of Surabaya (East Java, Indonesia) based on a massive properties expansion, staggering like a fighter jet that loses control onto runway.

Sunday, March 31 – 16h05

SONS OF WORTHLESSNESS

by JACQUELINE MAGEN, 2018 (in Israel)

Israel | 8 min

A personal Journey documenting the cold avant-garde scene in Jerusalem that reveals decadence and thirst for new values.

Sunday, March 31 – 16h15

GUARDIANS OF THE NIGHT

by ALEXANDRINE BOUDREAULT-FOURNIER & ELEONORA DIAMANTI, 2018 (in Cuba)

Canada | 15 min

When the night falls in Guantánamo and invades the streets, other forms of life emerge. Guardians of the Night sheds light on the people, activities, sites and ideas that occur on an everyday basis at nighttime in Eastern Cuba.

Sunday, March 31 – 16h30

20-22 OMEGA

by THIERRY LOA, 2018 (in Canada and the United States of America)

Canada |  111 min

20-22 OMEGA is a feature film that explores the emergence of a new humanity in the Anthropocene, an unprecedented era dominated by the human presence and activities (known as The Human Enterprise), and defined by accelerated changes, unimaginable possibilities and complex uncertainties.

Sunday, March 31 – 19h45

TOKYO 905

by ERAN SAGI, 2017 (in Japan)

Israel | 49 min | English subtitles

An emotional and cinematic journey in two registers: the first is inspired by the analytic and contemplative work of Chris Marker; the other is the personal and emotional one, in which questions arise about the relationship with my partner, meditation about our future family and deliberation about bringing a child into the world, in light of my intricate relationship with my father who died a decade ago.

Sunday, March 31 – 20h40

INVERSE

by AARÓN ÁLVAREZ, 2017 (in Mexico)

Mexico | 10 min | English subtitles

Ricardo and Carlos have been a couple for eight years. They run a duet The Durango;  Bárbara and Cordelia, they have reached a good place in the Drag Queen scene of Mexico City. Las Durango talks about ideas such as conventional femininity, misogyny and machismo to inspire those who have suffered gender violence.

Sunday, March 31 – 20h50

THE SISTERHOOD : VISITS WITH MY FRIENDS

by ROGER HORN, 2017 (in South Africa)

South Africa | 24 min | English subtitles

Filmed by Feebee Lee Von Diamond, a transgender employee in the winelands of Stellenbosch, South Africa, The Sisterhood: Visits With My Friends, functions as a critique and continuation of director Roger Horn’s 2010 film, The Sisterhood in which Feebee briefly appeared.

“The Sisterhood was the truth, but everyone was on their best behaviour most of the time in front of the camera and that is not always how we are.”

Sunday, March 31 – 21h15

LA NUIT ÉCLAIRE LA NUIT

by LO THIVOLLE, 2017 (in France)

France | 72 min | English subtitles

“We met on the benches of the faculty, each in our solitude. A few years later, we found ourselves on the bench of a public place. You sat there like a king! How foreigners live in the city, like people of yesteryear live on the streets of a kingdom. You introduced me to your father, king of a village in Niger and the main character of an [ethnographic] film by Eliane De Latour. “

Monday – Université de Montréal

Monday, April 1 – 18h

USUALLY I SING IT IN THE SHOWER

by MARIANNE BELIVEAU, 2018 (in Canada)

Canada | 16 min | English subtitles

By diving into the lively atmosphere of this popular enclave, this film opens our ears to the regular customers of the bar « Le Dauphin » and submerges us inside its walls, on the other side of stereotypes, where each one, in their own way, looks to soak up their own moment of freedom.

Monday, April 1 – 18h

VACANCY

by ALEXANDRA KANDY LONGUET, 2018 (in the United States of America)

Belgium | 80 min | French subtitles

Ultimate refuge for the leftovers of the American dream, the motels in the United States house a population of drifting humans who, from crisis to crisis – economic and personal – have been dispossessed of everything. Some of them lost it all. Some of them left it all. Some still have dreams. Some of them don’t remember well, sucked by daily survival.

Monday, April 1 – 20h

AT JOLIE COIFFURE

by ROSINE MBAKAM, 2018 (in Belgium)

Cameroon | 70 min | English subtitles

In this 8m x 2m salon, Sabine and the other hairdressers organize themselves and help each other to face the clandestinity. They work 13 to 14 hours a day under the threat of the patrol police and the eyes of tourists of all ages who look at them and photograph them as objects in the window.

Monday, April 1 – 21h25

THIRD-CLASS TRAVEL

by RODION ISMAILOV, 2017 (in Russia)

Russia | 80 min | English subtitles

A documentary film which recounts the lives of passengers travelling on the longest railway route in the world. The director tells the stories and fortunes of ordinary Russians met by chance on the Moscow-Vladivostok train. The endless journey is a metaphor of the country in perpetual motion, while the passengers’ stories form a social portrait of contemporary Russian society.

Closing night - Nomad Life

Tuesday, April 2 – 18h30

HISTORIES OF WOLVES

by AGNES MENG, 2018 (in Portugal)

Portugal | 22 min | English subtitles

This film is a collection of stories about wolves in  the northern Portugal mountains. At one peak among rocky ranges, there is a village called Pitões das Junias. At nightfall, shepherds gather and tell stories. Myth, death, killings…things that may or may not have happened but were inspired by internal fighting between humans and wolves, between us and the wild.

Tuesday, April 2 – 18h55

DJAMILIA

par AMINATOU ECHARD, 2018 (in Kyrgyzstan)

France | 124 min | English subtitles

The film sets off in Kyrgyzstan in search of the main character of Tchinghiz Aitmatov’s novel, Djamilia, written in 1958. The film takes us across the country to meet several generations of women who tell us about Djamilia, a young woman who breaks the rules of Kyrgyz society. Doing so, these women release an intimate word, reveal themselves, and tell us about their dreams, love, desires, and freedom.

Tuesday, April 2 – 21h40

MOKSHA

by JAN WAZ, 2018 (in India)

Poland | 15 min | English subtitles

Moksha in Sanskrit means “salvation.” On the banks of the holy river Ganges lies one of the oldest city in the world inhabited by the Banaras. Hindus come here to die and burn their bodies to free themselves from the cycle of reincarnation. This film is a record of the last journey before breaking the cycle of life.

Tuesday, April 2 – 21h55

COCO HEAT

by SERGIO SANTOS, 2018 (in Brazil)

Brazil | 11 min | English subtitles

The ancestral memories of rural artists recounted through the beat of four groups of Brazilian coco [rhythm and dance from the North-East region of Brazil].

Tuesday, April 2 – 22h10

OF LOVE AND ARTISTRY

by SURUCHI SHARMA, 2017 (in India)

India | 45 min | English subtitles

A film that explores the lifestyle and stories of different folk artists from Rajasthan, India while talking about memories and anecdotes associated with John Singh (John Da), the man who helped these artists explore the world of music on various national and international platforms and to go beyond the boundaries of their regional performing space.