Mémoire en fête

A wealth of archival images offers a glimpse into Québec City’s social history in this tribute to French Canada’s first classical college, the Seminary of Québec.

Footage of Québec City locations and the artwork of well-known Quebec animator Frédéric Back are used to tell the tale of Champlain’s life in New France – from his first explorations and settlement to his death in 1635.

A tongue-in-cheek archival film documenting a day in the life of a veteran horse-drawn carriage driver. Though the tourists that flock to the historic avenues of the Old City have changed considerably, the Old World charm of Québec City is timeless.

This feature documentary tells the story of the Notre-Dame-du-Sacré-Cœur Congregation which was formed in 1924 when 53 French-speaking nuns separated from their unilingual English community, forming a new religious community that immediately began to campaign for the preservation of Acadian language, faith and culture. Convinced that education was essential for Acadian women, in 1943 the Congregation founded Collège Notre-Dame d’Acadie, where young women were able to study in French for the first time in New Brunswick.

In 1903, a unique and magnificent Whaler's shrine was shipped from Friendly Cove, on the far northwest coast of Canada, to the Museum of Natural History, New York. The shrine had lain at the cultural heart of the Mowachaht, whale hunters and fishermen who had lived at Friendly Cove for thousands of years. In the 1960s and '70s, all but one family left their ancient village--they moved to Vancouver Island, to a new site under the walls of a pulp mill. They suffered extremes of pollution, violence, alcohol.... Then, in the 1990s, in defiance of the agony of their history and to overcome the grief of the present, the Mowachaht and their neighbours, the Muchalaht, revived their songs and dances, revisited their shrine and rediscovered their pride.

This feature-length film tells the story of the passion between Marie de l’Incarnation, a mid-seventeenth-century nun and God, her "divine spouse." Fusing documentary and acting by Marie Tifo, whom we follow as she rehearses for this demanding role, the film paints an astonishing portrait of this mystic who abandoned her son and left France to build a convent in Canada, where she became the first female writer in New France.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead is a two-part series that explores ancient teachings on death and dying. It was filmed over a four-month period on location in the Himalayas where the original text still yields an essential influence over people's views of life and death. The Great Liberation, is a docudrama which, in the company of an old Buddhist lama and a 13-year-old novice monk, leads us into the very foundations of Buddhist philosophy--the search for compassion and truth. Pema Choden, the lama, and Tubten, the young monk, read from the texts of The Tibetan Book of the Dead as they conduct the 49 days of final rites for a deceased Himalayan villager. We must all face the death of somebody we love, as well as our own death. This film helps us to prepare for these inevitabilities.

This documentary is a portrait of modern-day Pondicherry, an ancient city near the southern tip of India. For several centuries an outpost of France, the city is now home to Auroville, a spiritual community growing on its periphery. There, European and North American devotees of Sri Aurobindo, a Bengali poet and mystic, come to live the contemplative life. Their guru is a 94-year-old woman from France. This mecca of sorts is seen through the eyes of Albert Jordan, a professor from Concordia University, in Montreal, who spent a year there with his family in 1971.

This short documentary depicts Christmas time in Montreal. The milling crowds, department store Santas, Brink's messengers, kindergarten angels and boisterous nightclubs all combine to make a vivid portrait of the holidays.

Two well-known Quebec artists (filmmaker Jacques Godbout and playwright René-Daniel Dubois) look at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. Whose version of this historic event should prevail? Is history best served by documentary or fiction? We also meet Baron Georges Savarin de Marestan and Andrew Wolfe-Burroughs, direct descendants of Montcalm and Wolfe, both of whom died in the battle that would give birth to Canada and to the province of Quebec. In French with English subtitles.

Tahani Rached’s powerful documentary enters the doors of an AIDS clinic in Montreal. We meet a group of dedicated doctors struggling to provide health care to their patients. This 1994 film explores legal and ethical problems surrounding HIV/AIDS and the struggle against fear, rumours and prejudice. It is still relevant today. In French with English subtitles.