Pierre Hébert

This animated short follows a group of happy vacationers sunbathing... under cloudy skies. Despite the weather, they look cheerful, eating ice cream and hot dogs, frolicking in the sand. When the sun finally breaks through the clouds, everyone deserts the beach. The film presents a fanciful yet awkward scenario in which the strange behaviour of one person may be the delight of another.

A film in cut-out animation depicting the demographic problems of the world. It shows that in many countries freedom from the old scourges of famine and disease has in turn created the new problem of more mouths to feed. The film suggests that wealthier nations might increase all forms of aid to struggling nations to create a better world.

Painted directly on glass, Black Soul is an exhilarating immersion into the heart of Black culture—a whirlwind voyage through the defining moments of Black History.

A meditation on the passing of time, on a film that was never completed, upon Bazin’s death, on restoration and the future of ruins and on modern-day life that continues in resonance with the old stones.

Short animation from Tali

This film was made out of the capture of a live animation performance presented in Rome in January 2005 by Pierre Hébert and the musician Bob Ostertag. It is based on live action shooting done that same afternoon on the Campo dei Fiori where the philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned by the Inquisition in 1600. A commemorative statue was erected in the 19th century, that somberly dominate the market held everyday on the piazza. The film is about the resurgence of the past in this place where normal daily activities go on imperturbably. The capture of the performance was reworked, shortened and complemented with more studio performances.

This animated film, a small educational musical comedy, offers the viewer a proper enigma. He is very smart who succeeds in solving it the first time; because against this background of cold reasoning, fantasy and delirium retain all their rights.

In Adieu bipède (1987), Hébert turned to performance, using the scratching technique for the scenes with dancing and music. He used the same technique in La Lettre d'amour (1988).

A satirical, updated take on the classic Jean de La Fontaine fable.

This film is about cats--actually, one very clever cat. The title is a play on the French quatuor, meaning quartet, but the chorus is not the usual alley-cat variety. The cat in this film is talented indeed. He is both pianist and piano, trumpet and trumpeter and, if need be, even becomes the music--a pulsing rock and roll--or a whole swarm of alley cats.

This haunting animation film, rich with symbolism, is the filmmaker's plea for a peaceful world in which to raise his newborn son. Using the menacing imagery of the howling wind, the artist provokes viewers to reflect on the insanity of war. While the film is symbolic, its message is unmistakably clear: unless there is an end to conflict, we will continue to see our children swept away like leaves in the wind.

Scratched directly onto 35mm film stock, this abstract film is a visual interpretation of a piece for solo violin based on a Bosnian popular song from Bosnia-Herzegovina. The composer, Malcolm Goldstein, describes it as a gesture of hope for peace in that land ravaged by war during the 1990s.

In this animation film without words, filmmaker Pierre Hébert and musicians Robert Lepage and René Lussier worked together, and separately, in their respective media. This cinema/music performance recreates, impressionistically, the dehumanizing environment of the urban subway. Drawings etch the outlines of people hurtling through space in underground tunnels. The sound track, elemental and atonal, gives compelling expression to their alienation.

First, about ten years ago, there was a text by Paule Marier. Then, René Lussier made a song from that text for his 2014 album (Toucher une âme). Jim Corcoran translated the text to English and recorded it for his CBC radio program, but instead he decided to send it to René Lussier suggesting that maybe he could do something new out of it. René created a new music over the recorded text and after listening to the finished sound track, the two decided that it would be good if there were images to it. This is how it finally ended up in my Drop Box and it gave birth to this film. Afterward, a French version of the film was made with the original French text.

This feature documentary about education explores the mid-century state of learning in the classrooms of North America. New approaches to learning and the emerging technologies that facilitate them are explored, including the new roles of the computer, tape recorder and television. Directed by Quebec cinema giant Claude Jutra (Mon Oncle Antoine), the film was produced with the collaboration of researchers studying all forms of education, from infancy to adulthood.

An intense exercise of looking at a rockface shot near the waterfalls of Rivière au tonnerre, on the North Shore of the St-Lawrence river. A meditation about opacity, about the fissures that can open up anything, any situation on the infinity of meaning. It is the ontological moment, the moment of pure seeing, amongst the episodes of the Places and Monuments series that is a project of exploration of the fissures that crack any banal scene of daily life, any anonymous crowd, any forgotten monument, and that let seek through, until it explodes, the invisible constellations of history.

A whirlwind of improvisation combines the images of animator Pierre Hébert with the avant-garde sound of techno whiz Bob Ostertag in this singular multimedia experience, a hybrid of live animation and performance art.

Such diverse modes of expression as dance, music, poetic narration and images drawn directly on film combine to tell the story of a letter and the joy it carries to its destination. In French, with English sub-titles.

“In Green / Gray Story, for the most part, [one saw] vertical streaks and textures, with patterns that flew by. It was partly washed film on which I etched and I drew elements after washing. I used color inks, but since I did not have the money to make color copies, I had the film printed in black” -PH.

Abstract film by Pierre Hébert, originally made in 1964 and remastered in 2007.

In a world where work rhymes with identity and productivity, we meet a man in his fifties who has not worked for several years. A question is asked: what happened at the time for him to quit his job?