Serge Giguère

Years after first being inspired by a Félix Leclerc song, Martine Chartrand directed the film MACPHERSON. Ten years in the making, it features animated painting on glass and draws on her extensive research on the title character. Filmmaker Serge Giguère was there from the start, carefully and sympathetically chronicling this exceptional creative process.

A documentary about the folk country musician Oscar Thiffault, the famous songwriter of Le Rapide blanc.

This short documentary chronicles the everyday life of the city's residents. We hear testimonials from citizens set against black-and-white images of life downtown.

MAURICE reveals the famous #9 of the Montreal Canadiens like never before. Through never-before-seen archival footage shot over 35 years, this documentary offers exclusive access to the man behind the Rocket myth. Designed by Serge Giguère and Robert Tremblay, who died before completing this project, MAURICE paints an intimate and authentic portrait of Maurice Richard, well beyond his exploits on the ice rink. More than a hockey player, he embodies the perseverance and hope of a people, forever marking Quebec culture.

In this very personal and poetic film, veteran documentarian Serge Giguère pores through 100 letters written by his late mother to him and his 15 siblings. In them, she details the trials and tribulations of raising 16 children in rural Quebec, while helping to run a family carpentry business.

This film is first and foremost a documentary on the exploitation of the peat bogs of the Bas-Saint-Laurent region, which export most of their humus production to the United States: but the film is also the story of the exploitation of nature by man and of man by man.

Before Daybreak is a film about how life is passed on, and about the privileged relationship people have with the land they inhabit. In her house on Providence Island, Florence performs her timeless gestures. In Lourdes-de-Blanc-Sablon, Simonne opens her house and heart to guests, friends, people without work. Mireille, Florence’s daughter, affirms her desire to keep living in Tête-à-la-Baleine despite the decline in fishing. Gédéon, an old fisherman, observes the universe through his fertile imagination. The passenger freighter, Nordik Express is the silent witness of the links woven by time in the immense territory of the lower North Shore of the St. Lawrence.

Guy Nadon is the rhythm incarnate. A jazz drummer who strikes on everything that makes noise. A king of musical improvisation, but also a king of improvisation, sometimes holding words bordering on surrealism.

Through the eyes of children and women of different generations, this film reveals the soul of a small village on the Upper North Shore. Mrs. Kennedy has a vital link with the forest: Diane, faced with the difficult path of her life, raises her head; Cathy, at 18, has the biting lucidity of those who have had to fight. The strength and willpower of each of them is echoed by Guylaine, the young soprano who, throughout the film, plays, sings and exudes joie de vivre.

A dying man films his last month.

Upon Canada's entry into World War II, the RCMP rounded up thousands of people it considered fascist sympathizers. Among them, 700 Italian-Canadians were held for up to three years in internment camps. None were ever charged with a criminal offence.

A summer in the life of a mother and her two children. Précis of the Everyday is a tender look at the memory, passing time, imagination and poetry that make every day a unique experience. In her desire to “record every moment”, the mother is humbled by how much escapes her.

Dancing Around the Table: Part One provides a fascinating look at the crucial role Indigenous people played in shaping the Canadian Constitution. The 1984 Federal Provincial Conference of First Ministers on Aboriginal Constitutional Matters was a tumultuous and antagonistic process that pitted Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau and the First Ministers—who refused to include Indigenous inherent rights to self-government in the Constitution—against First Nations, Inuit and Métis leaders, who would not back down from this historic opportunity to enshrine Indigenous rights. The conference was Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s last constitutional meeting before he resigned and the process was handed over to his successor, Brian Mulroney.

What does a curious little girl find on her way north? Wolves, trees, stones, people. Through Gracile's quest to find her father, this documentary tale takes us into a world of men. Men whose sometimes tragic destinies are linked to the land they inhabit, whether by choice or necessity. It's as if a fatality drags them into the movement of the world in spite of themselves. Like the men she meets along the way - all possible fathers for Gracile - the paths she travels sometimes open onto gaping wounds: devastated forests, mine holes, ruined industrial zones. The lament of trees can be heard while men remain silent. From the moment she sets out and throughout her journey, the little girl is accompanied in spirit by her mother and nature, as well as by an Innu grandmother whose voice nourishes her dreams. This dreamlike world rubs shoulders with the raw reality Gracile is confronted with.

In 2001, the government of Quebec announced a new program to issue permits for the construction of private hydroelectric dams at specific sites. Upset, the population took things into their own hands and decided to act. Citizens formed collectives to protect their waterways, among the most beautiful in the province. This documentary follows several artist and citizen groups who led a crusade to force the Québec government to abandon private hydro-electrical production. It is a thorough inquiry on the environmental impact and other repercussions of such projects.

Feature-length documentary as part of Pierre Perrault's Abitibian Cycle. The filmmaker questions the past and present of Abitibi and draws up, face to face, the promises of colonization in the 1930s and the great disappointment caused by the closing of the land in the 1970s. There are witnesses to the heroic era, including the cultivator Hauris Lalancette, as well as extracts from films by Father Maurice Proulx (1934-1940).

A documentary that allows us to witness three births in their intimacy. Through their actions, the couples who agreed to participate in the film help to propose alternatives to the dominant medical interventions in hospitals.

Luc-André Godbout, better known as Ti-Dré, is a forty-three-year-old orphan who cleanses furnaces and consciences. Here he is presented, life-size, in a film impregnated with this extraordinary character.

Shot in 1987 at the Montréal International Jazz Festival, this documentary film presents musical performances and conversations between three jazz pianists with remarkably different styles: Soviet Leonid Chizhik, Black Montrealer Oliver Jones, and French-Canadian Jean Beaudet. It introduces viewers to the diversity of interpretation within today's jazz world, explores the roots of modern jazz and the specific formative influences on the musicians profiled, and reaches for a definition of twentieth-century jazz.

Les Grands Enfants does not tell a story in the traditional sense. Instead, it offers an honest image of people's dreams of change : people often unemployed, dissatisfied in some way with their work, or caught up in complicated social relationships. The film is set in Montreal.