In Praise of Shadows

Two solitary people meet each other and form a bond in the back country of the Gaspe peninsula.

Four strangers are wandering through town. Fanny, a young woman who takes care of trees, will cross paths with three people along her way and offer them her help: Jean-Luc is blind, Joséphine has reached the end of her life, and Carole is suicidal.

A mother deals with the violent murder of her daughter.

Yvonne is a young woman living in Quebec in the latter half of the 19th century, under the controlling influence of both her elder sister, Hélène, and the repressive Victorian society that pervades the area. Yvonne has a sensual passion that her sister hopes to extinguish by placing her in a convent. As summer arrives, a strange dream suggests a different future, and Yvonne confronts the unexpected return of both her mother and her first love.

A Road-Movie on rails, Ocean offers both a journey between Montreal and Halifax, as well as a sensory evocation of the intimate experience of travelling.

In an increasingly urban nation, Canada’s national parks are a treasured escape into extraordinary beauty and rugged wilderness. If the Group of Seven were an introduction to the landscape’s majesty, National Parks Project is the next logical chapter. Fifty-two contemporary artists from across the country, whose talents are as diverse as the parks they set out to explore, used their surroundings as a source of inspiration to blend musical and cinematic skills into collaboratively crafted vignettes. Epic in its ambition to celebrate these locales during Parks Canada’s centennial year, this omnibus film resonates with the knowledge that our unprotected land is more vulnerable than ever. Including films by Zacharius Kunuk, Peter Lynch, Sturla Gunnarsson and John Walker, and music by Sarah Harmer, Sam Roberts, Cadence Weapon and The Besnard Lakes, among many others, National Parks Project is a one-of-a-kind documentary experience.

Ladies of good families and social standing come to have their afternoon tea with their daughters who will someday follow in the same tradition. A charming portrait of a time that is slowly disappearing.

In 1970, Hungarian-Québécois photographer Gabor Szilasi set out for the Charlevoix region of Québec to photograph the last vestiges of a disappearing rural world. Thirty-five years later, filmmaker Catherine Martin (Océan, Dans les villes, Trois temps après la mort d’Anna) went back to revisit the landscape, places and people he photographed. The Spirit of Places retraces Szilasi’s photographic journey, taking stock of what remains and what has disappeared.

“De temps et d'eau” is a Carte Blanche directed by Catherine Martin as part of the 40th Festival du Nouveau Cinéma in 2011.

Seven portraits of people who present themselves at work and in daily life. Seven ways of being present to the world. People who are exceptional because they are like everyone else.