L'Émotion dissonante

Computer animated short film created to commemorate the National Film Board of Canada's 50th anniversary.

The folkloric Dance of the 24 Devils sheds new light on the reality of Guatemala. The Devils reveal a strong antagonism, both contemporary and mythological: they've declared war on humanity and have set out "to capture all souls", while Death heralds the end of mankind! Combining lyricism, realism and irony, The Devil's Dream explores the soul of this paradoxical country. We discover not only the beauty of the landscape, the people and their creative imagination, but also the wretched conditions of life, the spectre of violence, and a pervasive sense of the absurd. Guatemala is a society split between native and non-native, rich and poor, civil and military. Native people pick cotton for two dollars a day, their children work for half that amount. Those who dare to protest risk their lives. In this documentary, the people tell the story in their own words.

This bold "graffiti" essay on the Pope, Michael Jackson, the Olympic stadium, and the manipulation of the masses, provided a fresh glimmer of hope in a decade of institutional complacency. In Passiflora (named after the anaesthetic tropical flower), the animation, "new music", street theater and dramatization deployed builds on Belanger's observations of the two media stars' simultaneous visits to Montreal to meet with their followers. The film celebrates the resistance shown by a coalition of the unsubmissive: gays, transgendered people, youth, battered women, psychiatric patients, abortion activists and women who have had abortions.

Four female friends from Egypt with opposing religious, social, and political views listen to one another's perspectives and argue openly, without ever breaking the bond that unites them.

Images of love and freedom personified by a man who like to travel, a man who has made a profession of doing nothing and who constantly comes up against the structures of a society he rejects.

The ideal of youth is at the centre of this eloquent film, mixing documentary and fiction, art and experimentation. Demonstrating both formal and narrative freedom, Bélanger weaves a deliberately loose weave in which the initiatory journey of two young people, wandering through Montreal in search of a job, unfolds. But not just any job. The two idealists want a job that will satisfy their desire for freedom, peace and respect. Of course, even though the breath of renewal from Expo 67 still floats here and there, the world they encounter does not correspond - by far - to their aspirations. Strangers in this country that tells them nothing, they come across brutally, materialism, violence, and egocentrism.

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.

Made in collaboration with the Inuit Tungavingat Nunamini, this film focuses on those dissident members of the Inuit community who rejected the agreement signed on November 11, 1975, between the Northern Quebec Inuit Association, the Québec and federal governments, the James Bay Energy Corporation, the James Bay Development Corporation, Hydro-Québec and the Grand Council of the Crees, which took away Native rights to a territory of almost one million square kilometres. By their words and actions, the dissident Inuit of Povungnituk, Ivujivik and Sugluk express their strong desire to retain their land and their traditions. The filmmakers go into their homes, on the ice and the sea to record first-hand the lives of these northern people.

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.

This animated short is a touching and comical tale that pokes fun at motherhood. Without ever moralizing, it depicts the temper tantrums of a child and the efforts a loving mother makes to set her son on the right path. You don’t need to be a chicken to relate.