Test 0558

A modest employee, who has become an artist-painter, projects his existential anxieties into his paintings, which are appeased by familiar faces. The technique used: photographs juxtaposed with pastel drawings.

A visual poem, vivid, lyrical, as intriguing in its colour fantasy as in the beauty of its images. This is an escape from a merry-go-round of painted horses suddenly turned to flesh and blood, making a wild plunge for freedom. But these are horses of extraordinary colour--lime, mauve, bronze and gold--as if caught in some mysterious kaleidoscope of the dawn. A triumph of technical virtuosity, these unusual effects were achieved in the printing process.

During walks around Stanley Park in Montreal, the director became, for several months, the attentive witness of a number of events, gestures, encounters, brief, fleeting moments, privileged moments . Result of this long observation, Félicité depicts the incessant change of the seasons, making us discover, through the eyes of the artist and her magnificent pastel drawings, nature as an object of emotion and its influence on the world of man.

In this animated film a black line becomes a magic cord to serve a small child's fancy. In Nébule's hands it becomes whatever he wills--a hoop to roll, a spring to jump on, a tight-rope, a dog, or a bird. The metamorphoses, played out against soft, pastel-coloured backgrounds, encompass all the world of a child's fears and fancies.

This short film for kids offers a lesson in proportions in which simple actions achieve surprising results. A man wants a door in a wall. He draws a rectangle and, presto! There is an opening. In the same way, he conjures up furniture. If too high or too low, the raising or lowering of a finger puts everything right.

Alcoholism is the subject of this animated film. Stark line drawings portray the vicious cycle of drinking and family break-up, as the head of a family drinks to forget the drudgery of his life. The consequences are disastrous. A film without words in which images speak volumes.

Monsieur Pointu would like to play his fiddle. But the fiddle has other ideas.

Household effects and farm implements under the hammer. Here is the auctioneer's cajoling patter, the jostling crowd, pungent observations from one or two old-timers and, over all, the kindly curiosity of folks who gather to see the end of a neighbour's life on the farm.

There is no need to be a mathematician to appreciate this film which puts in images a part of Fernand Lemay's theory. For this Quebec scientist, it is the segment and not the point that is non-dimensional. From this new approach result dimensions and situations in infinite number that this film reconstitutes into an extraordinary spectacle. At once an artistic work and a mathematical test, Dimension Soleil provides proof that, once again, the beautiful is not foreign to the essential structures of being.

Line drawings, flowing freely across the screen, suggest a head-in-the-clouds feeling as Claude Gauthier recalls a lost but sweet love of other days. Part of the Contemporary Songs of French Canada series.