Montreal Stories

Hélène is a woman who already has, in her view, quite enough children. For some time she has secretly been taking birth control pills, but now she is too old to use them safely. When her husband Gabriel discovers the pills, he is distressed, since he wants a large family. The two of them discuss their differing attitudes and desires but come to no resolution.

An experimental short film shot in slow motion and set to Ottokar Nováček's violin composition Perpetuum mobile, the film depicts a love triangle between two men and a woman.

A doctor living in a small mining town discovers that his dissatisfied young wife is having an affair with a truck driver.

A woman is overwhelmed with having to deal with her emotionally unstable daughter, mentally-challenged brother and two suitors while simultaneously trying to run her small firewood business.

A fact-based account of ordinary citizens who found themselves arrested and imprisoned without charge for weeks during the October Crisis in 1970 Quebec.

Les inconnus de la terre starts like a traditional feature film: in the beginning of the film all the leading roles are given a short introduction. This is followed by a number of interviews, in which the makers unashamedly appear themselves. They include an interview with a lonely shepherd and one with three unmarried brothers who try to run the parental farm for better or worse. Notwithstanding the fact that this mode of interviewing has now become classical, les inconnus de la terre works rather refreshingly. The film is more than just an enumeration of problems. In an honest way it shows the ties of those involved to the land and to nature, in addition to being a plea for the modernization of French agriculture.

Paris, summer 1960. Anthropologist and filmmaker Jean Rouch and sociologist and film critic Edgar Morin wander through the crowded streets asking passersby how they cope with life's misfortunes.

A candid-camera view of professional wrestling as seen in the Montréal Forum, where some of the biggest bouts are staged, and in back-street wrestling parlours where the warriors practice their art.

Two teenage girls go to winter carnival in Quebec City for the first time. Their ambiguous, tentative relation with a young boy brings both of them the sweet intensity and disillusionment of first love. One of four film sketches on the problems of adolescents facing the adult world in the 1960s included in the anthology film That Tender Age (La fleur de l'âge, ou Les adolescentes). The three other sketches were directed by Jean Rouch, Hiroshi Teshigahara, and Gian Vittorio Baldi.

A psychiatrist is sent to evaluate if a convicted multiple murderer who's awaiting execution on Death Row for eighth year now and whose behavior during that time got more and more erratic is still mentally fit to be executed.

An efficiency expert is called in to downsize a trucking company and the employees fight to establish a union to save their jobs.

A young boy learns the rituals of what his father and his friends perceive as manhood on a weekend hunting trip.

Morbihan is one of the poorest regions in Brittany. Joseph, a 33-year-old farmer, can no longer live off the land. He is hired at the fancy new plant that has just opened where he enters a world of rote work. Fortunately he can go home to his farm every evening, far from the large urban centers where workers must usually live.

A young singer-songwriter abandons his life in his hometown and moves to the city to make it big. He achieves fame, but it comes at a price.

Festival panafricain d'Alger is a documentary by William Klein of the music and dance festival held 40 years ago in the streets and in venues all across Algiers. Klein follows the preparations, the rehearsals, the concerts… He blends images of interviews made to writers and advocates of the freedom movements with stock images, thus allowing him to touch on such matters as colonialism, neocolonialism, colonial exploitation, the struggles and battles of the revolutionary movements for Independence.

An unconventional undercover Chicago cop and his partner are recruited to commit the murder of a New Orleans criminal kingpin.