The Bridge

An abstract representation of an erotic relationship.

Exquisitely filmed in black-and-white, this experimental narrative follows four friends on a road trip as they discover the complicated arena of unseen desire that arises when ecstasy and sexuality mix.

Caught stealing drugs from the wrong people, 27 year old Vincent is in trouble and on the run from the local mob. Fleeing to the backwoods, Vincent unexpectedly reconnects with his brother Michel with whom he’d cut ties many years ago. As he tries to maintain the semblance of a normal life hanging out with friends and playing in his band, Vincent witnesses his brother's own turbulent downward spiral.

Mamori transports us into a black-and-white universe of fluid shapes, dappled and striated with shadows and light, where the texture of the visuals and of the celluloid itself have been transformed through the filmmaker’s artistry. The raw material of images and sounds was captured in the Amazon rainforest by filmmaker Karl Lemieux and avant-garde composer Francisco López, a specialist in field recordings. Re-filming the photographs on 16 mm stock, then developing the film stock itself and digitally editing the whole, Lemieux transmutes the raw images and accompanying sounds into an intense sensory experience at the outer limits of representation and abstraction. Fragmented musical phrases filter through the soundtrack, evoking in our imagination the clamour of the tropical rainforest in this remote Amazonian location called Mamori.

A re-photography in video of material that was originally used in a performance during which Karl Lemieux, painted, scratched and burned film loops from an old western 16mm film. Traces of an impossible past and future collide in a trajectory where the present unravels.

Some 12,000 oil and gas platforms remain at sea. What happens when one reaches the end of its life? In an experimental audiovisual journey to the shores of Scotland, acclaimed filmmaker Karl Lemieux (Godspeed! You Black Emperor, Quiet Zone) documents the painstaking process of dismantling these industrial behemoths. Metal creaks, excavators crunch and workers weld against desolate landscapes, captured on 16-mm film manipulated with photochemical processes, and amplified by Swedish artist BJ Nilsen’s haunting sonic landscape. The result is a ritual that seems both alien and undeniably Earthbound.

When the fireworks inflame the memory of a war survival.

All images and sounds of Unearthed were captured during a residency in the Arctic in Nikel, Zapolyarny and Prirechnyi in the Murmansk oblast in Russia, one of the most polluted areas in the world. True to his experimental cinema aesthetics, Karl Lemieux pursues his exploration of unusual locations as well as his long-term collaboration with musician and composer, BJ Nilsen. Unearthed is based on a work commissioned for the project Dark Ecology (2014−2017) curated by Sonic Acts and Hilde Methi.

Optical print film that was constructed from 16mm images that filmmaker Richard Kerr entrusted to Karl Lemieux.

Over the last 25 years, the Montreal post-rock band Godspeed You! Black Emperor has released seven albums and presented visually extraordinary shows around the world. At State’s End is their latest show, captured at the majestic Cinéma Impérial. It features six 16 mm projectors playing images in a loop to accompany the music from the band’s latest album. Part documentary, part experimental film, At State’s End! is a unique auditory and visual experience.

Writer and poet Gaston Miron comes back to life through archival documents from a variety of sources. His prose features landscapes of human beings and snow, dances with no future, and endless mines. His impassioned speeches on Quebec culture and identity are superimposed on images of demonstrations and political meetings about the future of Quebec. Between his recollections and fragments of memory, a man stands, passionate, convinced, reciting or dancing, to upset the established order and change things before it is too late.

Film super-8mm shot for the One Take super-8 in 2009. Music by Maussade.

A reflection on the fate of humanity in the Anthropocene epoch, White Noise is a roller-coaster of a film, a whirlwind of sounds and images. The fourth feature-length work by Simon Beaulieu, this film essay plunges viewers into a subjective sensory adventure—a direct physical encounter with the information overload of daily life. White Noise transforms the imminent collapse of our civilization into a visceral aesthetic experience.

Karl Lemieux deconstructs the narrative thread of found footage by slowing down its playback speed to the point of distortion. Music: Félix-Antoine Morin.

Hand-painted film on 16mm by Karl Lemieux. Music by Visions.