Gilles Groulx

Trying to describe oneself is a movie about representation. How it is possible, through film, to describe oneself and describe others. With the camera as mirror and third eye. At first, a collage-like combination of letter-writing, investigation and journey, something between documentary and feature film. Finally, a portrait of Boris Lehman from 1989 to 1995, part II of BABEL.

The story of a young university student who deals with love in the midst of the Quebec separatist movement in the 1960s.

This short documentary film is a fascinating portrait of urban and rural Quebec in the late 1960s, as the province entered modernity. The collective work produced for the Quebec Ministry of Industry and Commerce calls on several major Quebec figures.

We witness the race for marriage of thousands of young people, wanting at all costs to escape conscription, then we are transported to the war factories and we thus witness the difficulties of work in this place. Then it's the Italian campaign in 1943 and, finally, the return to Quebec where readjustment to civilian life proves more difficult than it seems. These events are experienced and told by the voice of a young man.

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This short documentary records the celebration and ritual surrounding a snowshoe competition in Sherbrooke in the late 1950s. The film marked the beginning of a new approach to reality in documentary and prefigures the trademark style of the NFB's newly formed French Unit. Today, "Les raquetteurs" is considered a precursor to the birth of direct cinema.

A classic NFB documentary about the Golden Gloves boxing tournament, the Canadian amateur's hope for success in the boxing world. This Gilles Groulx film shows three Montreal boxers in training. In behind-the-scenes interviews they talk about their ambitions and what prompted them to take up the sport. - NFB

A young journalist is unhappy with society and contemplates what he can do about it. Symbolizes the political coming of age of the people of Québec.

A chronicle of the lives of a couple and the gradual dissolution of their relationship.

Gilles Groulx's first film shot in 1955 with a camera borrowed from his brother and edited during his spare time when he worked as an editor at the Radio-Canada news service a few years before he joined the NFB. Silent film, presented as its author left it, where the soil and the dialectic of Groulx's work are already there: documentary realism, the social space to be explored, daily life, the relationship between individual and society, social disparities, the consumer society, seduction and happiness.

A film-opera divided into nine segments, Au pays de Zom tells a day in the life of Mister Zom, a capitalist infatuated with his own person, whose conformism is only matched by his artistic velleity. A thematic sequel to his movie filmed with Mexican peasants, here Groulx asks, by making a business man sing, a second question on happiness: this time about the ones for whom happiness is linked with the possession of overabundance. He delivers, by developing the theatrical dimension with great emphasis, a social pamphlet with a strong satirical charge that he himself qualified as a "neo-surrealist fantasy".

This feature-length documentary brings together six of the rare television interviews given by Gilles Groulx between 1966 and 1983. Through these interviews, the filmmaker's ethical and aesthetic concerns are revealed. A striking coherence emerges in his thinking regarding his conception of cinema and the role the filmmaker should play in his culture and society.

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

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Filmed in the town of Normétal in northern Québec, this short documentary provides a first-hand introduction to life in a frontier mining community where all roads lead to the pithead. Dweller of two worlds, the copper miner's life is one of contrasts. A mile underground are the rock face, the clattering drills, the dust of explosions; above ground, all the familiar activities of a small town. - NFB

The 4,000 inhabitants of the archipelago of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon describe it as a caillou—a tiny rock on which they live, lost in the shadow of Newfoundland. There is something mysterious and inexplicable about this extension of faraway France. In broad strokes, the film paints a picture of this insular population, revealing their history, daily lives and singular character.

This short 1964 documentary depicts the national sport of French Canadians: hockey. Seen "from the inside" this seemingly simple game turns out to be not so simple. Hockey is dream of mythic proportions that mirrors the aspirations of an entire people. Its heroes are national figures. At the Montreal Forum, there is total symbiosis between the crowd and the Habs. In 1955, idol Maurice Richard is suspended for striking a referee. The people take to the streets in unison and the riots begin... - NFB

At the end of the year 1961, three young students, Denys Arcand, Denis Héroux and Stéphane Venne, decide to direct a feature-length film centered on the perks of student life. The film mixes fiction and reality in the style of cinéma vérité. "Alone or with others" is often considered the first indepent film of Québec.

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