Bernard Arcand

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A film in four episodes presenting teenage girls chosen as representative of their country and our time, in Italy, France, Japan and Canada. In spite of the stylistic peculiarities of the filmmakers, we find in each of them the same desire not to affirm anything, not to judge, but to quite simply show.

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.

An ethnographic documentary directed by Brian Moser focusing on the Cuiva, a small group of nomadic hunters and gatherers in southeastern Colombia. Filmed in 1971, the film contrasts two Cuiva groups—one maintaining a traditional nomadic lifestyle, the other drawn into the Colombian economy—illustrating cultural and economic change brought about through contact with settlers and the pressures this contact places on their way of life. (Note: Produced as an episode of the Disappearing World television series, the film is structured as a self-contained ethnographic documentary with its own title, subject focus, and production context, supporting its treatment as a distinct film.)

A seasoned anthropologist, a great friend of the Amerindians, a free thinker, a prolific writer and a radio host with a magnetic voice, Serge Bouchard is an extraordinary character. In the documentary Le moineau sauvage (The Wild Sparrow), the man who has fascinated tens of thousands of listeners and readers by recounting the lives of others... tells his own story. A life that was anything but ordinary.