Simon Beaulieu

While a world war rages, Philippe, a draft-dodger from Quebec, takes refuge in the American West, surviving by competing in Charlie Chaplin impersonation contests. As Philippe makes his long journey home, he encounters various characters under the sway of a destructive madness borne of the chaotic times. His voyage, both violent and fascinating, is a hallucinatory initiation to the darker side of the American dream.

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.

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.

Gérald Godin's life and work were marked by his deep commitment to Quebec. Forgotten or overlooked, his political and literary legacy's contribution to our cultural heritage is invaluable. From Trois-Rivières to Montreal, from the 1960s to the 1995 referendum, via the October prisons and the songs of his partner Pauline Julien, the film Godin combines archives and interviews to retrace the unique journey of a fighter. A striking portrait of the man nicknamed "le député-poète" A cinematic quilt of modern Quebec, woven from an exceptional blend of archives.