Jean-Claude Labrecque

A program featuring independent documentaries produced in Canada and abroad exploring regional, provincial, national and international perspectives. Through these films, Doc humanité seeks to reveal, share, show and explain the big issues of our time in all spheres of human endeavour and contribute to an improved understanding of Canada’s place in the modern world.

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A genuine encounter with filmmaker Jean-Claude Labrecque, this feature-length doc underscores not only the importance of his work (especially in the documentary medium) but also his passion for film. The bond between Labrecque and director Michel La Veaux allows us to see beyond the images and discover the smaller story hidden within the larger one. La Veaux shares with us his own love for film and the humanistic perspective from which Labrecque has used his camera to etch the great moments of Quebec’s culture and history into Quebecers’ collective memory.

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This feature documentary by Jean-Claude Labrecque recounts the bold and astounding enterprise of French filmmaker Julien Duvivier, who shot a film adaptation of Louis Hémon’s classic novel Maria Chapdelaine in Péribonka, a village in Quebec’s Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region, in 1934. What was the impact of the original film’s production on the life of the community? What memories remain? What town secrets lie hidden in those memories?

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A two-part in-depth exploration of the evolution of the private film industry, seen through the eyes of more than 50 industry professionals. Part One (1939-1979) : Artists and professionals from the social and commercial film sectors recount the struggle to build a film industry that is privately operated yet publicly funded. Part Two (1980-2010) : Executives, policymakers, and industry professionals trace the origins of the major funding institutions and discuss the unintended consequences of building a cultural industry around performance metrics, revenue generation, and private profit.

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Thanks to the development of techniques and the adventurous spirit of pioneering filmmakers, among whom Michel Brault occupies a central place, a new way of making cinema was born at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s. This film relevantly retraces the history of a collective movement which revolutionized production and filming methods in Quebec and the world.

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About De Gaulle's eventful visit to Québec in 1967

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An anthology of sequences from the best films that the National Film Board of Canada produced since its beginnings. Divided by themes and presented by a trio of actors-signers (including Carle's wife Chloé Sainte-Marie) who sings the same song in between the movie excerpts. This movie celebrated the anniversary of the National Film Board in 1985.

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A Canadian documentary depicting Quebec City as it celebrates its 400th anniversary.

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Rejeanne and Gilles are a married couple whose devastating setbacks--she is laid off from her job and he suffers a debilitating stroke--only begin to fester in the face of corporate greed and personal struggles when they attempt to start over in a new neighborhood.

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Two men bond as one recovers from an attack and the other deals with the impending death of his grandmother.

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Yvonne is a young woman living in Quebec in the latter half of the 19th century, under the controlling influence of both her elder sister, Hélène, and the repressive Victorian society that pervades the area. Yvonne has a sensual passion that her sister hopes to extinguish by placing her in a convent. As summer arrives, a strange dream suggests a different future, and Yvonne confronts the unexpected return of both her mother and her first love.

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On the eve of her final moments, a woman recalls her alcoholic past. She revisits her entire youth, including a binge that, at 46, cost her everything she had: "Loneliness and aging are themes that impose themselves on me, in one form or another. As for alcoholism, it fascinates me because of the revolt it underpins, and revolts me because of the unhappiness it creates around itself.

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Paul-Émile Borduas, Québec's voice of the Quiet Revolution, reflects on the impact of his writing and art in his Paris studio.

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A Canadian documentary about composer André Mathieu. Nominated for Best Feature Length Documentary at the 15th Genie Awards in 1994.

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Heritage Minutes, also known officially as Historica Minutes: History by the Minute, are a series of sixty-second short films, each illustrating an important moment in Canadian history. They appear frequently on Canadian television and in cinemas before movies and are now also sold on DVD. The Minutes were first introduced on March 31, 1991 as part of a one-off heavily-promoted history quiz show hosted by Rex Murphy. The thirteen original short films were broken up and run between shows on CBC Television and CTV Network. The continued broadcast of the Minutes and the production of new ones was pioneered by Charles Bronfman's CRB Foundation, Canada Post Power Broadcasting, and the National Film Board. They were devised, developed and largely narrated by noted Canadian broadcaster Patrick Watson, while the producer of the series was Robert Guy Scully. In 2009 Historica merged with The Dominion Institute to become The Historica-Dominion Institute. While the foundations have not paid networks to air Minutes, they have made them freely available, and in the early years paid to have them run in cinemas across the country. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission has ruled that Heritage Minutes are an "on-going dramatic series" thus each minute counts as ninety-seconds of a station's Canadian content requirements.

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In 1953, in the Gaspé forest, there are three bodies half eaten by bears. Fearing repercussions on tourism and investment, Prime minister Maurice Duplessis decided to make an example accusing Wilbert Coffin.

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This short documentary revisits the 1976 Olympic Marathon. A modern-day addition to the Games, the marathon commemorates the soldier who ran cross-country, in 490 B.C., to announce the Greek victory at Marathon and then died. Here, great film footage of the 1976 Summer Olympics captures the physical demands of the race, while its emotional counterpart is related by Waldemar Cierpinski, the event’s 1976 gold medalist. This emotion-charged film proves that although the winner of the Decathlon is the best all-round athlete, the “toughest” is the winner of the Marathon

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A pimp and his seven working girls move to a small conservative mining town in northern Quebec to establish a brothel.

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Each married on their side, a teacher and a sociologist meet by chance in Quebec. Political and intellectual discussions followed a brief mad love.

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In this French Canadian film, when the provincial government tries to move two young farmers from their land to make way for development, the two fight back, accidentally killing a policeman and becoming outlaws in the process.

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In Montréal, Jean-Pierre is fired on the set of a TV commercial where he's an apprentice technician. He's penniless, behind on his rent, with a thin resume and no college units. He has a fiancée, Michelle, but his head is turned by a free-spirited model, from the U.S., who saw him being fired and comes to his flat to apologize. She's Elizabeth, a combination of feckless innocence and sexual freedom. Jean-Pierre borrows money from his outlaw friend, Dock, and buys clothes to impress Elizabeth. Soon he's sleeping with her, and he pulls a theft with Dock to get money to take her to Acapulco. Michelle tries to bring him back to her orbit. Is there a way out for Jean-Pierre?

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A meditation on society's attitudes and beliefs, as explored through a New France fur trapper's relationship with a Native woman that spans centuries.

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Filmed for the most part from a low-flying aircraft, this documentary short presents a breathtaking view of Canada from coast to coast. Showing the varied terrain, from craggy coast to towering glacier, the film illustrates Canada’s pristine wilderness as well as today's industrial and urban realities. Canada the Land was specially commissioned for the Canada Pavilion at the Osaka World Fair in 1970.

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This experimental short film deals with anguish, as imagined by Claude Péloquin, author, poet, performer and filmmaker, in the early 1970s. Vertiginous camera angles, oppressive places and a disturbing soundtrack, the filmmaker uses his sound environment and the words of the interpreter Josée Vanasse to express this generalized disease at a time of great acceleration and fury for life.

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Documentary about Charles Gagnon, Québécois politician, FLQ member and communist leader.

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This fictional feature follows a twenty-something man who is struggling to define his position in the world in early adulthood. He has left their parents' home but still has not made an home of his own. Our protagonist’s alienation is palpable; for him life is a game, not because he chooses to make it so, but because he is unable to make anything more of it. But for those who befriend him and eventually turn him loose again, his game is not enough.

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A 23-year-old Canadian wanders aimlessly throughout his wasted life.

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Documents a woman's actual pregnancy; the emotions, the affects on her husband and first-born child, the birth itself via Caesarean section, and her struggle to return to work and a social life, while still being a good mother.

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This short documentary studies the fate reserved to young people through the ages. Drawing from paintings, archival footage and various other documents, the film demonstrates that during the 16th and 17th century, young people lived happily alongside their elders. This equilibrium was broken in the 19th century, when the defense of the young and the protection afforded by reformers and educators created the generation gap evident in Western society today. Will dialogue between society’s young and less young ever resume?

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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.

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Four years after Pour la suite du monde (1963), director Pierre Perrault asks Alexis Tremblay if he'll agree to travel with his wife Marie to the country of their ancestors, France. In a montage parallel, we follow them in France and listen to them talking to their friends about it.

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In our mobile society some families move a lot, and children have to make new friends just when they are becoming comfortable with the ones they have. This film tries to show what goes on in the mind of a nine-year-old girl who finds her happiness disturbed both by a move to another street and by her father's increasing drunkenness.

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Documentary presenting the different stages of General de Gaulle's trip to Quebec in 1967, accompanied by extracts from his speeches.

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The story of two young women who go to the city to work in a dress factory, and who share a room to ease their expenses and their loneliness. The film shows the currents that brought them together and the facets of their natures that first made them seem compatible but eventually drove them apart. Their story reflects, to a degree, the situation of anyone who has ever shared the life of another.

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On your marks. Follow cyclists from 13 countries as they cover 2.400 km of Gaspé countryside in 12 days-a course longer than those of Italy, Belgium or Spain. The long shots of curving landscape and open road are set to a mesmerizing soundtrack in this documentary, and the results are spellbinding.

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A worker, called in a hurry to remove the snow in the city street, try to buy his remaining gifts in the tumult of Christmas eve without quitting his work.

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A film between reality and fiction about a popular singer, played by Joël Denis, idol of that time. He is surrounded by a host of great actors and real and famous characters from the 60s.

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A behind-the-scenes documentary about director Michelangelo Antonioni as he's shooting his segment of The Three Faces, a vehicle for Soraya, the former empress of Persia. Featuring interviews with Monica Vitti, Tonino Guerra and more.

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

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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.

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