Où êtes-vous donc? (1969), dir. Groulx—prod. ONF
[May Day; little red book; Chinatown; rue de la Gauchetière; fellow travellers; Maoism]
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Adultes avec réserve... (1962)
Adultes sans réserve… (1962), dir. Jack Zolov and Marc Beaudet—prod. ONF
[Boulevard Saint-Laurent; The Main; nightclubs; neon; burlesque; delicatessens; showgirls; jaywalkers; The Main Café; Schwartz’s Montreal Hebrew Delicatessen; Warshaw; tap dancers]
Watch this film here (en français).
aj
New York Lightboard Record (1961) & Opening Speech: McLaren (1961)
New York Lightboard Record (1961), dir. McLaren
In 1961, the National Film Board of Canada received a commission to create a promotional film that would entice Americans to travel to Canada (and spend tourist dollars here). The project was a unique one. The Canadian Government Travel Bureau had secured access to a large electronic screen (a “lightboard”) overlooking Times Square in New York. They wanted a work of animation that would capture the attention of passersby and lure Americans to “visit Canada.” Not surprisingly, it was Norman McLaren, the NFB’s animation wizard and the founder of its animation program, who got the assignment. The result was a typically whimsical, ultra-creative, and highly entertaining short film based on the use of paper cutouts that came to be known as New York Lightboard.
Why should Americans visit Canada? How did the film make its pitch? Well, it did so by associating Canada with things like “fun,” and “play,” and “sun.” It used catchy rhymes to help capture some of Canada’s appeal: “East / West / North’s the Best.” And it hyped Canada’s festivals (the Montreal International Film Festival, the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, etc.), its events (the Calgary Stampede), and its great outdoors (forests! fish! canoeing! waterskiing!). Better yet, it presented this material in a playful, light-hearted, and even ironic manner. In other words, Canada came across as hip, not square—quite possibly for the first time in its history.
It was also slyly informative: Want more information? Call PLaza7-4917. (That’s PL7-4917.) Or visit Canada House, at 680 Fifth Avenue. Or write “Canada Travel, Ottawa.”
That same year, McLaren also made a film that documented the projection of his animated advertisement in Times Square, as well as the reactions of its denizens, visitors, and passersby. This film became known as New York Lightboard Record and it’s the one that you see featured in the images above.
What does any of this have to do with “Montreal as seen in its cinema, circa 1960-1975”? Well, this project was a literal extension of Montreal’s film culture, an intervention on the part of Montreal’s film culture, and a representation of Montreal’s film culture, in the nocturnal space of Times Square (it played from dusk till 1:00 a.m. every night for the length of its run). It was a peaceful and bloodless invasion (une invasion pacifique* [et électronique]) of the American consciousness on the part of Canada (or at least its Film Board).
This one’s obviously more than a little bittersweet, given the circumstances. The border has been largely closed for over a year now. The idea of enticing Americans to “visit Canada” in search of “play,” “fun,” “sun,” or anything else still seems distant at the moment.
[Norman McLaren; tourism; Canada; the Idea of North; Times Square; advertising; animation]
If you’d like to watch this film, you can find it here.
Opening Speech: McLaren (a.k.a. Norman McLaren’s Opening Speech) (1961)
1961 was also the year of the inaugural edition of the Montreal International Film Festival. This was likely one of the reasons McLaren and the NFB were so enthusiastic about the New York Lightboard project. For this particular occasion—launching the MIFF—McLaren devised a film that was meant to make light of the pomp and ceremony that surrounds the opening night of a major international festival. That film was given the title Opening Speech: McLaren (although its title card reads Norman McLaren’s Opening Speech), and, as its title suggests, here it is McLaren himself—and a particularly willful microphone stand—that take centre stage.
What does any of this have to do with “Montreal as seen in its cinema, circa 1960-1975”? Well, here we have a representation of a gala event at the Montreal International Film Festival that was in all likelihood produced and shot within the NFB’s state-of-the-art studio facilities in Ville Saint-Laurent, just outside of Montreal.
[Norman McLaren; the Montreal International Film Festival; whimsy]
If you’d like to watch Opening Speech, you can find it here.
Today happens to be Norman McLaren’s birthday. It is the 107th anniversary of his birth, to be exact. If there’s a heaven, there most certainly is a lightboard that looms over it, and Norman is in charge of the Animation Department there—the one that develops the “whimsical, ultra-creative, and highly entertaining” content that animates its thousands upon thousands of lightbulbs. Either that, or he’s the one who gives the “opening speech” (or tries to) night after night after night.
Bravo, maestro!
aj
* To borrow a phrase from Michel Brault.
Fabienne sans son Jules (1964)
Fabienne sans son Jules (1964), dir. Jacques Godbout—prod. ONF
Fabienne stars the iconic Pauline Julien in the title role, playing a free-spirited chanteuse much like herself. The film is notable for its scenes of Montreal nightlife and of the city at night more generally (which is why it was part of a “Night and the City” screening that some friends of mine and I organized at the Cinémathèque québécoise 20 years ago), but it also has something to say about cycling and romance and the airport and cinephilia (the film’s central conceit is that Fabienne is trying to get in touch with none other than Jean-Luc Godard):
“J’adore le cinéma!”
And with Montreal presently in thrall to an epic early spring (and the cycle-mania that comes with it), well…
[cycling; flowers; romance; cinephilia; Montréal-Dorval; YUL; cigarette smoke; telephone booths; newsstands; singers; chanteuses; Pauline Julien]
Watch this film here (en français).
And for more about Pauline Julien, her art, her career, and her politics, check out Pascale Ferland’s Pauline Julien, Intimate and Political (2018) here.
aj
Manger (1961)
Remember, Easter is almost upon us!
Manger [Eat] (1961), dir. Gilles Carle & Louis Portugais—prod. ONF
[food; food culture; restaurants; diners; supermarkets; charcuterie platters; corned beef; French fries; Dunn’s; rue Sainte Catherine; electrical signage; business lunches; consumer society; consumption; sexism]
Watch this film here (en français).
aj
My Name is Susan Yee (1975)
My Name is Susan Yee (1975), dir. Shaffer—prod. NFB (for Children of Canada series)
[childhood; Chinese-Canadian community; school; Milton-Parc; Chinatown; Mount Royal Park; winter; snow; summer; shorts]
Watch this film here. It’s only 12 minutes long.
#stopasianhate
#racistviolenceagainsttheasiancommunityisdomesticterrorism
aj
Les Filles du roy (1974)
Les Filles du roy (1974), dir. Anne Claire Poirier—prod. ONF
[office workers; garment workers; wait staff; bar staff; doctors; information society; computing; Montreal General Hospital; St-Hubert BBQ; labour; gender]
Watch this film with English subtitles here.
Watch this film in the original version, without subtitles, here.
Happy International Women’s Day!
aj
Le Chat dans le sac (1964)
Labyrinth (1967)
Labyrinth (1967), dir. Roman Kroitor, Colin Low, et al.—prod. NFB
Labyrinth/Labyrinthe was an audacious multimedia and multi-sensory pavilion designed, executed, and hosted by the National Film Board of Canada for Montreal’s 1967 International and Universal Exposition, a.k.a. Expo 67. Its Brutalist form contained a number of multi-screen cinema chambers. One of them projected a series of moving images in a 5-screen cruciform arrangement. Though Labyrinth’s humanist perspective was also explicitly internationalist (hence the shots of the Sahara Desert that surround the first image), many of the featured images were of Montreal, where many of the filmmakers involved in this project lived and worked.
[snow; winter; commuters; gravedigger; traffic; public transportation; Dorchester Boulevard; Mary Queen of the World Cathedral; the Queen Elizabeth Hotel; camels; Sahara Desert]
Watch this film here.
And to learn much more about multi-screen experimentation at Expo 67, check out Reimagining Cinema: Film at Expo 67 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014), edited by Janine Marchessault and Monika Kin Gagnon. Featuring essays by Seth Feldman, Gary Mediema, Aimée Mitchell, Johanne Sloan, Monika Kin Gagnon, Janine Marchessault, and Yours Truly.
aj
L'École des autres (1968)
L’École des autres (1968), dir. Michel Régnier—prod. ONF
[children; the war on poverty; experimental school; crossing guards; Plateau Mont-Royal; avenue des Pins; snow; winter]
Watch this film here.
aj
Citizens' Medicine (1970)
Citizens’ Medicine (1970), dir. Bonnie Sherr Klein—prod. NFB (Challenge for Change/Société nouvelle)
[restaurant; sculptor; sculpture; statuary; le Faubourg à m’lasse; rue Wolfe; public health; snow; winter]
Watch this film here (CAMPUS subscription required).
aj
Trafficopter (1972)
Trafficopter (1972), dir. Barrie Howells—prod. NFB
[traffic; helicopter; aerial cinematography; Champlain Bridge; Cartier Bridge; St-Lawrence River; highway infrastructure; congestion; winter]
Watch this film here.
aj
The 80 Goes to Sparta (1969)
The 80 Goes to Sparta (1969), dir. Davies—prod. NFB
[snow; winter; Fletcher’s Field; Sir George-Étienne Cartier Monument]
Watch this film here.
aj
The 80 Goes to Sparta (1969)
Montreal, 1969: schoolchildren protest the redevelopment of a playground into a parking lot. They demand that the space be transformed back into a playground. Enthusiastic chanting of "We hate cars!" erupts, drowning out an interview with a community spokesperson.
The 80 Goes to Sparta (1969), dir. Davies—prod. NFB
[schoolchildren; protests; car culture; civil disobedience; Devonshire School; Plateau Mont-Royal]
Watch this film here.
aj
The Changing City (1963)
The Changing City (1963), dir. Jones—prod. NFB for the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation
[urban planning; aerial cinematography; Place Ville-Marie; centre-ville]
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We Are Young! (1967)
We Are Young! (1967), dir. Hammid & Thompson
We Are Young! was a massive multi-screen film experiment produced for the Canadian Pacific Railway/COMINCO pavilion at Expo 67 by Alexander Hammid (né Hackenschmied) and Francis Thompson.
[skyscrapers; department stores; neon; new space; abstract space; working girls; architectural sublime; urban sublime; centre-ville; rue Ste-Catherine]
To learn much more about multi-screen experimentation at Expo 67, check out Reimagining Cinema: Film at Expo 67 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014), edited by Janine Marchessault and Monika Kin Gagnon. Featuring essays by Seth Feldman, Gary Mediema, Aimée Mitchell, Johanne Sloan, Monika Kin Gagnon, Janine Marchessault, and Yours Truly.
aj
Valérie (1969)
Valérie (1969), dir. Héroux—prod. Cinépix
[Métro; advertising; gender; sexuality; The Look]
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Seul ou avec d'autres (1962)
Seul ou avec d'autres (1962), dir. Arcand, Héroux & Venne—prod. Association générale des étudiants de l'université de Montréal (AGEUM)
[Steinberg’s; supermarket; Côte-des-Neiges; convertible; student life; l’Oratoire St-Joseph]
Watch this film here.
aj
La P’tite Bourgogne (1968)
La P’tite Bourgogne (1968), dir. Bubulian—prod. ONF (Société nouvelle/Challenge for Change)
[Habitations Jeanne-Mance; public housing; domestic terrorism]
Watch this film here.
aj
La Ville (1970)
La Ville (1970), dir. Bédard—prod. ONF
[multiple exposures; neon; soldiers]
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