Montreal: This year’s inaugural Canadian Retrospective, a showcase for Canadian directors and themes, will spotlight Jean-Pierre Lefebvre. After nearly 40 years of filmmaking, Lefebvre is widely admired as ‘the godfather of independent Canadian cinema,’ particularly among the young and independent-minded.

The retrospective program, Jean-Pierre Lefebvre: Videaste, runs Sept. 7-16 with screenings of L’Age des images (1993-95), four video essays dating back to 1990, a fictional feature film and four earlier features: Le Jour S (1984), the National Film Board-produced feature drama Le Vieux Pays ou Rimbaud est mort (1977), La Chambre blanche (1969) and Mon amie Pierrette (1967).

The program was developed by Ottawa-based film scholar and author Peter Harcourt, who explains that Lefebvre is known to ‘a whole army’ of young English-Canadian filmmakers who attended his workshops, including Atom Egoyan and Bill MacGillivray.

Harcourt cites Lefebvre’s ‘great integrity’ and the originality of his subject matter and treatments, ‘a celebration of indigenous time and space.’

In the initial film essay, L’Age des Images, Le Pornolithique, Lefebvre comments on TV images and culture. The second essay, L’Ecran invisible, Harcourt’s favorite, offers a video poem on empty spaces and their potential. In Comment filmer dieu, Lefebvre examines Toronto’s cityscape, pointing to the ‘de-naturing of nature of a large urban center.’ The film asks, ‘Where is the spirit of a city like Toronto?’ explains Harcourt, one of the founding fathers of film studies in Canada, and the founder of the Queen’s University film program in 1967.

In Mon chien n’est pas mort, the director takes a ‘home movie’ approach to a stroll with his son and family dog, observing how Quebec filmmakers deal with long winters when they can’t raise funding for new projects.

Several of the essays are shot in both French and English, and all have been subtitled for the TIFF retrospective.

The longer 77-minute fictional production, La Passion de l’Innocence, tells the highly improvised story (in color and black and white) of an uncertain waitress hoping to become an actress and to be cast as a more dominant type in a film called La Passion. Harcourt points out the waiting by the would-be actress parallels the filmmaker’s own frustrating wait for money from public agencies like Telefilm Canada.

The storyline includes the waitress’ affair with a black man who won’t leave his wife and, at the end, the simple reality of not getting the part.

Cast includes Liane Simard, Genevieve Langlois, Widemir Normil, the voice of Christophe Rapin and Carnaval the cat. Lionel Simmons lensed La Passion and some of the essay collection sequences. Otherwise, all the footage in the assembled work was shot by Lefebvre.

‘I have always tried to make films about people, real people,’ says Lefebvre. ‘I especially like to try to portray women and I especially like to talk about love, death, tenderness and desire, and all those things that are increasingly rare in our society, but through the study of simple characters.’

Lefebvre says the few existing low-budget public funding programs represent the only ‘open doors to what is the [foundation] of our cinema, cinema d’auteur, which has almost disappeared because of all the industrial tendencies.’

New publication

To mark the showcase’s launch, the Toronto International Film Festival Group has published Jean Pierre Lefebvre: Videaste, edited by Harcourt.

This timely, illustrated look at the director’s work provides an overview of his films and an incisive consideration of the five-part video essay project L’Age des Images, an interview with Lefebvre and two essays by the director along with a filmography and bibliography.

Harcourt is also a respected academic journalist and is the author of Movies and Mythologies (CBC, 1977) and A Canadian Journey (Oberon, 1994). He’s worked with TIFF as a programmer since 1976 and established the festival’s Perspective Canada section in 1984 in association with Piers Handling, TIFF’s current director, and Wayne Clarkson, a former director.

Broadening interest

Distributor Cinema Libre, which has the rights to much of Lefebvre’s filmography (17 of 26 feature films ), will be represented at TIFF by Katherine Ouimet. Ouimet says the filmmaker’s dedication to truly independent cinema – writing, directing and often producing his own movies – continues to inspire new generations of Quebec filmmakers, among them Pierre Goupil, Hot Doc winner Lucie Lambert and Jeanne Crepeau.

Ouimet hopes the festival will encourage new interest in Lefebvre’s work from mainstream buyers and programmers in the English-language TV market.

A recipient of the Order of Canada for the excellence of his work, Lefebvre has received numerous honors including an award from the Canadian Alliance of Independent Film, the Prix Albert Tessier from the Quebec government and the Prix Lumieres from the ARRQ, the Quebec directors association. He has had retrospectives in Canada, France, Switzerland, Italy and England, and since 1968, 10 of his films have been official selections of the Cannes Film Festival.

Lefebvre is currently shooting his 26th feature film, Le Manuscript erotique, starring Lyne Riel, Sylvie Moreau and Francois Papineau. It is being produced by Lefebvre’s own house, Cinak, and Bernard Lalonde of Vent d’Est Films. Pierre Latour of Film Tonic is distributing.