1988: While studying mass culture at the Universite de Montreal, Claude Fortin shoots a short scenario on vhs in which the main character steals a camera and attempts to film his life story. The script is Fortin’s reaction to having ‘grown up in front of a tv,’ powerless to affect its content.

His instructor, Jean Marc Felio, is impressed and encourages him to elaborate the idea.

1989: Fortin fleshes out the story of the camera stealer. His central character will be a member of the so-called Generation x, the 20-to 35-year-old crowd that, according to Fortin, is underrepresented in the boomer-oriented mass media. Felio takes on the role of producer and applies for funding from sogic and Telefilm Canada. They refuse the project. Felio switches roles to advisor and suggests that Fortin join Main Film, a Montreal-based film co-op.

September 1989: Fortin approaches Cinema Libre, distributors of The Grocer’s Wife and A Bullet in the Head, with a 50-page script. The script is sketchy, says the young director, ‘with room for dialogue improvisation’. Claude Forget of Cinema Libre is intrigued and writes a letter of support to help with funding.

December 1989: Fortin receives $16,000 from a Canada Council Explorations grant for a 40-minute video project, about half the final budget. With more faith than experience, Fortin pragmatically decides to shoot a feature-length film/video, given that the long format is more likely to be screened and/or programmed than a short.

The structure of Le Voleur de camera solidifies: a man on the dole goes about his daily business and attempts to remake The Decline of the American Empire with his stolen camera. The portion taped on video takes the character’s pov as he learns to use the medium of video. Blurring the line between fact and fiction, Fortin casts himself in the central role.

June 1990: Fortin gets Main Film to rent him equipment at one-tenth its normal low price, selects a largely inexperienced crew and starts principal photography on 16mm. A heat wave hits Montreal while the eight-person crew crams into the very small apartment that serves as the main location. With instructions from his assistant director, Fortin learns how to ‘stay in the frame’.

June-July 1990: Processing of footage is done through a Program to Assist Filmmakers in the Private Sector grant from the National Film Board.

The filmmaker discovers one-third of the 16mm footage is unusable it’s unsynchronized due to equipment problems. Felio suggests a reshoot. Instead, Fortin rewrites the script and shoots only a few new scenes.

July 1990-July 1991: Fortin shoots the video excerpts from the ‘voleur’s’ perspective on Hi-8. Demonstration footage is lifted directly from television. He edits throughout the year.

Meanwhile, Felio consults a lawyer about the legalities of using unauthorized tv footage and encourages Fortin to cut the pirated images. Possibilities of a television sale seem unlikely with bootleg goods, says the advisor. Fortin isn’t concerned. He decides to go ahead, keeping the tv-napped footage in the film, and continues to edit, cutting approximately 50 hours of tape down to 20 minutes using a home Hi-8 video editor.

September 1990-September 1991: 16mm post-production begins. To save money, Fortin projects the synchronized film rushes onto his apartment wall, videotapes them, then does a rough cut on his video editor.

Editing Voleur is a formidable task because the film is part documentary, part fiction, part essay, and ‘I had never edited before,’ says Fortin. He cuts seven versions of the feature-length project over the year, while continuing to apply for funding for a ’40-minute video project’.

February 1992: $10,000 comes in from Canada Council Media Arts for post-production costs.

April 1992: Fortin rolls out the Steenbeck at Main Film and uses the rough cut on Hi-8 as a reference for the film edit.

June 1992: Fortin receives an additional $6,019 from Canada Council for post. He transfers the 20-minute edited Hi-8 footage to 16mm, with help from the nfb’s pafps grant. The grant goes towards film development, video-to-film transfers and some sound transfers. Other sound transfers are done at Main Film.

September 1992: Fortin shows the final cut of Le voleur de camera to Cinema Libre. They plot a launch.

January 1993: For the modest sum of $6,000, Cinema Libre launches the film at Cinema Parallele, a showcase for alternative cinema in Montreal. There’s a surprising amount of press coverage for a small-scale project.

February 1993: Voleur appears as an anomaly when screened opposite the more expensive ‘officially sanctioned productions’ at the Rendez-vous de Cinema Quebecois, the Quebec industry’s annual film and video retrospective. With a certain irony, Fortin’s improvised, rescripted film walks away with the award for best screenplay, sharing the $5,000 prize with Robert Morin, director/writer of Requiem pour un beau sans-coeur.

June 1993: The film is invited to the Toronto Festival of Festivals. Festival programmers request money from Telefilm to subtitle it. Folks at Telefilm are not convinced. Fortin submits the film to the Vancouver International Film Festival, where it is accepted. Vancouver organizers again request that Telefilm fund the subtitling. This time the agency agrees.

September 1993: Le voleur de camera has its English-Canadian premiere in the Perspective Canada section at the Festival of Festivals.