Denis Bachand

An Interview with François Macerola, President and CEO of la Société de développement des entreprises culturelles (SODEC)

Appointed by the Conseil des ministres, François N. Macerola is President and Chief Executive Officer of the Société de développement des entreprises culturelles (SODEC) and sits on the SODEC Board of Directors. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Fonds d’investissement de la culture et des communications (FICC) and Fonds capital culture Québec (FCCQ). He officially began his duties at SODEC on November 30, 2009. Macerola has an unparalleled background in the cultural sector. Before assuming his current position with SODEC, he was the Executive Producer of Cirque du Soleil, for which he had previously served as the Vice President for Business and Legal Affairs. During his tenure with Cirque du Soleil, he also fulfilled the role of Chairman of the Board of Directors at Place des Arts for a four-year term. Macerola has forged a solid reputation within the cinema and television industries. After practicing law for a few years, he was appointed the Government Film Commissioner and Chairperson of the National Film Board of Canada. Other previous positions include Vice Chair of the Board of Directors at Malofilm Distribution Inc. and Executive Director and subsequently Chair of the Board of Directors of Telefilm Canada. In addition, he oversaw, on behalf of the federal government, a study on the definition of Canadian content in film and television productions and, on behalf of the Québec government, a study on the production and financing of feature films.

Special Issue of the American Review of Canadian Studies on Québec Cinema

Québec cinema has arrived. In a way reminiscent of the emergence of Québec literature in the 1960s, it has crossed a threshold. Québec’s literary history during this period can be illustrated by a list of important indicators, spurred by what was perceived as a national cultural emergency: small publishing houses started to grow and became more ambitious; the educational curriculum and literary canons were established; academic and journalistic criticism became institutionalized; literary prizes were endowed; and international recognition of a few particularly successful novels and plays followed. Somewhat later, new forms and genres, such as science-fiction novels, mysteries, and children’s literature, began to appear. A similar process has now taken place for Québec cinema. For better or for worse, the period of initial effervescence and experimentation, often artisanal and idealistic if not ideological, is past. There was once mostly goodwill and imagination (and very little money), but the industry has consolidated throughout the last decade. Cultural models of development borrowed from Europe include state funding and agency screening processes; those borrowed from United States include a growing awareness of market imperatives and investment value. Producers and distributors alike are thinking ahead about digital platforms. New genres, such as action thrillers and horror films, are reaching larger audiences. The public recognizes its favorite actors and follows them from film to film. Québec films often figure on the list of winners at prestigious festivals. Indeed, a Québec film has been a finalist in the Oscar category for Best Foreign-language Film for three consecutive years (Incendies in 2011; Monsieur Lazhar in 2012; Rebelle in 2013). Perhaps the most glamorous sign of Québec cinema’s emergence on the international scene was Denys Arcand’s winning the 2003 Best Foreign-language Oscar for Les Invasions barbares. After two unsuccessful nominations in the 1980s—Le Déclin de l’empire américain (1986) and Jésus de Montréal (1989)—Arcand’s Academy Award win in the early 2000s signaled that the Québec film industry had finally arrived. With a 22-minute standing ovation at Cannes and two of its most prestigious awards (best actress and best screenplay), rave reviews at home and abroad, more than

Cultural Encounters in Québec Cinema. Identity and Otherness in Denis Chouinard's Tar Angel 1

35 million at the box office worldwide (a record for a Québec film), a César for best French film (Les Invasions is a Canada–France co-production), and of course the Oscar, Arcand’s sequel to Le Déclin de l’empire américain can safely be hailed as the greatest success of Québec cinema. This isn’t to say that Les Invasions barbares is considered the supreme artistic accomplishment in French–Canadian film history. Generally, the classics of Québec cinema—Claude Jutra’s Mon Oncle Antoine (1971), Michel Brault’s Les Ordres (1974), and Francis Mankiewicz’s Les bons débarras (1980)—rank higher on lists of “best Québec films ever made” than Les Invasions barbares. Nor is it the most popular domestic film among the Québécois

An interview with Carolle Brabant Executive Director of Telefilm Canada

Over the course of its history, Québec cinema displayed an interest in outsiders and intercultural exchanges. The opening up to the outside world, which characterized Québec societys evolution, resulted in a renewed consciousness of its own diversity. The quest for and affirmation of the self now proceeds by a recognition that engages in dialogue with the Other—a sign of a profound maturity. Beyond the vision of an identity founded on the heritage of the majority Francophone group, there emerges a new vision with unifying aspirations founded on the necessary inclusion of other ethnic communities. This dynamic is potentially enriching, since a society cannot open itself to others, to difference, without being transformed in return. This contact, however, can also provoke feelings of suspicion and violence. In 1997, Denis Chouinard and Nicholas Wadimoff direct Clandestins, a film of astounding originality and dramatic density: six refugees originating from Maghreb, Russia and Eastern Europe, confined in a container, desperately attempt to cross the Atlantic on a cargo ship en route to Montreals harbour. Only two children successfully reach their destination. A glimmer of hope resonates in the films final images, which depict the children on the steamships bow, prolonging, in a sense, the desire of their parents for a new life. But how would the country of arrival welcome these refugees? It is in attempting to answer these questions that Chouinard directs Tar Angel in 2001. This article aims to demonstrate how the latter film, which presents itself as a social drama espousing a road-movie aesthetic, is constructed through a system of opposing exotic tones that evoke the difficult fusion of heritage and newly adopted culture in this era of massive population displacement, hybridization and plural identities.

The marketing of ideas advertising and road safety

Carolle Brabant is a Chartered Accountant by training, and was hired as an auditor by Telefilm Canada in 1990. Subsequently, she became its director of finance and administration and served as acting executive director for six months in 2004. She was permanently appointed to Telefilm’s top post in 2010, and since that time, she has received several honors and awards for her leadership, including being named to The Hollywood Reporter’s 2011 list of “13 Female Power-Players Who Rule the World.” In 2012, she was selected to receive the Canadian Women in Communications Leadership Excellence Award. Brabant’s achievements include contributing to the successful partnership between her organization and the Canadian Television Fund [renamed the Canadian Media Fund] whose programs are administered by Telefilm.1 A skilled communicator, Brabant’s presentation of Telefilm’s 2011–2014 corporate plan, Fostering Cultural Success, at the Prime Time in Ottawa annual conference in March of 2012, is available on YouTube (http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=B2zLCpXQM_c).