VIDEOGRAPHE – Part. 1
"Beyond Real"

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Videographe art centre in Montreal, the Canadian Cultural Centre invites you to two evenings of online screenings.

• “Beyond Real“: 1st part of this programme
  Join us on Tuesday 26th January at 8pm on our Facebook page.
• “The Duty of Remembrance“: 2nd part of this programme
  Join us on Tuesday 2 February at 8pm on our Facebook Page.

Established in 1971 in Montréal, Vidéographe is an artist-run centre dedicated to the research and dissemination of moving image practices.

Artist Luc Bourdon, in collaboration with Vidéographe’s team, is curating five programmes covering 50 years of video creation.

Since its invention, video technology has proven to be mobile, lightweight, instantaneous, portable, thrifty, handy, easy to learn and free from constraints. These keywords that fascinated in the 1970s, have become everyday ones in 2020. Since the 70s, the use of image has gone through a profound revolution and now impacts all socio-economic and cultural spheres of our society.

Vidéographe’s collection is a testament of the evolution of this medium, which has been marked by major social, political, artistic and technological changes. The artists’ discourse bears witness to these upheavals in which video art has created a new language.

Over the decades, this new tool has enabled new worlds to be created by videomakers who constantly push the boundaries of reality, whether by magnifying, manipulating or imagining it.

VIDÉOGRAPHE, ENTRÉE EN SCÈNE by Robert Forget
10 min, 1972 Documentary
Robert Forget, the founder of Vidéographe, presents the editing room and the “videotheatre”. A pertinent document on the origins and the running of Vidéographe. 

BABY JESUS by Donigan Cumming
3 min, 1999 Art video
It’s Christmas night. Pierre, the principal protagonist of After Brenda by the same author, lies in a deserted corridor. A bottle by his side, he cries out his solitude, his despair, and sends a prayer to Christ.

THE THIEF LIVES IN HELL by Robert Morin, Lorraine Dufour
20 min, 1984 Docufiction
After losing his job, a man is forced to go on welfare and move to a different neighbourhood where rent is more affordable. In the process of filming this new reality he did not know existed, he unwittingly takes on its characteristics, and the traits of his neighbours. 

LA PETITE VISION by Manon Labrecque
5 min, 1994 Art video
Dogs, chairs, spaghetti. Games above the void.

OH LA LA DU NARRATIF by Sylvie Laliberté
14 min, 1997 Art video
This is a story about a love story. We often believe that love stories are lived in a horizontal position, very very horizantal. However, love is experienced standing up. So I tell this story with both feet in the snow. I work with and within the limits of the screen to show how much love tends towards freedom, even when it’s a story confined by its own history and form, in this case, video.

THE COLDEST DAY OF THE YEAR by Kim Kielhofner
9 min, 2020 Art video
The Coldest Day of the Year takes place in a future where a cataclysmic event has made tracing a coherent meaning of the past and recounting a narrative of the present impossible. The narrator believes she has seen another being in this destroyed landscape. She attempts to find this figure and recounts a journey that traces the shadows of her presence. Using temporary sets, props and collaged images, The Coldest Day of the Year recounts an attempt to understand an ever shifting horizon and possibility of dwelling.

Duration: 61 minutes / Films available for 24 hours

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