VIDEOGRAPHE – Part. 2
"The Duty of Remembrance"

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the artist-run center Vidéographe 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.

On Tuesday, February 2 at 8pm, the Canadian Cultural Centre invites you to an evening of online screenings to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the art centre Vidéographe in Montreal: a selection of 4 art videos on the theme of the duty to remember.

Established in 1971 in Montréal, Vidéographe is an artist-run centre dedicated to the research and the dissemination of moving image practices. Artist Luc Bourdon, in collaboration with Vidéographe’s team, is curating five programs 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.

From the very beginning of the Vidéographe project, the Canadian and international scene has produced works that seek to offer an alternative voice to the official media. This selection presents original and engaged works that aim to raise awareness of the world’s woes. The duty to remember has thus prompted videographers over the years to produce videos that attempt to awaken our consciences. 

Programme duration: 64 minutes / Films available for 24 hours

NUTAG-HOMELAND by Alisi Telengut
6 min, 2016, Animation
A visual poem and surrealist requiem for the Kalmyk people that were mass-deported by USSR from 1943-1957 and half of them died before they were allowed to return home. The film manifests itself as an archetype with frame-by-frame hand painted imagery, bringing back an example of human history on the eternal theme of diaspora and the loss of homeland, but more importantly, by referencing to the past and the lost, it poses a critical resistance to the current social political situations in the world.

TERRES FANTÔMES by Félix Lamarche
20 min, 2019, Experimental Documentary
An experimental approach, with ghostly and a temporal elements, gives substance to recollections of a disturbing but largely forgotten episode of the history of Gaspésie.

LAS MUJERES DE PINOCHET by Edouardo Menz
12 min, 2015, Art video
In this experimental short film, the viewer is forced to role-play through the repeated employment and alteration of the text, sound and image until his or her expectations have been truthfully realized. The video examines class structure, the meaning of beauty and forgotten history through two very different but significant women during Pinochet’s brutal regime of the late 1980’s.

LA STATUE DE ROBERT E. LEE À CHARLOTTESVILLE by Pierre Hébert
26 min, 2018, Documentary and animation
On August 11 and 12, a show of force by neo-nazis and white supremacist groups in Charlottesville, Virginia, to oppose the removal of the statue of  General Robert E. Lee, leads to violent clashes and leave several deaths and many wounded. On August 23, the Town Hall decides to cover the statue with black as a sign of mourning. On August 28, Pierre Hébert leave for Virginia to shoot the shrouded statue as departure point for a reflection about the historical and political implication of the raging debate on the fate of the Confederate statues in the USA.

Further information