CELEBRATING 5 YEARS of SPIRA with 5 SHORT FILMS

Through R_Don’t Give an Inch, Anne-Marie Bouchard collects the surprisingly lucid reflections of children on the notion of resistance. With a female roller derby training session as its background, the film offers a selection of tableaux filled with everyday poetry, as displays of opportunities to stand up to something. Above all, it reminds us that, as it turns out, the very action of creating is an act of resistance.

Joseph Samuel Jacques Julien, by David Bernatchez, tells the life story of a 59-year old man deeply invested in a quest for meaning since the death of his wife. In the three-act film, the salesman struggles to take control of his destiny, obviously terrified of opening his heart again. The filmmaker draws inspiration from the political context to make connections between the life of the bereaved and the reality of a nation resisting change. As he pays visits to Rosie’s, a canteen in the working-class districts, the salesman learns to hope again.

In A Man of Dance, Marie Brodeur follows the atypical path of a giant who tiptoes through life: internationally renowned ballet dancer Vincent Warren. A proud advocate for culture, Warren opens up with a rare generosity on the encounters that have shaped him, including the one with the love of his life, American poet Frank O’Hara. Following the tragic death of the poet, pain becomes Warren’s main motor of creation, as he draws his strength from the various forms of beauty he encounters.

Emergence, by Clarissa Rebouças and Julie Bernier, denounces the incredibly violent fate of Haitian women through the luminous portrait of Katiana, a young woman who has had the courage to escape her family to gain freedom. This immensely powerful testimonial shows us once again that humans can be resilient. It urges us to lend a hand to all those hoping to keep their head above the water.

With Foret Noire, Philippe David Gagné and Jean-Marc E. Roy enter the universe of genre films and experiment with polar. Set in the Jura department in France, the plot involves a mother accused of her husband’s murder as well as her two daughters, one of which is presumable her accomplice and the other, a key witness. At the judge’s request, all three women must recall the day of the crime in its every detail.