Les Films du 3 Mars is happy to offer a holiday gift to documentary lovers. Starting today and until January 4, films carefully chosen to warm hearts are offered for free and available across Canada via the online platform f3m.ca.
This holiday selection will feature 10 films from the last decade from the Les Films du 3 Mars catalogue to watch or rewatch. Among them is Ensemble, in which Jean-Nicolas Orhon follows the Montreal Orchestre Métropolitain and its conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin for a year, as they prepare for a world tour. A completely different kind of musical documentary, Erik Cimon’s Montreal New Wave honours the emergence of the Quebec New Wave movement from the late 70s to the mid-80s, which propelled Quebec onto the international scene.
Around the enigmatic Armand Vaillancourt, Vaillancourt: Isn’t It Beautiful? by John Blouin is an intimate documentary produced over eight years that offers a privileged access to the sculptor’s universe. Pedro Ruiz dwells on another artist Quebec is proud of in The Gentle Drifting of a Haitian Child, a fascinating cinematic journey that plunges us straight into the wild imagination of author Dany Laferrière. Phil Comeau pays homage to a filmmaker who left an immense work behind him in The Nature of Frédéric Back. Produced shortly before the two-time Oscar-winning artist passed away, the film portrays a man who is passionate, indignant and always inspiring.
Some of the other films offered showcase human poetry. Catherine Hébert takes us to Burkina Faso in Yesterday in Nyassan, an observational documentary in which the camera closely examines the gestures of a daily life punctuated by the cultivation of rice. A Mile End Tale by Jean-François Lesage takes us on an evening stroll through the heart of this mythical Montreal district, meeting passers-by who confide their love on a revealing fall night. Another walk is featured in Alex marche à l’amour by Dominic Leclerc, the prayer/poem of a pilgrim who seeks his way in the boreal labyrinth of Abitibi. Lights Above Water by Ariel St-Louis Lamoureux and Nicolas Lachapelle invites us to Waswanipi in a Cree community in Baie-James, where the children we meet affirm and question their identity while wondering about the future of their generation. For its part, Nadine Beaudet’s Le chant des étoiles takes a universal look at our relationship to time and memory through the unprecedented encounter of astronomy and music, while meeting different characters.
10 films available for free from December 14 to January 4, 2021:
Vaillancourt: Isn’t It Beautiful? by John Blouin
Quebec (Canada) / 2019 / Original French version with English subtitles / 80 minutes
Official Selection – Festival du nouveau cinéma (FNC) 2019
Ensemble by Jean-Nicolas Orhon
Quebec (Canada) / 2018 / Original French and English version with French and English subtitles / 92 minutes
Official Selection – Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM) 2018
Montréal New Wave by Érik Cimon
Quebec (Canada) / 2016 / Original French and English version with French and English subtitles / 92 minutes
Winner – Gémeaux for Meilleure émission ou série documentaire : Arts et culture 2017
Yesterday in Nyassan by Catherine Hébert
Quebec (Canada) / 2016 / Original Dyula version with French or English subtitles / 26 minutes
Official Selection – Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM) 2016
Lights Above Water by Ariel St-Louis Lamoureux et Nicolas Lachapelle
Quebec (Canada) / 2016 / Original French, English and Cree version with French and English subtitles / 60 minutes
Official Selection – Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) 2016
Official Selection – Montreal First Peoples’ Festival 2016
Le chant des étoiles by Nadine Beaudet
Quebec (Canada) / 2016 / Original French version with English subtitles / 76 minutes
Official Selection – Rendez-vous Québec Cinéma (RVQC) 2016
A Mile-End Tale by Jean-François Lesage
Quebec (Canada) / 2013 / Original French version with English subtitles / 68 minutes
Closing Film – Visions du Réel 2014
Alex marche à l’amour by Dominic Leclerc
Quebec (Canada) / 2013 / Original French version with English subtitles / 79 minutes
Official Selection – Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM) 2013
The Nature of Frédéric Back by Phil Comeau
Quebec (Canada) / 2012 / Original French, English and Japanese version with French and English subtitles / 78 minutes
Audience Award – Festival international du cinéma francophone en Acadie (FICFA) 2012
Audience Award – International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA) 2012
The Gentle Drifting of a Haitian Child by Pedro Ruiz
Quebec (Canada) / 2009 / Original French version with English subtitles / 84 minutes
Audience Award – Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM) 2009
COMING IN 2021
Les Films du 3 Mars will come back in force in 2021 with the release of several films highly anticipated by the public, including No Ordinary Man by Aisling Chin-Yee and Chase Joynt, Sisterhood by Maxime Faure, Under the Same Sun by François Jacob, Passage by Sarah Baril Gaudet, The End of Wonderland by Laurence Turcotte-Fraser and Prayer for a Lost Mitten by Jean-François Lesage.
Follow Les Films du 3 Mars on
