Program 2 Precursors: The Canadian Connection
• All films in this program were produced in Canada.
• Les raquetteurs is in French and Wrestling (La lutte) is in English, French, Russian and Italian.
Les raquetteurs
- 1958 / B&W / Digital File (Original: 35mm) / 14 min
Directors, Photography, Editing: Gilles Groulx, Michel Brault
Sound: Marcel Carrière
Sound Editing: Stuart Baker
Music Editing: Norman Bigras
Mixing: Ron Alexander
Production Assistant: Marcel Martin
Production Manager: Louis Portugais
Source: National Film Board of Canada
The spontaneity captured by Les raquetteurs inspired many filmmakers. Michel Brault cited the mayor’s key scene as his first true experience of Cinéma Vérité.
The Days Before Christmas
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1958 / B&W / Digital File (Original: 16mm) / 29 min
Directors: Terence Macartney-Filgate, Stanley Jackson, Wolf Koenig
Photography: Michel Brault, Georges Dufaux
Editing: Roman Kroitor, René Laporte, Wolf Koenig
Sound: Jack Locke, George Croll, Kay Shannon
Sound Editing: Kathleen Shannon
Executive Producer: Tom Daly
Producers: Roman Kroitor, Wolf Koenig
Source: National Film Board of Canada
Solidly in the city symphony tradition of films like Walter Ruttman’s Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927), this portrait of Montreal in the days before Christmas hints at the Direct Cinema style to come. Ironically, it climaxes with Koenig’s famous “gun shot.”
Emergency Ward
- 1959 / B&W / Digital File (Original: 16mm) / 30 min
Director, Editor: William Greaves
Photography: Wolf Koenig
Sound: Jack Locke, Ron Alexander, Kathleen Shannon
Narration: Stanley Jackson
Executive Producer: Tom Daly
Producers: Roman Kroitor, Wolf Koenig
Source: National Film Board of Canada
Emergency Ward may look conventional, but Greaves and Koenig whip the camera off the tripod when the interviews are repeatedly interrupted by Life—Direct Cinema eruptions within Griersonian documentary.
Wrestling (La lutte)
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1961 / B&W / Digital File (Original: 16mm) / 27 min
Directors: Michel Brault, Marcel Carrière, Claude Fournier, Claude Jutra
Photography, Editing: Michel Brault, Claude Fournier, Claude Jutra
Sound: Marcel Carrière
Participation: Édouard Carpentier
Narration: Stanley Jackson
Artistic Advisor: Roland Barthes
Producer: Jacques Bobet
Source: National Film Board of Canada
Inspired by Barthes’ essay “The World of Wrestling” (1957), where wrestling is a form of theater pregnant with meaningful gestures and characters symbolizing larger social narratives. The same year, Brault was in Paris shooting Chronicle of a Summer (1961).