NFB - About the NFB
Address
Ontario and West Studio
150 John Street
Toronto, (On), M5V 3C3
Executive producer : Jacques Turgeon
Producer : Anne-Marie Rocher
Phone : 416-973-0907 or 1-866-663-7668
Fax : 416-973-2594
E-mail : studioontarioetouest@nfb.ca
Ontario and West Studio (French)
Created in 1974, the NFB's Ontario and West Documentary Studio serves a large portion of the country, working with Francophone video and film directors from Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia, Yukon and the Northwest Territories.
This geographic range is also reflected in the diversity of works from French Canadian documentary filmmakers.
Displaying innovation and creativity, a host of French-language filmmakers has contributed to the vitality of the Ontario and West Studio. Standouts include Jacques Ménard with Rien qu'en passant, Paul Lapointe with J'ai besoin d'un nom (I Must Have a Name), Pierre Vallée with Un homme à sa fenêtre, Valmont Jobin with Un gars d'la place (A Local Kid), Michel Macina with Métallo Blues, Guy Bénard with L'Amour à Pékin, Paul Crépeau with Les Deux Marcelle, Claudette Jaiko with Deux voix, comme en écho (Two Voices Echoing), Léon Laflamme with L'Éclipse, Fadel Saleh with Notre place au soleil and Marie Cadieux with À double tour (Twice Condemned).
The Ontario and West Studio has had great success with series. In addition to the exuberance of 20 ans express, the camera as therapy of Transit 30/50 and the new-generation voices of L'Urgence de se dire, the most significant series remains À la recherche de l'homme invisible, 12 documentaries co-produced with Aquila Productions that profile some Ontario men and women who have contributed to preserving the language and culture of Franco-Ontarians. À la recherche de l'homme invisible is the most important French series ever made in Canada outside Quebec.
Two films in the series garnered honours: Notre place au soleil by Fadel Saleh won the Multiculturalism Award at the Prix Gémeaux in 1992, while Valmont Jobin's Mon pays… won the award for best testimonial at the International Festival of Films on Art in 1992.
The 11th Journées du cinéma africain et créole in 1995 gave The Tolerance Award to Yves Bisaillon for Le Quatuor de l'exil. In 1999, Frenchkiss - La génération du rêve Trudeau (Just Watch Me: Trudeau and the ‘70s Generation), a film by Catherine Annau, was chosen Best Canadian First Feature Film at the Toronto International Film Festival. Enfer et contre tous! (No Quick Fix) by Andrée Cazabon was nominated for Best Documentary at the Prix Gémeaux of 2001. The film Après… (Aftermath) by Lisa Fitzgibbons premiered at the World Film Festival in Montreal in 2001.
A decade after she gave us an inside look at the lives of several women prisoners in À double tour (Twice Condemned), filmmaker Marie Cadieux explored her friendship with Diane Charron in Sentence Vie (Sentenced to Life). The film draws us into Diane's vicious circle of prison and psychiatric hospital. In L'appétit d'Ève, Vancouver director Fabienne Lips-Dumas describes her release from the strictures of her traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs after she discovers the path to freedom through science. Her adventure begins with her fascination with the extraordinary fauna of 500 million years ago: the Burgess Shale fossils in the Canadian Rockies.
In Ottawa, Andrée Cazabon (Les jeunes de la Couronne) follows kids as they leave the Children's Aid Society and find themselves on the street, recruited by gangs or sleeping on a friend's couch. Nadine Valcin of Toronto (Sur le bout de la langue) highlights the issues facing the French-language school system in Ontario through portraits of young Franco-Ontarian high-schoolers in different regions of the province.
Anne-Marie Rocher (Les Acadiens de l'Île, chronique d'une renaissance) reports on a community – the Acadians of Prince Edward Island – trying to revive their mother tongue. Also in Toronto, Ilan Saragosti (La ruée vers l'Ouest) tells the story of a romantic obsession, that of young Quebecers seduced by the powerful idyllic mirage of British Columbia. He records their hopes, their bitter disappointments and the hazards they face.
In Winnipeg, Raoul McKay (Le Mechif) explores the importance of preserving and improving the Mechif language. A mixture of old French, Cree and Ojibwa, the language was attacked and suppressed by colonists but survived and is today a means of reaffirming cultural identity.
In Vancouver, Isabelle Longnus and Jonathan Benny (Black and Blue) focus on the phenomenon of gay festivals and their political, social and economic influence on host cities, while Sylvie Peltier (Homo Taxus) questions our tax system, with more and more poor people unable to pay their taxes while the rich continue to pressure governments to pay as little as possible. Georges Payrastre (Le père Mouchet andLes Gwitchin) examines the struggle of a group of Native women to save their children and their community from the ravages of rapid social change.
The Ontario and West Studio covers a vast territory and produces a great diversity of documentaries from French-language film and video artists.