Remembering Maria Chapdelaine
This feature documentary by Jean-Claude Labrecque recounts the bold and astounding enterprise of French filmmaker Julien Duvivier, who shot a film adaptation of Louis Hémon’s classic novel Maria Chapdelaine in Péribonka, a village in Quebec’s Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region, in 1934. What was the impact of the original film’s production on the life of the community? What memories remain? What town secrets lie hidden in those memories?
Tracking our identity and our relationship with the past, Labrecque and his team delve into the boundaries between the fantasy world of film and reality. Drawing on clips from Duvivier’s film, material from archives in France and Quebec, and original footage shot by Labrecque and his team in Péribonka in 2013, the documentary Remembering Maria Chapdelaine is an inquiry into the boundaries between the fantasy world of film and reality.
Tracking our identity and our relationship with the past, Labrecque and his team delve into the boundaries between the fantasy world of film and reality. Drawing on clips from Duvivier’s film, material from archives in France and Quebec, and original footage shot by Labrecque and his team in Péribonka in 2013, the documentary Remembering Maria Chapdelaine is an inquiry into the boundaries between the fantasy world of film and reality.