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English-French Relations (11)
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The Boy Next DoorErnest Reid 1962 18 minWhen French-speaking Jacques moves next door to English-speaking Jimmy, each is amazed to find that the other doesn't speak his language. But when it comes to exploring and playing together, language just doesn't seem to matter. Each soon finds himself venturing into the other's language. -
Between the SolitudesAbbey Jack Neidik 1992 49 minIn this documentary, journalist Josh Freed takes a personal journey through English-speaking Montréal; its history, its haunts, its characters, and the difficulties and delights experienced in trying to straddle two solitudes. This is a sometimes angry, often funny and always affectionate portrait of a city split along linguistic lines, as seen through the eyes of its English-speaking minority.
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Love on WheelsBen Low & Ian Rankin 1979 4 minA love story between an English boy and a French girl that takes place at a roller skating rink.
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If at FirstGilles Gascon 1969 22 minIn learning a language such as French or English it is certainly a matter of trying again and then again. This film, made with the cooperation of teachers and students, takes a sympathetic look at the application and perseverance required in mastering all the idiosyncracies of a foreign language. It shows the methods of a language laboratory and, most important, the value of venturing into situations where expression in the language being learned must be attempted.
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Instant FrenchDavid Bairstow 1965 21 minThis short film features the adventures of a group of businessmen who are forced into taking French lessons to stay competitive in their field. At first put out by this news, one by one they begin to realize that gaining fluency in another language has its benefits. Produced in 1965, the film, intended as a good-natured spoof, is definitely a product of its time.
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The Rise and Fall of English MontrealWilliam Weintraub 1993 50 minIn the past 20 years, some 300,000 English-speaking people have left Montréal, convinced they had no future in a Québec that had become increasingly French, increasingly nationalistic. In this video we meet some of the people who are moving away and recall the days, in the last century, when there were more English-speaking people than French in Montréal. The video poses a controversial question: Will the city, with its youth leaving in great numbers, become a community of the elderly, unable to renew itself?
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Referendum - Take 2/Prise deuxStéphane Drolet 1996 1 h 16 minOctober, 1995. The most important political event in recent Canadian history, the Quebec vote on sovereignty, is about to unfold. During the tense days leading up to the referendum for independence, 23 filmmakers from the NFB's English and French documentary studios take their cameras into the streets and homes of Quebeckers. Culled from 250 hours of footage, Referendum is an emotional portrait of a profoundly divided society. In a collage of powerful moments, the video recaptures the emotions of that time and measures them against today's political agenda. Implicit is the question: What next?
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Sophie Wollock's NewspaperGilles Blais 1979 27 minThis short documentary profiles Sophie Wollock and the newspaper she founded for the western suburbs of Montreal in l963, The Suburban. A weekly paper distributed free to some 45,000 homes, most of them anglophone, The Suburban became famous for the strongly worded editorials written by Wollock, mainly on the subject of Québec nationalism. The film looks at the paper, then under the guidance of her son, and sums up some of Wollock's more impassioned editorials.
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The Secret OrderPhil Comeau 2022 1 h 24 minPhil Comeau shines a spotlight on the Ordre de Jacques-Cartier, a powerful secret society that operated from 1926 to 1965, infiltrating every sector of Canadian society and forging the fate of French-language communities. Through never-before-heard testimony from former members of the Order, along with historically accurate dramatic reconstructions, this film paints a gripping portrait of the social and political struggles of Canadian francophone-minority communities.
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Tickets s.v.pPierre Perrault 1973 9 minAn incident from the early days of Québec's quiet revolution, tailor-made for the cartoonist. It is the story of a Montréal commuter train, a unilingual ticket collector and a bilingual passenger. The passenger appears on screen himself to describe his bid to have tickets requested in French as well as in English. What ensued, and how even the railway president became involved, is illustrated with wit and humor.
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Waiting for CarolineRon Kelly 1967 1 h 24 minA feature drama about a girl torn between two cultures, the English-speaking community of Vancouver where she grew up and the French-speaking Québec where the film opens. Her uncertainty extends to her lovers, one from Vancouver who wants to take her home and the other from Québec who would like to continue their pleasant, if inconclusive affair. The settings show a Québec winter and British Columbia spring.
