Domestic paradise
and the opposite

Two screenings juxtapose two very
different versions of the home life

OUT OF SIGHT: Algonquins from Le Peuple Invisible

by CHRISTOPHER HAZOU

The 11th annual Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal (RIDM) doesn’t roll around until November, but organizers offer up two screenings this weekend for film fans in search of a non-fiction fix.

The 2008 Genie Award winner for best documentary, Radiant City, which was part of last year’s RIDM, will be shown at 7 p.m. tonight, Thursday, Aug. 14, at Cinéma du Parc (3575 Parc), as part of the monthly Docville series. The screening will be followed by a discussion with Christopher Gobeil of the Committee for the Sustainable Redevelopment of Griffintown.

Co-directed by filmmaker Gary Burns and CBC journalist Jim Brown, Radiant City examines the phenomenon of suburban sprawl in the 21st century and its affects on those who inhabit it.

“The suburban environment is a subject that both of us had been interested in,” says Brown over the line from his home in Calgary. “It’s something I’ve covered as a journalist and Gary has touched on in his narrative films, so we decided to come up with something together.”

What the two first-time documentarians came up with was a boundary-pushing, critically acclaimed film with a soundtrack by Pixies guitarist Joey Santiago.

“It is a documentary in the sense that we are talking to real experts, we’re following actual people who live in the suburbs, but we play around with the form a little bit,” says Brown. “We tried to underline the unreal aspects of the suburbs by introducing some unreal aspects into the film.”

EXPLORING SUBURBIA:
Radiant City’s Gary Burns (L) and Jim Brown

Anywheresville, North America

Radiant City was shot in the fall of 2005 in a number of cities around the U.S. and Canada, giving it a kind of generic, “anywhere in North America” atmosphere. At the time, Brown, the host of CBC radio’s Calgary morning show, had an unexpected vacation due to a labour dispute at the corporation. “I was fortunate in one sense,” he says. “We had a little unscheduled leave given to us—we were all locked out. It was my lockout project.”

With its genre-bending elements and a surprise ending, Radiant City provokes questions not only about the environments in which we live, but about truth and reality, and the nature of the documentary film itself.

“We’re trying to get a discussion going about how and where we live, and whether we can do a better job of building new communities. But we’re also playing with the documentary form, and hopefully getting conversations going after the film about what’s real and what isn’t real,” says Brown.

Flush with success, Brown and Burns are already back at work on their next project, a kind of follow-up to Radiant City, minus the suburbs. “We’re in the writing stage of a film about the future,” Brown says. “It’ll be another twisted film focused on where we’re going from here.”

Canadian Third World

Far from the shiny, plastic facade of suburbia, Richard Desjardins and Robert Monderie’s Le Peuple invisible will be screened for free outdoors at the Théâtre de Verdure at Parc Lafontaine this Friday, Aug. 15, at 8:30 p.m.

Winner of the 2008 Jutra for best documentary, Le Peuple Invisible tracks the plight of the Algonquin, who once occupied large swaths of Quebec and Ontario, but who are today relegated to a small number of destitute communities that border on third-world conditions, far away from the public eye and consciousness.

“I think it’s the first time their story has been told,” says Desjardins from Havre St-Pierre, where the Québécois folk singer is on tour.

Desjardins says he and longtime friend and filmmaking partner Monderie had little trouble gaining the trust of their Algonquin subjects, some of whom were fans of his. “I think they liked my music, so that was a nice way to get in touch with them,” he says. “And they saw that we were independent, we weren’t attached to any company or government.”

Le Peuple invisible premiered at the Abitibi Film Festival last November, with many Algonquins in attendance. “All the chiefs were there,” says Desjardins. “Many of them didn’t even know their own story. They told us it was very rough [to see on screen], but necessary.”

In spite of the film’s positive reception and the spotlight thrown on the problems facing the Algonquin, Desjardins isn’t optimistic about their future, at least not in the short term. “[The government] doesn’t give a fuck about them,” he says. “The problem is so large and abstract, [serious action] will probably only come as a result of international pressure.”

For more info on either film, visit www.ridm.qc.ca.