Short stories

>> Denis Côté’s low-budget flicks are making the scene on the festival circuit

by MARK SLUTSKY

Though he’s never been blessed with that most elusive of prizes, a grant, filmmaker and journalist Denis Côté has managed to persevere on, making 11 short films over the last few years and showing them in countless festivals. Actually, if you were to count them up, you’d find Côté’s films have had a grand total of 38 appearances at festivals across Canada and Europe, from Winnipeg’s Local Heroes fest to the 30th Figueira da Foz Film Festival in Portugal to the prestigious Rotterdam International Film Festival.
“It started at college,” says Côté of his cinematic endeavours, and his fledgling studio, Nihil Productions. “The rest I learned from the Cinémathéque and from watching tons of movies.” After school, Côté went on to host a film-oriented radio show at CIBL, before landing his current gig as the film editor at French weekly ICI (the Mirror’s sister paper).
Côté’s films, to this point, have all been shot on Super-8 or video. They’re all, by necessity, made on a relatively low budget, yet it hasn’t hurt their critical reception. Take the beautifully shot documentary Second valse, for instance, which follows two children in a small New Brunswick town. Co-director Steve Asselin and Côté made the film for $1,800, and won for Best Editing at the Atlantic Film Festival.
At 30 minutes, Côté’s latest, Les Petits Cagney, is his longest yet. Just finished, it’s somewhat inspired by the life of film legend James Cagney, who was a huge star yet felt typecast his entire life as a gangster. “It’s the story of a few little Cagneys who are pissed of at the image we give them in society,” he says. Featuring an original soundtrack by Da Bloody Gashes, the movie will likely be launched at an event at the Monument-National sometime in the next month. :