2024-01-11 00:00:00
On October 24, 2022, Radio-Canada ended the cinema gala that it had been broadcasting for 18 years.
An unjustifiable decision for a public broadcaster whose responsibility is to promote culture. The decision came at the worst time, since for the first time since 2011, six Quebec films exceeded one million or more box office receipts last year.
Our cinema seems to be entering a period as fertile as the early 2000s. In 2005, Quebec films accounted for 17% of Quebec’s box office, a feat comparable to that of Australian cinema, yet much further than the ours from the Hollywood steamroller.
To make up for it, Radio-Canada is showing next Sunday evening, at 8 p.m., on ICI Première, In a cinema near you, a kind of Beautiful Sundays hosted by the very likeable actress Karine Vanasse.
In this 90-minute documentary report, the actress goes behind the scenes of more than two dozen Quebec films that will be on our screens this year. Ironically, their number and quality prove that the decision to abandon the annual gala was ill-timed.
KARINE LOVES CINEMA
Frédéric Nassif, author of the documentary The cedars of Lebanon, produces this show which owes a lot to Karine Vanasse’s liveliness, curiosity and, above all, very real attachment to cinema. Even if In a cinema near you has the mission to introduce us to films that are still at the script stage, such as Two women in goldfilming as 1995 de Ricardo Trogi ou en postproduction comme Sisters-in-lawthe special show still gives pride of place to Ru, a film that has been on display since November 24.
I knew that there was a long friendship between Karine Vanasse and Kim Thùy, but I did not know that the actress had been indirectly at the origin of her first novel. In the show, Kim Thùy recounts that Karine, upon her return from Thailand, had given him a notebook which she had autographed thus: “It is time that you stop offering your words to others and that you start to write”. This is how the novel would have been born Ru, printed in 540,000 copies and translated into 28 languages.
Sunday’s show lets us discover the reaction of Kim Thùy and his entire family when they were shown Charles-Olivier Michaud’s film at the Toronto International Film Festival.
KARINE AND ALANIS OBOMSAWIN
Karine’s meeting with Alanis Obomsawin is another highlight. My old friend Alanis has made 65 films since 1967. She could almost single-handedly justify the very existence of the National Film Board. Two other films by the Algonquin filmmaker, Daylight et The Green Horse, will be released this year, but they will not be her last, swears Alanis who is only 91 years old!
The broadcast of more than an hour (90 minutes with messages) really makes you look forward to discovering the films of 2024, including Two women in golda remake secretly concocted by screenwriter Catherine Léger and director Chloé Robichaud, Hotel Silence by Léa Pool, which could be her last film according to what she has suggested, and the Pauline Julien that Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette prepares with as much affection as feverishness.
At the end of the show, I was almost ready to forgive Radio-Canada for dropping the cinema gala. A moment of weakness on my part!
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