Movies: Claude Jutra

Set in cold rural Quebec at Christmas time, we follow the coming of age of a young boy and the life of his family which owns the town's general store and undertaking business....

In Quebec 40s, orphans or abandoned children are placed in a gigantic psychiatric hospital where children were locked. Were they sick? No, they simply had no family. To escape this oppressive universe, they created a parallel world: the institution's...

Following her father's puzzling disappearance, Kate and her city-bred companions brave the untamed backwoods in a desperate search for him. However, the harsh environment becomes a dangerous catalyst for their explosive mix of personalities, propelli...

Angie and Helen are in love. They live and work together designing women's evening wear in Vancouver. When Helen decides she wants to have a baby, the pair set out to find a suitable sperm donor....

This short 1966 documentary dedicated "to all victims of intolerance” depicts the dawn of skateboarding in Montreal. A new activity frowned upon by police and adults, skateboarding gave youngsters a thrilling sensation of speed and freedom. This film...

An acerbic and surreal comedy about marriage and married life....

This short film is a series of vignettes of life in Saint-Henri, a Montreal working-class district, on the first day of school. From dawn to midnight, we take in the neighbourhood’s pulse: a mother fussing over children, a father's enforced idleness,...

A writer, Kamouraska is based on a real nineteenth-century love-triangle in rural Québec. It paints a poetic and terrifying tableau of the life of Elisabeth d'Aulnières: her marriage to Antoine Tassy, squire of Kamouraska; his violent murder; and her...

In this French Canadian film, the lives of teenagers are examined in fantasy sequences and through the use of documentary interviews. Prompted by the filmmaker, nine teenagers individually act out their secret dreams and, between times, talk about t...

An ordinary looking chair refuses to be sat upon....

An experimental movie based on a poem of the French writer and director Jean Cocteau about a servant who fantasises about killing the lady of the house....

A revealing look at the great Quebecois director who gave us such classic films as Mon Oncle Antoine, A toute prendre and Kamouraska: Power of Passion. Amidst the rise of French-Canadian identity and the political struggles of the '60s, Jutra was at ...

A young singer-songwriter abandons his life in his hometown and moves to the city to make it big. He achieves fame, but it comes at a price....

A ritual vase, the hampi, is placed in the center of the Musée de plein air de la République du Niger in Niamey, during a ritual ceremony featuring possession dances. With this film, Jean Rouch continues his ethnological and cinematographic study of ...

Three troubled couples attend a two day marital retreat in hopes of saving their marriages. Unbeknownst to them, their psychiatrist is not who they think he is....

A man struggles with his identity, his life choices, his interracial relationship, and his latent homosexuality. A portrait of some young intellectuals in early sixties Montreal....

In the early 1940's, Canada is a country at war and Florentine is a young woman, from a very poor family, looking for love. She meets two suitable men, a nice soldier from a good and wealthy family, and an ambitious self-centered engineer. She must d...

A classic NFB documentary about the Golden Gloves boxing tournament, the Canadian amateur's hope for success in the boxing world. This Gilles Groulx film shows three Montreal boxers in training. In behind-the-scenes interviews they talk about their a...

A woman's peculiar religious convictions lead her on a self-destructive path....

Ian Tracey plays 11-year-old Peter, who is plagued by demons and sent to an institution for setting fires. Peter escapes and hops a freight train headed into northern B.C. He is befriended by a native shaman or "dreamspeaker" (George Clutesi). The sh...