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Quebec filmmaker tackles Montreal massacre
Wednesday May 21st 2008CANNES, France – Quebec filmmaker Denis Villeneuve has come to the Cannes Film Festival with a short film about gluttony that has people talking.
Back home in Canada, he’s working on a dramatic feature about the 1989 Montreal Massacre that has people holding their breath: “Everybody I know is afraid of the movie,” he told the Toronto Star in an exclusive interview.
The short about gluttony is called Next Floor, an 11-minute pantomime of “ritualistic gastronomic carnage,” to quote the program notes. The short is screening at the International Critics’ Week festival sidebar, which continues through Friday.
It shows 11 gourmands chowing down so aggressively on heaps of meat, fish and other delicacies, they keep crashing through the floors of the multi-level warehouse where they are dining. The most common interpretation of the surreal event is that it’s a comment on how humans are rapaciously consuming the Earth’s resources to the point of calamity.
The idea for Next Floor came from Phoebe Greenberg, one of the film’s producers. Villeneuve said he directed it for “the pure pleasure of making cinema” and also because it’s a “relief” from the daunting feature he is currently editing in Montreal.
Called Polytechnique, it dramatizes the Montreal Massacre of Dec. 6, 1989, in which 14 women were killed, and 10 women and four men were injured by deranged gunman Marc Lépine, who claimed he was targeting feminists. He then took his own life.
It’s titled for École Polytechnique, an engineering school affiliated with l’Université de Montréal, where the tragedy occurred. The movie, which is in English, was shot earlier this year in Montreal under tight security.
It’s scheduled for a 2009 release, marking the 20th anniversary of the tragedy, but it could well debut this fall on the festival circuit, most likely at either the Montreal or Toronto film fests.
“I think it’s going to attract a lot of attention,” said Villeneuve, 40, in an interview in a restaurant along the Riviera beachfront.
“Some people love the idea; others hate the idea to make a film about such an event. But that’s what I like about it. I love those kind of movies that have roots in reality and deal with real events.”
Does he think Canadians are ready to see a realistic screen re-creation of one of the darkest moments in the country’s history? It’s such a touchy topic, the film’s producer Don Carmody (Chicago) has refused comment on his own production.
“That’s a good question that I can’t answer just by the movie,” said Villeneuve, who is known for his visual flair from earlier films Maelström and 32nd Day of August on Earth.
“I think everybody’s afraid; everybody I know is afraid of the movie. But so far the people who have seen it are relieved. They say, `Okay, that was a good idea because of the angle you chose and the feeling you get after it.’ I don’t know if the audience is going to like it, but I’m doing it because it’s a subject that touched me a lot.”
In what way did it touch him? He thinks different generations reacted differently to the massacre, and there were different responses to the killer’s avowed anti-feminist agenda.
“At the time I was the same age as the people who went through this event. I know there was a lot of misunderstanding between generations from the people who lived it and the older generation that judged the people. They judge the men because they say the men did nothing and they judge the women because they say the women said they were not feminists (to try to avoid being shot).”
While the work is technically a work of fiction – real names of victims aren’t used – Villeneuve has tried to make it as historically accurate as possible. He talked to survivors and also to police officers, doctors, teachers and other students who responded to the attack, and who attended to the dead and wounded.
He doesn’t shy away from the horror. “There’s a lot of violence in the movie. If you want to understand what happened you have to see what they’ve been through, what I tried to portray.”
Yet at the same time, Villeneuve said he’s tried to be very subtle in his approach. He insisted he’s not trying to exploit anyone, but instead wants to offer consolation.
“I think the movie has to deal with consolation for those people. I’m making the movie for the students of Polytechnique who went through that day.”
It is told from the perspective of the victims, and not from that of Lépine, who is played by actor Maxim Gaudette, 33. Gaudette was in the cast of Les 3 p’tits cochons (The 3 Li’l Pigs), a comedy smash last year in Quebec.
Polytechnique sounds a lot like Elephant, the dramatic re-creation of the 1999 Columbine school shootings that won Gus Van Sant both the Palme d’Or and the directing prize at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival. Villeneuve doesn’t deny the influence.
“Elephant for me is a masterpiece. I loved it, but at one point I said, ‘F— Gus Van Sant!’ in my head because I wouldn’t be able to do Polytechnique. It’s like trying to make a war movie after Apocalypse Now. So you say f— off and you do your own interpretation of it, although it’s basically the same universe of students going through violence.”
Whatever the reaction is to Polytechnique, Villeneuve wants people to know that he has approached the topic with the best of artistic intentions.
“I did it with a lot of humility. It’s not a film that I came to with a lot of ego.”
Source: The Toronto Star
Headline, Industry News
Quebec filmmaker tackles Montreal massacre
Wednesday May 21st 2008CANNES, France – Quebec filmmaker Denis Villeneuve has come to the Cannes Film Festival with a short film about gluttony that has people talking.
Back home in Canada, he’s working on a dramatic feature about the 1989 Montreal Massacre that has people holding their breath: “Everybody I know is afraid of the movie,” he told the Toronto Star in an exclusive interview.
The short about gluttony is called Next Floor, an 11-minute pantomime of “ritualistic gastronomic carnage,” to quote the program notes. The short is screening at the International Critics’ Week festival sidebar, which continues through Friday.
It shows 11 gourmands chowing down so aggressively on heaps of meat, fish and other delicacies, they keep crashing through the floors of the multi-level warehouse where they are dining. The most common interpretation of the surreal event is that it’s a comment on how humans are rapaciously consuming the Earth’s resources to the point of calamity.
The idea for Next Floor came from Phoebe Greenberg, one of the film’s producers. Villeneuve said he directed it for “the pure pleasure of making cinema” and also because it’s a “relief” from the daunting feature he is currently editing in Montreal.
Called Polytechnique, it dramatizes the Montreal Massacre of Dec. 6, 1989, in which 14 women were killed, and 10 women and four men were injured by deranged gunman Marc Lépine, who claimed he was targeting feminists. He then took his own life.
It’s titled for École Polytechnique, an engineering school affiliated with l’Université de Montréal, where the tragedy occurred. The movie, which is in English, was shot earlier this year in Montreal under tight security.
It’s scheduled for a 2009 release, marking the 20th anniversary of the tragedy, but it could well debut this fall on the festival circuit, most likely at either the Montreal or Toronto film fests.
“I think it’s going to attract a lot of attention,” said Villeneuve, 40, in an interview in a restaurant along the Riviera beachfront.
“Some people love the idea; others hate the idea to make a film about such an event. But that’s what I like about it. I love those kind of movies that have roots in reality and deal with real events.”
Does he think Canadians are ready to see a realistic screen re-creation of one of the darkest moments in the country’s history? It’s such a touchy topic, the film’s producer Don Carmody (Chicago) has refused comment on his own production.
“That’s a good question that I can’t answer just by the movie,” said Villeneuve, who is known for his visual flair from earlier films Maelström and 32nd Day of August on Earth.
“I think everybody’s afraid; everybody I know is afraid of the movie. But so far the people who have seen it are relieved. They say, `Okay, that was a good idea because of the angle you chose and the feeling you get after it.’ I don’t know if the audience is going to like it, but I’m doing it because it’s a subject that touched me a lot.”
In what way did it touch him? He thinks different generations reacted differently to the massacre, and there were different responses to the killer’s avowed anti-feminist agenda.
“At the time I was the same age as the people who went through this event. I know there was a lot of misunderstanding between generations from the people who lived it and the older generation that judged the people. They judge the men because they say the men did nothing and they judge the women because they say the women said they were not feminists (to try to avoid being shot).”
While the work is technically a work of fiction – real names of victims aren’t used – Villeneuve has tried to make it as historically accurate as possible. He talked to survivors and also to police officers, doctors, teachers and other students who responded to the attack, and who attended to the dead and wounded.
He doesn’t shy away from the horror. “There’s a lot of violence in the movie. If you want to understand what happened you have to see what they’ve been through, what I tried to portray.”
Yet at the same time, Villeneuve said he’s tried to be very subtle in his approach. He insisted he’s not trying to exploit anyone, but instead wants to offer consolation.
“I think the movie has to deal with consolation for those people. I’m making the movie for the students of Polytechnique who went through that day.”
It is told from the perspective of the victims, and not from that of Lépine, who is played by actor Maxim Gaudette, 33. Gaudette was in the cast of Les 3 p’tits cochons (The 3 Li’l Pigs), a comedy smash last year in Quebec.
Polytechnique sounds a lot like Elephant, the dramatic re-creation of the 1999 Columbine school shootings that won Gus Van Sant both the Palme d’Or and the directing prize at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival. Villeneuve doesn’t deny the influence.
“Elephant for me is a masterpiece. I loved it, but at one point I said, ‘F— Gus Van Sant!’ in my head because I wouldn’t be able to do Polytechnique. It’s like trying to make a war movie after Apocalypse Now. So you say f— off and you do your own interpretation of it, although it’s basically the same universe of students going through violence.”
Whatever the reaction is to Polytechnique, Villeneuve wants people to know that he has approached the topic with the best of artistic intentions.
“I did it with a lot of humility. It’s not a film that I came to with a lot of ego.”
Source: The Toronto Star
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Headline, Industry News
Quebec filmmaker tackles Montreal massacre
Wednesday May 21st 2008CANNES, France – Quebec filmmaker Denis Villeneuve has come to the Cannes Film Festival with a short film about gluttony that has people talking.
Back home in Canada, he’s working on a dramatic feature about the 1989 Montreal Massacre that has people holding their breath: “Everybody I know is afraid of the movie,” he told the Toronto Star in an exclusive interview.
The short about gluttony is called Next Floor, an 11-minute pantomime of “ritualistic gastronomic carnage,” to quote the program notes. The short is screening at the International Critics’ Week festival sidebar, which continues through Friday.
It shows 11 gourmands chowing down so aggressively on heaps of meat, fish and other delicacies, they keep crashing through the floors of the multi-level warehouse where they are dining. The most common interpretation of the surreal event is that it’s a comment on how humans are rapaciously consuming the Earth’s resources to the point of calamity.
The idea for Next Floor came from Phoebe Greenberg, one of the film’s producers. Villeneuve said he directed it for “the pure pleasure of making cinema” and also because it’s a “relief” from the daunting feature he is currently editing in Montreal.
Called Polytechnique, it dramatizes the Montreal Massacre of Dec. 6, 1989, in which 14 women were killed, and 10 women and four men were injured by deranged gunman Marc Lépine, who claimed he was targeting feminists. He then took his own life.
It’s titled for École Polytechnique, an engineering school affiliated with l’Université de Montréal, where the tragedy occurred. The movie, which is in English, was shot earlier this year in Montreal under tight security.
It’s scheduled for a 2009 release, marking the 20th anniversary of the tragedy, but it could well debut this fall on the festival circuit, most likely at either the Montreal or Toronto film fests.
“I think it’s going to attract a lot of attention,” said Villeneuve, 40, in an interview in a restaurant along the Riviera beachfront.
“Some people love the idea; others hate the idea to make a film about such an event. But that’s what I like about it. I love those kind of movies that have roots in reality and deal with real events.”
Does he think Canadians are ready to see a realistic screen re-creation of one of the darkest moments in the country’s history? It’s such a touchy topic, the film’s producer Don Carmody (Chicago) has refused comment on his own production.
“That’s a good question that I can’t answer just by the movie,” said Villeneuve, who is known for his visual flair from earlier films Maelström and 32nd Day of August on Earth.
“I think everybody’s afraid; everybody I know is afraid of the movie. But so far the people who have seen it are relieved. They say, `Okay, that was a good idea because of the angle you chose and the feeling you get after it.’ I don’t know if the audience is going to like it, but I’m doing it because it’s a subject that touched me a lot.”
In what way did it touch him? He thinks different generations reacted differently to the massacre, and there were different responses to the killer’s avowed anti-feminist agenda.
“At the time I was the same age as the people who went through this event. I know there was a lot of misunderstanding between generations from the people who lived it and the older generation that judged the people. They judge the men because they say the men did nothing and they judge the women because they say the women said they were not feminists (to try to avoid being shot).”
While the work is technically a work of fiction – real names of victims aren’t used – Villeneuve has tried to make it as historically accurate as possible. He talked to survivors and also to police officers, doctors, teachers and other students who responded to the attack, and who attended to the dead and wounded.
He doesn’t shy away from the horror. “There’s a lot of violence in the movie. If you want to understand what happened you have to see what they’ve been through, what I tried to portray.”
Yet at the same time, Villeneuve said he’s tried to be very subtle in his approach. He insisted he’s not trying to exploit anyone, but instead wants to offer consolation.
“I think the movie has to deal with consolation for those people. I’m making the movie for the students of Polytechnique who went through that day.”
It is told from the perspective of the victims, and not from that of Lépine, who is played by actor Maxim Gaudette, 33. Gaudette was in the cast of Les 3 p’tits cochons (The 3 Li’l Pigs), a comedy smash last year in Quebec.
Polytechnique sounds a lot like Elephant, the dramatic re-creation of the 1999 Columbine school shootings that won Gus Van Sant both the Palme d’Or and the directing prize at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival. Villeneuve doesn’t deny the influence.
“Elephant for me is a masterpiece. I loved it, but at one point I said, ‘F— Gus Van Sant!’ in my head because I wouldn’t be able to do Polytechnique. It’s like trying to make a war movie after Apocalypse Now. So you say f— off and you do your own interpretation of it, although it’s basically the same universe of students going through violence.”
Whatever the reaction is to Polytechnique, Villeneuve wants people to know that he has approached the topic with the best of artistic intentions.
“I did it with a lot of humility. It’s not a film that I came to with a lot of ego.”
Source: The Toronto Star
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