Michel Brault

Pour la suite du monde, or “when cinema recreates life, old gesture and future…”

Film Reference Library wrote:
For centuries the inhabitants of Île-aux-Coudres, a small island in the St. Lawrence River, trapped beluga whales by sinking a weir of saplings into the offshore mud at low tide. After 1920 the practice was abandoned.

In 1962, Michel Brault and Pierre Perrault, and a team of filmmakers from the NFB, arrived on the island to document life on Île-aux-Coudres and the resumption of the traditional whale trapping practice.Read More »

Les ordres has been rated by critics as one of the best Canadian films ever made. It subtly blends fiction and documentary realism in a chilling portrait of what can happen to a liberal democracy when the state imposes its power.

In October 1970, when FLQ terrorists kidnapped a British diplomat and threatened to (and later did) murder a Quebec cabinet minister, Prime Minister Trudeau sanctioned the War Measures Act and sent the Canadian army into Montreal. Close to 500 ordinary citizens who had no connection to the terrorists were summarily arrested and held without charge.Read More »