“A man who was equal parts poet and cinéaste, nationalist and naturalist, intellectual and laborer.” –D. Totaro

Although Pierre Perrault is a hugely important figure for Québécois cinema, he has remained largely unknown outside of his home province. Developing a unique style of documentary cinema while making use of ever lighter and smaller equipment, Perrault explored Québec and its inhabitants from up close. Shot throughout rural French Canada, his films speak of a time when Québec was still in search of its own identity and voice

Born in 1927, Perrault grew up in Montréal where he repeatedly got kicked out of private schools until he finally graduated as a lawyer from Université de Montréal. He practiced for two years in the 1950s, then started working for Radio Canada and spent several years traveling along the Saint Lawrence River, recording traditional folk songs, interviewing the residents, and meeting many of the people who would later appear in his films. His first radio series Au Pays de Neufve-France (In the Land of New France) was one such exploration of traditional music, which later became a television series. It was through this assignment that Perrault first met the inhabitants of Isle-aux-Coudres.

Exploring the language and culture of the island’s inhabitants, which have remained nearly unchanged for three centuries, the Isle-aux-Coudres trilogy follows in the tradition of ethnographic films like Flaherty’s Nanook of the North. Sometimes called “cinema of the spoken word,” Perrault’s films emphasize the role of language and vernacular in passing knowledge and customs between generations. By looking at tradition and history, at Québec’s roots in France, and at urban influences on rural societies, Perrault positioned himself politically through his films at a time when separatism was a subject of intense debate. Some called his anthropological films reactionary; some believed they helped the separatists’ cause.

After The Isle-aux-Coudres trilogy, Perrault distanced himself from direct cinema and started making films about Québécois nationalism, documenting protests and questioning the feasibility of separatism. He returned to the people of rural Québec in the mid 1970s in his Abitibi cycle, which centered around farmer Hauris Lalancette.

He finally turned to aboriginal issues and topics of wilderness and hunting. LA BÊTE LUMINEUSE (1982), a film about nine Québécois urbanites on a moose hunting trip in the wilderness, was screened at the Cannes Film Festival and ignited a firestorm of debate in France and Canada.

Perrault made feature-length documentaries while continuing to work in radio and television throughout his life, and from 1965 onwards he acted as director of the National Film Board of Canada. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of the Quiet Revolution from the Government of Québec for his contributions to Québecois culture in the 1960s.

Special thanks to the National Film Board of Canada.

POUR LA SUITE DU MONDE
Dir. Michel Brault and Pierre Perrault, 1963
Canada, 105 min.
In French with English subtitles.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 2 – 5 PM
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 22 – 7:30 PM

Directed in co-operation with Michel Brault (who was later to become another big name of Québécois cinema), POUR LA SUITE DU MONDE follows the lives of the inhabitants of Isle-aux-Coudres, where Perrault had met Alexis Tremblay and Louis Harvey—two of the trilogy’s protagonists—while working for Radio Canada.

Alexis’s son, Léopold, is trying to get a team together to reinvigorate the island’s abandoned tradition of beluga whale trapping. When his father—the only man with any knowledge of the ancient trapping techniques—stubbornly withholds his support for the endeavor, “Grand-Louis” Harvey steps up to offer his help. Ultimately, the film’s subject is not the whale that gets caught and sold to an aquarium in New York, but rather the islanders’ way of working together to reestablish a custom that has only been transmitted orally.

LA RÈGNE DU JOUR
Dir. Pierre Perrault, 1967
Canada, 118 min.
In French with English subtitles.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 11 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 17 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 25 – 10 PM

Four years after POUR LA SUITE DU MONDE, Pierre Perrault invites the Tremblay family to Perche, Normandy, the region in Western France from which the people of Québec are said to originate.

On the way to France, the Tremblay family visits an old friend—the beluga whale they shipped off to New York years ago. By cutting back and forth between documentation of the Tremblay family’s experiences in France and the verbal accounts of the trip they give to their friends and neighbors upon their return, Perrault comments on his characters, often refuting them when the camera proves to have a “better memory” than they do.

LES VOITURES D’EAU
Dir. Pierre Perrault, 1968
Canada, 110 min.
In French with English subtitles.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 11 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 18 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 29 – 10 PM

The first half of LES VOITURES D’EAU alternates between workers building a wooden schooner and shipmen fixing their weather-beaten ships. Like the beluga whale hunt, the building of the boat brings the community together. The men debate the craft of shipbuilding while townsfolk stop by to gossip. The ships, which are used to transport wood to the pulp mills, are an important part of the island’s economy. In the second half of the film a longshoremen’s strike in the city of Trois-Rivières maroons a handful of Isle-aux-Coudres ships for 39 days, leaving the men with nothing to do—a rare condition for them. They complain about the march toward automation, the inequality between union and non-union workers, the government’s bias toward big shipping companies, the competition from off-shore ships, but ultimately they accept their fate with a philosophical attitude.

The film culminates in the burning of a ship no longer deemed sea-worthy. An aesthetic spectacle, for Alexis and Laurent Tremblay it is a painful reminder of a lost tradition.

HAWK JONES
Dir. Richard Lowry, 1986
USA, 88 min.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 8 – 8:00 PM
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 16 – 5:00 PM
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 17 – 10:00 PM
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 26 – 7:30 PM

Minitropolis is under siege by gangster Antonio Coppola, whose reach extends throughout the city, all the way to the police department, where the Chief of Police does everything in his power to aid Coppola and thwart the one person who can rid the city of this scourge once and for all — HAWK JONES! Against all odds, Hawk uses an arsenal of weapons to take down Coppola’s army of thugs and anyone who stands in the way of justice.

We should mention the average age of the cast is eight years old.

Those of you expecting Disneyfied goofs should beware — this is a film well in line with shoot-em-all 80s action. There’s no mugging to the camera, no soapy morality lessons, no relentless merchandising. What you do get is Uzi-toting shootouts, crooked cops, milk-slinging speakeasies and a hero more in line with Fred Williamson than Fred Rogers. In other words, perfect for Spectacle!

It’s a mini-fest of crazy Italian B-movies created to cash in on more successful brethren, but taken to the nth degree—where the initial source material, the cinematic urtext as it were, is forgotten, and what we have left is the fun-house reflection of a reflection of a reflection. And each reflection must keep getting crazier to top what came before, until all conscious ties to THE FRENCH CONNECTION, George Lucas’s cash machine, or any Hollywood westerns are forever lost.

You can also witness the evolution of the B-movie as the marketplace’s tastes change over the years—and check out some of the madness imitation has created! See a PCP-psychosis Spaghetti Western; a brutal indictment of sexism disguised as a crime exposé; and a Star Wars rip-off so blatant, it’s actually charming…

Much in the same way kids play with random toys without thought, having G.I. Joe and Spider-Man confront each other in the backyard, Italian Space Operas shamelessly and often obviously mash-up chunks of different styles and genre. But when you look at it, all of the films in this mini-series are doing this, some more obviously than others…

MATALO!
Dir. Cesare Canevari, 1970
Italy, 92 min.
Dubbed into English.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 1 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 9 – 5 PM
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 28 – 10 PM

Like EL TOPO’s meaner, stupider, more drug-addled little brother, this Spaghetti Western is in some ways even more mysterious and insane than Jodorowsky’s classic—because EL TOPO knows what it is doing, while often MATALO! does not.

To understand MATALO!—if you dare—consider this: It’s the B-Maestro’s tribute to the late-’60s Biker Movie (where the Hells Angels ride in and trash a town) disguised as a Spaghetti Western. More The Wild Angels than The Wild Bunch!

Never not entertaining (if your tastes dovetail with old-school 42nd Street sleaze), MATALO! spits in the eye of all things Hollywood. Our “hero” backstabs everybody, and then the “good guy” is one of those movie-pacifists who lets himself get stomped again and again before realizing that, gosh, he should use his magical powers to fight back. Meanwhile, the psychedelic influence seems perhaps more behind the camera—how high were they when making this? But thankfully the incoherence is balanced with a vibe of pure hippie hate: These Manson-esque longhairs suck.

After being rescued from a hanging, scumbag protagonist Burt (Corrado Pani) guns down his buddies—because who wants to share the loot?—and hightails it to a ghost town to meet up with his violent and incestuous kin who are just as awful as he is.

Italian superstar Lou Castel (who probably wishes he was back in BULLET FOR THE GENERAL) is the “good guy,” who doesn’t carry a gun, but a bandoleer full of…boomerangs, and why he’s here is anybody’s guess, but somebody had to show up and teach Burt a lesson…

As long as you’re willing to deal with utterly corrupt and ruthless cowboys taking a hot dump all over your John Ford/Howard Hawks preconceived notions of what a western should be, you’ll be fine. Every frame of MATALO! oozes that grimy, gritty vibe that usually you only get from a dirtbag late-1960s biker flick…while looking super—like any western shot in Spain should be…

MATALO! is a technically perfect movie, with crisp long-lens cinematography and a very mobile camera, sharp editing and an awesome “in your face” fuzz-guitar/electronico musical score, by Mario Migliardi—having all these technical aspects so top-notch, makes all the madness on-screen that much more odd and disturbing: Did they really know what they were doing with this movie?

TEENAGE PROSTITUTION RACKET
Dir. Carlo Lizzani & Mino Giarda, 1975
Italy, 123 min,
Dubbed into English.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 3 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 23 – 5 PM

Meandering, schizoid and evil-minded, this film is three intertwined tales of lost virtue whose essential message is “Italian men are irredeemable pigs”—and if you’re a chick stupid enough to get involved with them, they will fuck you over both literally and figuratively. Jumping on the bandwagon of “realistic, but ultraviolent crime/cop movies” that Italy churned in the wake of THE FRENCH CONNECTION, while adding exploitation elements from the “Schoolgirl in Trouble” and “Stewardess/Nurse” genres, directors Lizzani & Giarda deliver a movie Lars von Trier wishes he’d made…

TEEN PROSTITUTION RACKET is a must-see for connoisseurs of “feel bad” movies. This film’s overt subtext (“men suck”) is hammered home with depressing regularity: you witness the almost-artless creation of an awful world of sexual Darwinism. Nasty, intense stuff, that’s borderline depressing, really. Shot semi-cinema verite in an around Milan, it’s a film that makes you feel DIRTY while watching innocent economically deprived young woman after innocent economically deprived young woman being utterly corrupted by some slick pimp.

What’s worse is that sometimes that pimp is Grandma…

THE HUMANOID
Dir. Aldo Lado (as George B. Lewis), 1979
Italy, 100 min.
Dubbed into English

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 9 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 18 – 10 PM
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24 – 10 PM

Needs to be enjoyed—not only for the kinda decent effects (created by Antonio Margheriti—a.k.a. Antony M. Dawson—the director of those legendarily bad Italian space exploration flicks from the 1960s), or the second unit direction of Enzo G. Castellari (!!!), or the space opera score by Ennio Morricone (!?!), but for the goofy attempt to turn Bond villain Richard “Jaws” Kiel (R.I.P.) into a family-friendly gentle-giant good guy! It’s as if someone from the Sunn Classics studios managed to sneak into Cinecittà for a little while and started messing with the formulas.

A deliriously stupid rip-off of Star Wars that actually seems more like a “lost” episode of NBC’s Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, THE HUMANOID also tries to ride the coattails of James Bond by casting Kiel alongside his sex-bomb costars from The Spy Who Loved Me, Barbara Bach, and Moonraker, Corrine Clery. As such, the flick often resembles a sober, sort-of-kid-friendly Barbarella, Roger Vadim’s made-in-Italy “Space James Bond” spoof, especially with THE HUMANOID’s combination of nonsensical dialog and “secret mission” action set pieces.

But THE HUMANOID has the added joy of a Hollywood legend chewing the scenery. In one of his last roles, veteran Arthur Kennedy tears it up as a mad scientist seeking intergalactic revenge—the actor needed the paycheck obviously (he doesn’t look too well), but still goes for the gusto. This movie also rips off 1970s mystical martial arts TV show Kung Fu with a little Asian wise child—who is actually a Yoda figure one year before The Empire Strikes Back was released! Hmmmm….

The film’s best value is nostalgia: although THE HUMANOID may have never gotten a stateside release (depending on whom you ask), it’s very much like other colorful and semi-unique rip-offs/tributes to Star Wars that we grew up with, like Battle Beyond the Stars, The Black Hole, Flash Gordon, Message From Space and, of course, everybody’s favorite Starcrash!

BLAST OFF!!! Avanti!