Recently, when asked about what he thought of Montreal, where he had practically just arrived, a Parisian colleague told me that he was disappointed in some ways, that it was less interesting than he thought, especially in terms of architecture. His answer puzzled me. I did not know what to say to him; although I personally find the architecture beautiful in its own way, I don't think that is the main charm of the city. I simply replied: "It's the little things".

Few filmmakers since the heyday of direct cinema seem to have understood this as well as Jenny Cartwright with I Remember a Time When No One Jogged in This Neighbourhood, a sprawling ethnographic mosaic of a vibrant and eventful city. If the synopsis of the film presents Parc-Extension as a neighborhood ''particularly threatened by the merciless gentrification'', Cartwright does not pity its inhabitants. On the contrary, she demonstrates wonderfully with her impressionistic images and her magnificent soundtrack that the neighbourhood is anything but dead, that Montreal is not only the Olympic stadium, the Saint Joseph's oratory or the Mount Royal. That Montreal is rather two strangers playing chess in a park, being at your favorite bakery on a Saturday morning, that the multicultural neighborhood of Parc-Extension is diversity, uniqueness and richness.
 

Jean-François Vaudrin
Head of acquisitions at Tënk
and film critic

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