Five films to discover the many faces of Québec, explore its heritage, and spark conversations — created for newcomers! Available free of charge!
Synopsis
A driven but intimate work, this film recounts the history of Manicouagan (North Shore, Quebec) a legendary territory shaped by the impact of an asteroid 215 million years ago. From the St. Lawrence River to north of the 51st parallel, the legendary Route 389 brings us to the heart of this meteor crater to meet some extraordinary individuals (astrophysicists, geologists, truck-stop manager, hikers). Digging deep into their memories, the Innu of Pessamit tell of the dispossession of their ancestral lands, which were flooded by the construction of the big hydro dams, leading to the disorientation of the young people from their community. After choosing to live in the boreal forest at the feet of the Uapishka Mountains, a guide and a hermit reveal their powerful connection with nature. In this non-linear narrative with many faces, the land speaks out and questions the traces we humans leave behind us.
A word from Tënk
This film is part of our Welcome Films program, which offers newcomers a window into Québec’s past and present. Available to watch for free!
"It’s a very beautiful film. The various changes brought about by the hydroelectric dam created a number of opportunities. Electricity gave rise to a different way of living. I appreciated the intimate relationship the characters had with the land. Hearing them describe how the land was organized, the memories they held. The film is highly contrasted; on one side, you see people who are well settled and who love the land, and on the other, a kind of melancholy. The film reflects a certain reality present in Quebec, this duality. It’s important to see in order to fully understand this duality."
Damien Mongsi
Cameroonian, living in Quebec since 2019
If you want to go further
- What does the place where you were born look like?
- What do you miss most about the landscapes of your childhood?
- Have you travelled in Québec?
- What stands out to you most about Québec’s landscape?
- Where would you like to go in Québec?
- Did you bring fragments/traces/pieces of your country of origin with you?
- Do you often return to / have you returned to the places where you were born?
- Do you still dream of the landscapes of your past?
Points for reflection
Québec is characterized by its vastness; Canada’s largest province, it covers 1.7 million square kilometres. Across this immense territory, 80% of the population (nearly 7 million people) live in the south, mainly along the St. Lawrence River. Some 3.6 million bodies of water dot the landscape, while forests cover half of this strange country-that-is-not-a-country.
Manicouagan, a geopoetic exploration of the Manicouagan-Uapishka territory, invites us to collectively reflect on the traces we leave behind, and on the traces that the landscapes we inhabit leave within us. Through an intimate narrative that shares filmmaker Nadine Beaudet’s quest — a woman who never truly left the vast Côte-Nord region she carries within herself and that witnessed her birth — the film invites us to share in this personal reflection on the visceral attachment that connects us to the landscapes of our childhood. By weaving in the testimonies of people who have each been shaped in their own way by these majestic places, the filmmaker allows us, among other things, to encounter Innu communities and reminds us that there are many different ways of inhabiting a place.*
This film immerses us in the little-known history of Québec’s vast northern territories by giving us access to one small fragment of them. While it helps foster a connection to Québec’s landscapes, it also offers a unique opportunity to share memories, impressions, and stories of the places where newcomers were born. As human beings, we are shaped by the territories we come from: their seasons, colours, and scents. A group screening will undoubtedly open the door to a rich and moving exchange, highlighting the fragments of territory that we all carry within us.
*Geopoetics is an artistic and philosophical approach developed in the 1970s by Scottish writer and thinker Kenneth White:
“Geopoetics is a transdisciplinary theory-practice applicable to all fields of life and research, whose aim is to restore and enrich the human-Earth relationship, long disrupted, with the ecological, psychological, and intellectual consequences we know, thereby developing new existential perspectives in a re-founded world.”
— Kenneth White
