Cinema Canada (Dec 1974-Jan 1975)

National Film Board, Léopold Z. Then the CFDC came in and then Denys Héroux made a couple of films that proved you could make money making films in Quebec. So there was a bit of a crest and I rode it. But these guys were in the same situation I was in — everybody was learning. They had done a lot of shooting — mainly slow zooms on quiet seagulls for the National Film Board — but now they were working in the private sector. The director would come on the set and you’d sense he was groping ... He hadn’t slept the night before worrying about how the hell he’d shoot this next scene. Everybody was learning! Which directors do you like working with most? I like to work with Gilles Carle. I personally enjoy working with that man and I really like him very much... Pierre Harel, who made Bulldozer — which was released two years after it was shot — he has great potential and I like working with him. Denys Arcand is a guy I’ve worked with just a little bit, but I'd like to work with him. I like Don Owen very much — as a man and the way he operates. I’ve worked in Canada and I’ve worked in Québec, so there are quite a few directors... I'd like to make a cowboy movie. A Leone or something like that. That would be different. Do you have any other unfulfilled ambitions? I’m not really ambitious. I’m not a very hard worker, and I try to live day by day. If I’m happy today and tomorrow looks alright — that’s okay with me. It’s really not more complicated than that. If I’d tell you something else, ’'d have to make it up. That’s how it is. I’m doing something I like and what’s important is if I’m satisfied. I’ve done films I was very unhappy with and they’ve become great successes. Take a film like Deux Femmes en Or which has made about three million dollars for an investment of $240,000. In Québec, that film went on and on, it was still playing all summer. This year! For that amount of money, in Québec, everyone has seen it three times! But I’m not happpy — it’s not one of my favourite films. There are scenes in there that I don’t even want to think about! Jutra once said that coming to Toronto was like going to a foreign country — did you feel that way while you were here for the “Collaborators” series? Not at all. I enjoyed Toronto. I’ve met some fantastic people and the food is fine and it’s a beautiful town. I even refused a film in France because I wanted to do this Collaborators series. It was just an instinct, a feeling in my guts that I wanted to come and work here. That’s the way I think. I knew of Don Shebib, Don Owen, Stan Olsen and Peter Carter but I had never worked with them. This gave me a chance to work with these people and get to know them, and learn about the CBC — that’s an experience! If I were offered a fantastic chance to . work in France or the States or England or whatever, I would take it. I really don’t have that thing that it’s got to happen here. It might continue and I could continue working here — fine. That would be a lot of fun. So I enjoyed all this. But I’m very happy to go back home. I love Québec very much. I bought a house there and I have a little bit of land and I will always go back to that. I need the contact with other Québécois, that’s something very special. But that will not stop me from going out and discovering the world. Do you get reproached for that attitude and for working in English? Probably, in some circles, but that’s not my problem. It doesn’t bother me. There are a lot of people who are café intellectuals and they sit and write their little papers and they’re going to change the world... But you offer them a position with the Los Angeles Times and the guy’s gonna move, my friend, so fast! Not all of them, but some circles... Some people don’t work in film — they work in politics. Maybe that’s necessary too... It is necessary, but I respect them and they should respect me and what I’m doing. What has happened is that instead of us being one circle, it’s gotten to be a few circles. We all have our problems and differences but we’re working at it. But there is one thing I am sure of — if the moment comes when we all have to rally — I'd be on the next plane to Québec. It’s still there... —A. Ibranyi-Kiss Cinema Canada 41