Cinema Canada (Aug 1978)

‘It’s not encouraging to tell a story when there’s no one to laugh at the punch line.” These words, spoken by a mining unionist at the end of Maurice Bulbulian’s La Richesse Des Autres, could have just as well been spoken by Bulbulian himself; the films that he has made since joining the NFB thirteen years ago remain littleknown, not only in Canada but in Québec as well. His situation is not unique; it is echoed in frustration by most Québec filmmakers as they witness their cinema being in turn ignored, impeded, and ultimately strangulated. “But,” concludes Bulbulian, ‘on a personal level, all you can do is keep on making films.” And this he does, like the radioman on a sinking ship, trying to send out as many S.O.S.’s as possible. His latest film, Les Gars Du Tabac, was screened as part of the Critic’s Festival in Montréal in August, and he has three films set for release this fall. His subjects have ranged from victims of urban renovation in Montréal’s Little Burgundy slum district to Québec’s forestry workers to miners in Québec and Chile; films whose interest go beyond one’s backyard. Yet, even in his own backyard, Bulbulian remains unknown. It is perhaps the subjects themselves which, in the present system, preclude the films’ being shown and known. Or even the presentation itself, a kind of direct-cinema approach which promulgates the orchestration of alternative opinions by the filmmaker while letting the subject speak for himself. In other words, it is not the kind of thing film exhibitors are anxious to run in their theatres. Replies Bulbulian, “No matter who the people are, the expression of their problems as they themselves see them has as much right to be shown on the CBC or in any theatre as does Sam Peckinpah’s latest film.” Bulbulian’s interest in film and his belief in the underdog’s right to a well-organized and sophisticated presentation of his situation go back a long way. After spending his childhood in a parish hall watching Charlie Chan and Tarzan films, Bulbulian joined his high school’s cine-club where, on the first night’s program, he saw Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath and Flaherty’s The Land. Parallels to Bulbulian’s approach can be seen especially in the latter film; Flaherty broke from his established structure and, in The Land, digressed from the more global problems of farming to illustrate the consequences of such problems through personal stories told by farmers. This approach, combined with Ford’s demonstration of the dramatic and textural potential of a socially-conscious cinema, finds its synthesis, albeit not always successful, in Bulbulian’s documentaries. Of course, this is not to say that Bulbulian stands alone in this regard; his work falls in line with that of Brault, Perrault, King and others of the direct-cinema. In terms of thematic expression, his films, although dealing with varied situations and conditions, are of people in transition trying to retain or regain control of their lives. In his first social document. La P’tite Bourgogne (1968). he took a year to follow a group of slum citizens faced with eviction who were trying to organize and deal themselves into the decision-making process. In Un Lendemain Comme Hier (1970), a family from rural Québec, now living in Montréal, goes back to their native Lac St-Jean for the blueberry picking season; the children, having lost interest in their René Balcer is a filmmaker and free-lance writer who lives in Montreal. parents’ traditions, decide to return to Montréal and, as a result, the parents are forced to evaluate their own move to the big city. : In Dan Nos Foréts (1971), part one of a trilogy on the Québec forest, workers try to revitalize their sagging wood industry by starting cooperatives; but community apathy and government interference doom their efforts. In La Richesse Des Autres (1973), Québec miners, in an attempt to find solutions to the problems inherent to their occupation, visit Chile to see the reality of nationalization but the context is too different and the Chilean experiment does not mesh with North American values. In La Revanche (1974), part two of the forest trilogy, pre-war efforts to form cooperatives are contrasted with the efforts documented in Dans Nos Foréts. Les Gars Du Tabac (1977) is a reportage on transient young Quebeckers trying to find work in the tobacco fields of Ontario who meet with intolerance and unconcern instead. Ameshkuatan, to be released this fall and the last of the forest trilogy, documents the relationship between the Montagnais tribe and the forest, and how this relationship has been eroded by government relocation of the bands on seaside reserves far from the forest. Tierra y Libertan and Amory Cumbia, also to be released this fall, deal with the urban poor in Mexico and their efforts to organize and gain control of the land on which they live. ents of Little Burgundy Bulbulian confers with the evicted re Far from being an intrusion, Bulbulian’s crew and the film itself become part of the subject’s movement towards and eventual solution to his problem; as most direct-cinema filmmakers, Bulbulian does not hesitate to act as a catalyst. In La Richesse Des Autres, he organized the trip to Chile. In La P’tite Bourgogne, he set up a meeting between the evicted citizens and municipal and provincial representatives in an NFB studio to clarify issues and assess the progress to date; in the same film, he organized a visit to a city housing project already completed by the Little Burgundy residents and invited Radio-Canada to report on the event. This visit forms one of the more chilling sequences in the film as we hear of the living conditions, complete with rent-a-cops, spies and overnight evictions, prevailing in the housing project. Another aspec of Bulbulian’s films, evident in other directcinema works, is the lack of chauvinism. exhibited by the filmmaker towards his subjects: “We try to involve them in the process of developing a theme, to bring them imo the adventure of filmmaking.” The two Mexican film«<« . 1ad August 1978/21