What happens when the camera turns inward—toward the self, toward loved ones, toward the body and its histories? This retrospective screening explores that question through two works that make the ethnographic gesture an intimate and political act.
BIRTHDAY SUIT: WITH SCARS AND DEFECTS
Lisa Steele
1974 / Canada / 13 min / English
To mark her 27th birthday, Steele stands naked before the camera and presents the scars that have marked her body since birth. A simple, radical gesture that transforms personal testimony into cultural archive.
COMMENT VS DIRAIS-JE
Louis Dionne
1995 / Québec (Canada) / 32 min / French (EST)
In a 32-minute single take, the director sets up a camera in front of his parents. He has something to tell them…
Both films cross the boundary between testimony and auto-ethnography, revealing personal narratives as embedded in complex historical and cultural processes. As Catherine Russell writes in Experimental Ethnography: “Identity is no longer a transcendental or essential self that is revealed, but a ‘staging’ of subjectivity – a representation of the self as a performance.” These works invite us to question authenticity within anthropological production, and the counter-myth they represent against the dominant visual productions of their time.
The screening, presented as part of FIFEQ-Montréal’s 22nd edition, will be followed by a discussion between Joëlle Rouleau, professor of film studies at the Université de Montréal, and Louis Dionne, director of Comment vs dirais-je?
- Friday, May 8
17:00
FIFEQ - Free entrance
FST - French subtitles
EST - English subtitles
E/FST - Bilingual subtitles
