L'Abbatiale de la
Liturgie Apocryphe

Montréal, p.Q.

 

FLicKeR
Nic Sheehan, Canada, 2008, 75 min




(…) The film is based on the book Chapel of Extreme Experience by John G. Geiger about the work of artist Brion Gysin and his Dreamachine.


Gysin’s Dreamachine used a 100-watt light bulb, a motor, and a rotating cylinder with cutouts. Its users would sit in front of it, close their eyes, and experience visions as a result of the flashes of light. Gysin believed that by offering the world a drugless high the invention could revolutionize human consciousness.

 

flickerflicker.com

 
 

Flicker (2008) by NIC SHEEHAN

 

***

Limited Edition Dreamachines based on BRION GYSIN’s original specifications (August 10, 2012)
Montréal Dreamachine (April 6, 2010)

 

Le Diable d’Amérique
Gilles Carle, Canada, 1991, 1 h 11 min




En Amérique, le diable, omniprésent, traverse les siècles et nourrit les peurs, les superstitions. Au diable brûlant de la religion catholique a succédé son double, aussi glacé que la haute technologie.

 

Le Diable d'Amérique (1991) de GILLES CARLE

Le Diable d'Amérique (1991) de GILLES CARLE

NON SERVIAM

Le Diable d'Amérique (1991) de GILLES CARLE


 

L’ Ordre secret
Phil Comeau, Canada, 2022, 84 min

 
 

L’Ordre de Jacques Cartier (la Patente) était une société dite « secrète » qui a servi les Canadiens français et les Acadiens comme outil de réseautage et noyautage de 1926 à 1965. Au plus fort de ses activités au milieu des années 50, elle réunissait environ 12 000 hommes aux valeurs patriotiques, catholiques et pro-francophones. Ses objectifs étaient simples: défendre les intérêts des minorités francophones du Canada par l’entremise d’une élite militante qui infiltrait et influençait l’administration d’organismes publics et d’entreprises privées. Un puissant lobby auquel le père du réalisateur Phil Comeau appartenait.

 

L' Ordre secret (2022) de PHIL COMEAU

L' Ordre secret (2022) de PHIL COMEAU

 
 

NOUVELLE FRANCE numéro 13, avril-juin 1960

 

***

 

Les relations ANGLO-FRANCO dans
le cinéma québécois :

Octobre (1994) de PIERRE FALARDEAU (October 14, 2023)
A Song for Quebec
(1988) de DOROTHY TODD HENAUT (August 16, 2021)
Les Rose (2020) de FÉLIX ROSE (October 8, 2020)
Quebec My Country Mon Pays (2016) by JOHN WALKER (November 17, 2016)
Montréal New Wave (2016) de ÉRIK CIMON (February 26, 2016)
Between the Solitudes (1992) by ABBEY JACK NEIDIK (January 13, 2016)
La langue à terre (2013) de JEAN-PIERRE ROY & MICHEL BRETON (January 8, 2016)
Les États-Désunis du Canada (2012) de MICHEL BARBEAU, GUYLAINE MAROIST & ÉRIC RUEL (December 8, 2015)
Reaction: A Portrait of a Society in Crisis (1973) by ROBIN SPRY (May 1, 2015)
Le journal de madame Wollock (1979) de GILLES BLAIS (January 15, 2015)
Le sort de l’Amérique (1996) de JACQUES GODBOUT (January 16, 2015)
Speak White (1980) & Le temps des bouffons (1985) de PIERRE FALARDEAU et JULIEN POULIN (January 20, 2015)
Le mouton noir (1992) & Les héritiers du mouton noir (2003) de JACQUES GODBOUT
(January 22, 2015)
Le confort et l’indifférence (1981) de DENYS ARCAND (January 26, 2015)
Le chat dans le sac (1964) de GILLES GROULX (April 7, 2014, à la toute fin de l’entrevue)
Québec Soft (1985) de JACQUES GODBOUT (June 24, 2011)
Mon oncle Antoine (1971) de CLAUDE JUTRA (December 24, 2010)
Les événements d’octobre 1970 (1974) de ROBIN SPRY (October 6, 2010)

 

The Lighthouse
Robert Eggers, USA, 2019, 110 min

 

 

As the wavering cry of the foghorn fills the air, the taciturn former lumberjack, Ephraim Winslow, and the grizzled lighthouse keeper, Thomas Wake, set foot in a secluded and perpetually grey islet off the coast of late-19th-century New England. For the following four weeks of back-breaking work and unfavourable conditions, the tight-lipped men will have no one else for company except for each other, forced to endure irritating idiosyncrasies, bottled-up resentment, and burgeoning hatred. Then, amid bad omens, a furious and unending squall maroons the pale beacon’s keepers in the already inhospitable volcanic rock, paving the way for a prolonged period of feral hunger; excruciating agony; manic isolation, and horrible booze-addled visions. Now, the eerie stranglehold of insanity tightens. Is there an escape from the wall-less prison of the mind?

 

The Lighthouse (2019) by ROBERT EGGERS

The Lighthouse (2019) by ROBERT EGGERS

The Lighthouse (2019) by ROBERT EGGERS

 
 

***

 
 

SASCHA SCHNEIDER (March 24, 2016)

 

Maciste all’inferno (Maciste in the Underworld)
Guido Brignone, Italy, 1926, 100 min

 

 

The screenplay by Riccardo Artuffo provided director Guido Brignone with a scenario rich in fantastic and bizarre humor. Completed in 1925, Maciste all’inferno ran afoul of the censors — reputedly because of charges that its depictions of Hell and Lucifer were blasphemous, which may explain why the Devil is now referred to as Lord Pluto — and the film was released in Sweden three months before it premiered in Italy in March of 1926. Maciste all’inferno was re-released in the early 1940s with a synchronized music and sound-effects track, and the Maciste character surfaced again in the ’50s and ’60s during a revival of the muscleman epic alongside stalwarts such as Hercules, Goliath, Colossus, Samson, Atlas, and “The Strongest Man in the World.”

 

Maciste all’inferno occupies a very special niche in Italian cinema as the film that inspired Federico Fellini to get into the movies. He spoke of the film as a sort of scena primaria in his personal cinematic subconscious: “I’m sure that I remember it well because the image has remained so deeply impressed that I have tried to re-evoke it in all my films. I saw it standing with my father’s arms around me amidst a crowd of people in wet overcoats because it was raining outside. I remember a large woman with nude belly, her belly button, her eyes darkened with make-up, blazing. With an imperious movement of her arm she created a circle of flames around Maciste, he also half-naked and with a dove in his hand.

 

– Rebecca Peters, silentfilm.org

 
 

Maciste all'inferno (Maciste in the Underworld) (1926) by GUIDO BRIGNONE

Maciste all'inferno (Maciste in the Underworld) (1926) by GUIDO BRIGNONE

Maciste all'inferno (Maciste in the Underworld) (1926) by GUIDO BRIGNONE

Maciste all'inferno (Maciste in the Underworld) (1926) by GUIDO BRIGNONE

L'Abbatiale de la
Liturgie Apocryphe

"The production of nervous force is directly connected with the diet of an individual, and its refining depends on the very purity of this diet, allied to appropriate breathing exercises.

The diet most calculated to act effectively on the nervous force is that which contains the least quantity of animal matter; therefore the Pythagorean diet, in this connection, is the most suitable.

...

The main object was to avoid introducing into the organism what Descartes called 'animal spirits'. Thus, all animals that had to serve for the nourishment of the priests were slaughtered according to special rites, they were not murdered, as is the case nowadays".