Michel Brault

Happiness Bound (2007)

Poetry and cinema merge as 11 filmmakers bring to life 21 poems by Québécois poets. ...

Anne Hébert, 1916-2000 (2000)

Jacques Godbout takes us into the world of Anne Hébert, a woman he considered his spiritual sister and who had only one raison d'être: literature. During the four decades of her creative process, this Quebecois poet and novelist rose to the ranks of the ...

The Long Winter (1999)

In 1838, François-Xavier Bouchard fights beside his Québec countrymen and the English minority. ...

Mon amie Max (1994)

Catherine, a concert pianist, is surprised one night by the arrival of her best friend from childhood, Marie-Alexandrine (Max), whom she hasn't seen for 25 years. Catherine and Max were Québec's most promising young pianists in the mid-1960's when the adv ...

Montreal Stories (1991)

Six stories about Montreal. 1: A young housewife from Toronto samples the nightlife using basic French. 2: The tale of a painting of Montreal's first mayor, Jacques Viger. 3: During a hockey game, Madeleine tries to tell Roger she wants a divorce after for ...

Bye Bye Victor (1989)

Friendship between two old men becomes love. Slightly-unkempt, tired, and frail, Philippe Lanctot moves into a rest home. The administrator says she wants him to be happy, but that seems far from his mind: he's waiting to die. Then, into his room, unannoun ...

Dead Man Out (1989)

A psychiatrist is sent to evaluate if a convicted multiple murderer who's awaiting execution on Death Row for eighth year now and whose behavior during that time got more and more erratic is still mentally fit to be executed. ...

A Paper Wedding (1989)

A woman agrees to a marriage of convenience with a refugee. ...

The Great Land of Small (1987)

While visiting their grandparents in the Québec countryside, two children enter a fantasy kingdom and are confronted by evil forces. ...

No Mercy (1986)

An unconventional undercover Chicago cop and his partner are recruited to commit the murder of a New Orleans criminal kingpin. ...

Half a Lifetime (1986)

A regular night of poker among four friends turns into a night full of conflict, recriminations and self-reflection. ...

Louisiana (1984)

Virginia Tregan returns to her home in the U.S. Deep South from a sojourn in Paris only to discover that her family plantation and its holdings have been lost. She determines to recoup her family's fortune. ...

The Forties (1982)

A group of friends reunite after thirty years of separation. ...

Threshold (1981)

Celebrated heart surgeon Thomas Vrain supports the research of an offbeat scientist who has invented an artificial heart. Against the advice of the Ethics Committee, Dr. Vrain decides to perform the first artificial heart transplant. ...

Good Riddance (1980)

A woman is overwhelmed with having to deal with her emotionally unstable daughter, mentally-challenged brother and two suitors while simultaneously trying to run her small firewood business. ...

The Skiff of Renald and Thomas (1980)

Five men work together in a communal effort to build a skiff on Ile-aux-Coudres, an island in the St. Lawrence River. It is built in a traditional fashion, all the more remarkable because no blueprint is used. The film does not merely record a building tra ...

A Scream from Silence (1979)

A director and an editor, both women, cannot work on a movie presenting the rape of a nurse without reacting on the scenes they're working on, the situation of womanhood in general, and the way the 'Justice' handle those cases of rape. ...

La Tête de Normande St-Onge (1975)

Working as a pharmacy clerk while dreaming of escape through dance, Normande St-Onge supports a household of dependent and unstable relatives. As her efforts to protect and hold together her improvised family intensify, the pressures of exploitation, evict ...

Before the Time Comes (1975)

Hélène is a woman who already has, in her view, quite enough children. For some time she has secretly been taking birth control pills, but now she is too old to use them safely. When her husband Gabriel discovers the pills, he is distressed, since he wan ...

Eliza's Horoscope (1975)

A young woman arrives to Montreal to find love. A fortune teller tells her that a wealthy man meant for her is right around the corner so she goes looking even among her odd rag tag group roommates. ...

Le son des français d'Amérique (1974)

27 shorts films about francophone traditional music in America. ...

Orders (1974)

A fact-based account of ordinary citizens who found themselves arrested and imprisoned without charge for weeks during the October Crisis in 1970 Quebec. ...

Kamouraska (1973)

A writer, Kamouraska is based on a real nineteenth-century love-triangle in rural Québec. It paints a poetic and terrifying tableau of the life of Elisabeth d'Aulnières: her marriage to Antoine Tassy, squire of Kamouraska; his violent murder; and her pas ...

Tickets s.v.p (1973)

An incident from the early days of Québec's quiet revolution, tailor-made for the cartoonist. It is the story of a Montréal commuter train, a unilingual ticket collector and a bilingual passenger. The passenger appears on screen himself to describe his b ...

The Lever and the River (1973)

In the film, produced for the series "Young Scientists", for the CBC, a group of young people on vacation share the discovery of the application of the lever in some applications of everyday life. ...

The Time of the Hunt (1972)

A young boy learns the rituals of what his father and his friends perceive as manhood on a weekend hunting trip. ...

Mon oncle Antoine (1971)

Set in cold rural Quebec at Christmas time, we follow the coming of age of a young boy and the life of his family which owns the town's general store and undertaking business. ...

Acadia Acadia?!? (1971)

In the late 1960s, with the triumph of bilingualism and biculturalism, New Brunswick's Université de Moncton became the setting for the awakening of Acadian nationalism after centuries of defeatism and resignation. Although 40% of the province's populatio ...

Un pays sans bon sens! (1970)

Structured as a cinematic essay, "Un pays sans bon sens!" explores the emotional and political foundations of belonging to a nation. Moving between Quebec, France, and Western Canada, Pierre Perrault interrogates questions of cultural maturity, autonomy, a ...

Marie-Christine (1970)

Short film about the underground part, both geographical and social, of the city of Montreal, through the obsession of a business magnate for a young woman. ...

Between You and You All (1970)

A chronicle of the lives of a couple and the gradual dissolution of their relationship. ...

The Panafrican Festival in Algiers (1969)

Festival panafricain d'Alger is a documentary by William Klein of the music and dance festival held 40 years ago in the streets and in venues all across Algiers. Klein follows the preparations, the rehearsals, the concerts… He blends images of interviews ...

Éloge du chiac (1969)

Set in New Brunswick, "Éloge du chiac" takes the form of an open discussion between a young French-language teacher and her students in Moncton. Through their exchanges, Michel Brault examines the challenges of preserving French in a bilingual region wher ...

Préambule (1969)

Poussière sur la ville (1968)

A doctor living in a small mining town discovers that his dissatisfied young wife is having an affair with a truck driver. ...

Les enfants de Néant (1968)

Morbihan is one of the poorest regions in Brittany. Joseph, a 33-year-old farmer, can no longer live off the land. He is hired at the fancy new plant that has just opened where he enters a world of rote work. Fortunately he can go home to his farm every ev ...

Beluga Days (1968)

From the lower St. Lawrence, a picture of whale hunting that looks more like a round-up, with a corral, whale-boys and all. In 1534, when he stopped at the island he named l'Île-aux-Coudres, Jacques Cartier saw how the Indians captured the little white be ...

Between Sweet and Salt Water (1967)

A young singer-songwriter abandons his life in his hometown and moves to the city to make it big. He achieves fame, but it comes at a price. ...

The Devil's Toy (1966)

Dedicated "to all victims of intolerance," "The Devil's Toy" is a faux–public service documentary that chronicles the early days of skateboarding in Montreal. Framed as mock anti-skateboarding propaganda, Claude Jutra contrasts official hostility with th ...

Ville-Marie (1965)

Today it is the city of Montreal, but 3 centuries ago the tiny band of missionary founders called it Ville-Marie, the holy city of Mary. This film goes back to its beginning and those who felt called to plant an oasis of Christianity in the North American ...

Jusqu'au cou (1964)

The story of a young university student who deals with love in the midst of the Quebec separatist movement in the 1960s. ...

Geneviève (1964)

Two teenage girls go to winter carnival in Quebec City for the first time. Their ambiguous, tentative relation with a young boy brings both of them the sweet intensity and disillusionment of first love. One of four film sketches on the problems of adolesce ...

The End of Summer (1964)

A 16 year old girl recalls the last moments of her summer vacation, spent with friends in the Laurentians north of Montreal. She reminisces about their talks on life, death, love, and God. Shot in direct cinema style, working from a script that left room f ...

Take It All (1963)

A man struggles with his identity, his life choices, his interracial relationship, and his latent homosexuality. A portrait of some young intellectuals in early sixties Montreal. ...

Of Whales, the Moon, and Men (1963)

At the instigation of the filmmakers, the young men of the Ile-aux-Coudres in the middle of the St-Lawrence River try as a memorial to their ancestors to revive the fishing of the belugas interrupted in 1924. ...

Seven Surprizes (1963)

A compilation of seven shorts made for the National Film Board of Canada. Features the NFBC shorts, "Nahanni," "Le Merle," "A Chairy Tale," "The Cars in Your Life," "Corral," "Wrestling," and "Neighbors. ...

September Five at Saint-Henri (1962)

This short film is a series of vignettes of life in Saint-Henri, a Montreal working-class district, on the first day of school. From dawn to midnight, we take in the neighbourhood's pulse: a mother fussing over children, a father's enforced idleness, teena ...

Alone or with Others (1962)

At the end of the year 1961, three young students, Denys Arcand, Denis Héroux and Stéphane Venne, decide to direct a feature-length film centered on the perks of student life. The film mixes fiction and reality in the style of cinéma vérité. "Alone or ...

Visit to a Foreign Country (1962)

They come in high-powered convertibles, with cameras and curiosity, to look at French Canada and French-Canadians. Their usual objective is Québec City, where they can soak up a bit of French culture without a trip to France. With an eye for humour, VISIT ...

The Punishment (1962)

An aimless young woman is sent home from school with nothing to do. Drifting through the streets of Paris, she comes across a variety of people. ...

Children of Silence (1962)

This film looks at the world of children with hearing loss and the importance of early diagnosis. With its straightforward, rigorous cinematic style and intimate approach to the subject, the film focuses on the human rather than the technical side of the p ...

Captive Feast (1962)

Captive Feast documents the annual village festival that allows inmates at the psychiatric hospital of St. Alban a rare chance to mingle with the rest of the population. ...

The Joy of Winter (1962)

How Canadians adjust to their long, snowbound season. Filmed with humour, 'The Joy of Winter' shows people making the best of what they cannot change. From tiny tots to human polar bears the film leaves no doubt that, in the eyes of many Canadians, winter ...

Wrestling (1961)

A candid-camera view of professional wrestling as seen in the Montréal Forum, where some of the biggest bouts are staged, and in back-street wrestling parlours where the warriors practice their art. ...

Strangers of the Earth (1961)

Les inconnus de la terre starts like a traditional feature film: in the beginning of the film all the leading roles are given a short introduction. This is followed by a number of interviews, in which the makers unashamedly appear themselves. They include ...

Chronicle of a Summer (1961)

Paris, summer 1960. Anthropologist and filmmaker Jean Rouch and sociologist and film critic Edgar Morin wander through the crowded streets asking passersby how they cope with life's misfortunes. ...

Festival in Puerto Rico (1961)

This short documentary features Canadian contralto Maureen Forrester as she sings at the Festival Casals, a musical event founded by the great Spanish cellist and conductor Pablo Casals and sponsored annually by the Puerto Rican government. Part concert fi ...

Golden Gloves (1961)

A classic NFB documentary about the Golden Gloves boxing tournament, the Canadian amateur's hope for success in the boxing world. This Gilles Groulx film shows three Montreal boxers in training. In behind-the-scenes interviews they talk about their ambitio ...

Normetal (1960)

Filmed in the town of Normétal in northern Québec, this short documentary provides a first-hand introduction to life in a frontier mining community where all roads lead to the pithead. Dweller of two worlds, the copper miner's life is one of contrasts. A ...

Alfred DesRochers, poète (1960)

Félix Leclerc, troubadour (1959)

Fred Barry comédien (1959)

Télesphore Légaré, garde-pêche (1959)

Jour de juin (1959)

The Days Before Christmas (1958)

This short documentary depicts Christmastime in Montreal. The milling crowds, department store Santas, Brink's messengers, kindergarten angels and boisterous nightclubs all combine to make a vivid portrait of the holidays. ...

Police (1958)

The misbehaving public performs for the camera in a half-hour miscellany of misdeeds. In a behind-the-scenes look at the hour-by-hour operation of a large metropolitan police force, this film presents a fair sampling of what keeps Toronto's police officers ...

The Snowshoers (1958)

This short documentary records the celebration and ritual surrounding a snowshoe competition in Sherbrooke in the late 1950s. The film marked the beginning of a new approach to reality in documentary and prefigures the trademark style of the NFB's newly fo ...

A Day in June (1958)

This short documentary profiles Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day parade in Montreal in 1959. The annual parade takes place every June 24th in memory of Saint-Jean-Baptiste, the patron saint of Québec. Candid shots of youngsters preparing their costumes for the fes ...

Washed Hands (1958)

An efficiency expert is called in to downsize a trucking company and the employees fight to establish a union to save their jobs. ...

Perpetual Movement (1949)

An experimental short film shot in slow motion and set to Ottokar Nováček's violin composition Perpetuum mobile, the film depicts a love triangle between two men and a woman. ...

The Private Life of Cinema (2011)

A two-part in-depth exploration of the evolution of the private film industry, seen through the eyes of more than 50 industry professionals. Part One (1939-1979) : Artists and professionals from the social and commercial film sectors recount the struggle ...

From Office to Box-Office (2009)

Capturing Reality (2008)

From cinema-verite; pioneers Albert Maysles and Joan Churchill to maverick movie makers like Errol Morris, Werner Herzog and Nick Broomfield, the world's best documentarians reflect upon the unique power of their genre. Capturing Reality explores the compl ...

Rebels with a Camera (2006)

Thanks to the development of techniques and the adventurous spirit of pioneering filmmakers, among whom Michel Brault occupies a central place, a new way of making cinema was born at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s. This film relevantly retraces the histor ...

La beauté du geste (2004)

A documentary about the act of filmmaking. ...

Claude Jutra: An Unfinished Story (2002)

A revealing look at the great Quebecois director who gave us such classic films as Mon Oncle Antoine, A toute prendre and Kamouraska: Power of Passion. Amidst the rise of French-Canadian identity and the political struggles of the '60s, Jutra was at the fo ...

Québec...? (1967)

This short documentary film is a fascinating portrait of urban and rural Quebec in the late 1960s, as the province entered modernity. The collective work produced for the Quebec Ministry of Industry and Commerce calls on several major Quebec figures. ...