A pioneer of experimental cinema, Louise Bourque is an Acadian filmmaker based in Montreal. Much of her work is rooted in documentary cinema or, more broadly, in reality. Adopting a highly personal, at times autobiographical approach, her sensory visual and auditory poetry embodies a rare interiority. She revisits various archival materials with renewed aesthetic vigour, incorporating elements of her own works and home movies shot by her father. She sculpts filmic material through a complex artisanal craftsmanship using optical printing, contact printing and reuse techniques, multiplying the film’s alterations and transformations, from hand-development and dyeing to manual, mechanical or chemical aging, all carried out with skill, precision and carefully considered experimentation. By adapting her artistic actions and techniques to the nature of each project, she explores memory, nostalgia, trauma and identity through ingenious reflections.

This retrospective revisits six of her short films. The program includes Just Words (1991), Fissures (1999), L'éclat du mal / The Bleeding Heart of It (2005), A Little Prayer (H-E-L-P) (2011), Auto-portrait / Self Portrait Post Partum (2013) and Bye Bye Now (2022). The screening will be followed by an in-depth 40-minute discussion with the artist. A 90-minute standalone lecture, focusing on Going Back Home (2000), Self Portrait Post Mortem (2002), Jours en fleurs (2003) and Remains (2011), will explore  her approach, artistic practice and concept of cinema in detail. Finally, we are proud to present a live performance by Louise Bourque.

Biographical note: Louise Bourque studied journalism at the Université de Moncton (New Brunswick) before turning to film at Concordia University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she completed her master's degree. She has taught film at Concordia University and in the United States, notably at Emerson College, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University and Boston University. Since the early 1980s, she has created installations and directed a dozen films that have received international acclaim been recognized around the world at festivals and museums, including the Sundance Film Festival, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Tribeca Festival, the Flaherty Film Seminar, the Ann Arbor Film Festival, TIFF, the Musée des beaux-arts du Québec, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, MOMA and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Her films have received numerous awards, while her career has been celebrated in a monograph published by the Canadian Film Institute and her work has been featured in retrospectives. 

- Hubert Sabino-Brunette