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Filmstill A Night Song

A Night Song

Le chant de la nuit
Félix Lamarche
International Competition 2022
Documentary Film
Canada
2022
45 minutes
French
Subtitles: 
English

A patient camera glides over the everyday objects: still lives on the wall, flowers in the vase, a swaying drop light. The sun enters the cosy home where Noëlla sits smoking at her laptop, playing Solitaire. The situation is hopeless. She’s going to lose against the computer once again. All the while her son-in-law, Pierre, is organising everything she needs, pragmatic and friendly: breakfast, the (last) doctor’s visit – and then the transfer.

Because Noëlla intends to die, and she is determined. Pierre conscientiously manages the paperwork and invites her loved ones to say goodbye. They bring photos and chat with the protagonist who is about to depart this life and who waves one last time before the doctor administers the deadly dose. Bye bye, that’s it. Dying can be so unexcited. This slowed-down, minute study of time very gradually acquires a completely different meaning from what one assumed at first. How one would love to see the onetakes from the beginning again. Félix Lamarche’s unpretentious observation evolves into a metaphor of life. Noëlla’s insistent head-on gaze from the screen into the viewers’ eyes will always be unforgettable.
Borjana Gaković

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Félix Lamarche
Cinematographer
Félix Lamarche
Editor
René Roberge
Producer
Félix Lamarche
Sound
Samuel Gagnon-Thibodeau
World Sales
Robin Miranda das Neves
Nominated for: FIPRESCI Prize, Prize of the Interreligious Jury
Animation and Musique concrète 2021
Media Name: 990651c9-ea29-49d0-9601-b9f50e92401b.jpg
Neighbours
Norman McLaren
A neighbourhood dispute escalates … The pixilated movements of actors and scenery seem more and more absurd, heightened by the frantic sounds of the hand-drawn soundtrack.
Media Name: 990651c9-ea29-49d0-9601-b9f50e92401b.jpg

Neighbours

Voisins
Norman McLaren
Animation and Musique concrète 2021
Animated Film
Canada
1952
8 minutes
without dialogue
Subtitles: 
None

An escalating neighbourhood dispute as a pacifist parable on the Korean War. The pixilation, which Norman McLaren is said to have pioneered, makes plot and scenery look more and more absurd. The madness is heihgtened by frantic electronic sounds, which were also created by a special technique: McLaren drew optical sound signals in lines and dots by hand directly on the soundtrack.

André Eckardt

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Norman McLaren
Cinematographer
Wolf Koenig
Producer
Norman McLaren
Score
Norman McLaren
Performer
Grant Munro, Jean-Paul Ladouceur