Open to conference registrants.
Montréal film director François Girard will recollect the making of his recent historical drama HOCHELAGA, LAND OF SOULS (2017), both as a personal journey and as a spatial exploration of Montréal’s history, digging for its cultural roots. The film documents the various cultures that have occupied Montréal over seven hundred and fifty years: Iroquoian, Algonquian, French, British, Irish, and others. Focused on one specific area of the city, the current Percival Molson Memorial Stadium at McGill University and the presumed location of the 16th-century Iroquoian village of “Hochelaga,” the film exposes, thanks to stunning historical reconstructions, the site as a palimpsest of the territory’s successive occupations. Apart from the village of Hochelaga, Girard invites us to travel through early colonial settlements and villages, its hospital wards, and up to the Art Deco campus of the Université de Montréal.
Link to the Hochelaga, Land of Souls (2017) trailer: https://vimeo.com/250135478
Warning: the film includes language that may be offensive to some viewers
FRANÇOIS GIRARD gained notoriety as much for his filmmaking as for his theatre and opera work. THIRTY TWO SHORT FILMS ABOUT GLENN GOULD and THE RED VIOLIN (Academy Award for best original score) established him on the international movie scene. His other film credits include SILK, BOYCHOIR, HOCHELAGA LAND OF SOULS and his most recent opus THE SONG OF NAMES, starring Tim Roth and Clive Owen.
Girard was also stage director of a dozen plays and operas including PARSIFAL which earned him and the Metropolitan Opera a remarkable critical success. And Cirque du Soleil’s commissioned him to write and direct two shows: ZED and ZARAKANA.
To date, François Girard’s accomplishments have earned him over one hundred international awards and public acclaim the world over.