À St-Henri le cinq septembre

À St-Henri le cinq septembre (English release title: September Five at Saint-Henri) is a 1962 National Film Board of Canada (NFB) documentary film directed by Hubert Aquin about the first day of school for children and their families in the working class Montreal district of Saint-Henri. As Aquin was primarily a writer, he worked with a variety of cameramen. The NFB credits 11 on the film—Guy Borremans, Michel Brault, Georges Dufaux, Claude Fournier, Bernard Gosselin, Jean Roy, Claude Jutra, Bernard Devlin, Arthur Lipsett, Don Owen and Daniel Fournier. Caroline Zéau in her book L'Office national du film et le cinéma canadien (1939-2003): éloge de la frugalité states that as many as 28 filmmakers worked on the project, including the entire French production team, with Jacques Godbout reading narration.[1][2][3]

The film was originally released in French as a 42-minute film. The English-language version is shorter, with a 27-minute running time.

Reaction

While the filmmakers sought to make a socially activist film by portraying conditions in the poor neighbourhood, some residents were so dismayed by their depiction in the film that they withdrew their children from school and moved out of the area. In subsequent NFB films such as Fernand Dansereau's Saint-Jérôme, filmmakers sought to involve residents in a participatory filmmaking process, so as to avoid such a negative reaction.[1][2]

Sequel

In 2011, director Shannon Walsh assembled 16 filmmakers to once again record the first day of school for children in Saint-Henri, in the NFB/Parabola Films documentary À St-Henri, le 26 août.[4]

See also

References
  1. Dansereau, Fernand (February 2010). "Saint-Jérôme: The Experience of a Filmmaker as Social Activist (1968)". In Thomas Waugh, Ezra Winton and Michael Brendan Baker (ed.). Challenge for Change: Activist Documentary at the National Film Board of Canada. McGill-Queen's Press. p. 35. ISBN 9780773536623.
  2. MacKenzie, Scott (July 11, 2005). Screening Québec: Québécois Moving Images, National Identity, and the Public Sphere. Manchester University Press. p. 133. ISBN 978-0719063961.
  3. Zéau, Caroline (November 22, 2006). L'Office national du film et le cinéma canadien (1939-2003): éloge de la frugalité (in French). Peter Lang International Academic Publishers. p. 145. ISBN 978-9052013381.
  4. Duchesne, André (May 11, 2011). "À St-Henri, le 26 août: une journée dans la vie d'un quartier". La Presse. Retrieved December 28, 2014.
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