"They discover they were somebody and had something to say. It was like the rite of spring. Suddenly it’s ripe and the seed comes out. It brings up earth, it moves stones, it starts moving, to live."

La suite canadienne offers a fascinating immersion into the creative process of a group of artists reinterpreting a sociologically significant television archive of our cultural heritage, namely the Radio-Canada recording of Ludmilla Chiriaeff's eponymous ballet. Originally intended to be presented to the Queen of England to represent the brave French-Canadian nation, this choreography created at the dawn of the Quiet Revolution is here excavated and dusted off through an exploratory and experiential journey guided by dance, movement, bodies, and imperfect (thus free) gestures of a diverse group of dancers who visibly enjoy engaging in the game of reinterpretation.

Godin's film, echoing the spirit of this artistic project led by Adam Kinner, also transforms into a true impressionist laboratory capturing thought in motion. Favoring a stance of total openness, the filmmaker wholeheartedly embraces unexpected trajectories, unusual exchanges, improbable encounters, incongruous, strange, funny, and surprising connections that come to life within the experience of creation. By chaining together experiments, subverting constraints, and embracing imperfections—letting them live instead of quietly discarding them—this new Suite canadienne radiates with a fertile poetry that seems to literally write itself before our eyes. For Godin, the act of creation always prevails.

Inviting and generous, far from any sterile hermeticism, La suite canadienne embodies the full power of an indocile cinema, a cinema finally freed from its shackles as we wish to experience more often.

Jason Burnham
Tënk editorial manager