Synopsis
A documentary about the vast political mobilization that took place in Quebec during the spring of 2012. Initially propelled by the student strike for accessible education, the scope of the movement soon broadened to take on the government, the impunity and violence of the Montreal police force, the exploitation of untapped natural resources, and the current economic system.
A word from Tënk
To celebrate the centenary of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s birthday and the tenth anniversary of the 2012 student movement in Quebec, Tënk brings you two films produced almost fifty years apart, in two contexts of revolt against capitalist violence and the state, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Paper Flower Sequence (1969) and Insurgence by the Collectif Épopée (2013).
Insurgence is a documentary by Collectif Épopée, an autonomous film action group created in 2005 following the experience of making a film with sex workers and drug users in Montreal. Filmed over the course of a year, it captures the events of the 2012 student movement, handheld, without commentary, in the purest tradition of direct cinema. The film follows the protests closely, becoming one with its collective spirit, energy and fantasy. At the same time, the documentary denounces the violence of the police, the ferocity of state repression. From this perspective, Insurgence is not a documentary about a revolt, but about a movement of revolt that shows a community in the making whose rhythm is set by slogans, chants and caserolazos. The reflection that Pasolini poses on the commitment to the atrocities of the last century, the Collective Épopée revives it in 2012. Insurgence ends with this quote from Jean Genet: "Any spontaneous violence of life continued by the violence of revolutionaries will be just enough to defeat the organized brutality.
Rosanna Maule
Professor of Film Studies
Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, Concordia University
With the support of
