24 heures ou plus

24 heures ou plus (also written as 24 heures ou plus... or Vingt-quatre heures ou plus...) is a radical political documentary about Quebec society, shot in 1971 and completed by director by Gilles Groulx by mid-January 1973. However, the film was initially suppressed by producer National Film Board of Canada and not released until February 1977.

24 heures ou plus
Directed byGilles Groulx
Produced byPaul Larose
Written byGilles Groulx
Jean-Marc Piotte
Narrated byJean-Marc Piotte
Music byOffenbach
CinematographyGuy Borremans
Serge Giguère
Edited byGilles Groulx
Jacques Kasma
Distributed byNational Film Board of Canada
Release date
  • February 10, 1977 (1977-02-10)
Running time
113 minutes
CountryCanada
LanguageFrench

Synopsis

A Marxist critique of the capitalist system, Gilles Groulx filmed Quebec society as he saw it in the fall of 1971. Shot only a year after the events of October 1970, while Quebec was still in turmoil, the film denounces the alienation of the masses and exalts the optimistic progressives who want to awaken the people of Quebec to their cultural and political oppression.[1]

Alternating between colour and black and white, the film combines actuality footage, graffiti, didactic texts, live sequences, various interviews, newspaper articles and television extracts, edited into a structure whose form and commentary offer both an analysis of society and the necessity and hope of social change. The political analysis made by Groulx and the political scientist/narrator Jean-Marc Piotte testifies to an unequivocal desire to make a real film of confrontation.

Controversy

A controversial documentary from one of the most significant figures in the development of modern Quebec cinema,[2] Gilles Groulx made 24 heures ou plus at a time of exceptional popular fever in Quebec. It was few months after the common front of the three largest Quebec unions (CSN, FTQ, CEQ) against the Quebec government, and only one year after the notorious October Crisis of 1970.

By the end of 1972, NFB Commissioner Sydney Newman ordered production on the incomplete film stopped and locked away before a bootleg video could be made (as had happened with a previous banned NFB documentary, Denys Arcand's Cotton Mill, Treadmill). Newman said the film lacked shape or structure, but in fact the Board was censoring a work it considered to be inflammatory.[3][4] In an NFB official statement issued on December 12, 1972, Newman stated that the majority of Canadians, who believed in Canada's political and economic system, would not accept that the NFB release the film in its current form. In January 1973, responding to appeals in Quebec newspapers as well as a petition, Newman did permit Groulx to complete work on the film, which was done by January 15.[5] However, in March, Groulx announced to the press that he refused to change the film, thus it would never be finished. The Board considered suing him for non-performance, but never followed through.[6] When his offer to buy the rights was turned down, Groulx quit the Board in protest. The ban was lifted in 1976.[7] The film received a "for all" rating from the Bureau de surveillance du cinéma on February 8, 1977, and was shown for the first time on February 10 at the Cinémathèque québécoise.[5]

References
  1. Morris, Peter (1984). The Film Companion. Toronto: Irwin Publishing. pp. 311–312. ISBN 0-7725-1505-0.
  2. Morris, Peter (1984). The Film Companion. Toronto: Irwin Publishing. p. 136. ISBN 0-7725-1505-0.
  3. "NFB Cancels Film Urging Revolution". Montreal Star. December 12, 1972.
  4. "NFB Documentary Shelved for Depicting Downfall of Canadian System". Ottawa Citizen. December 12, 1972.
  5. Hébert, Pierre; Landry, Kenneth; Lever, Yves, eds. (2006). Dictionnaire de la censure au Québec : littérature et cinéma (in French). [Montréal (Québec)]: Éd. Fides. p. 298. ISBN 2762126363. Retrieved 24 April 2017.
  6. Evans, Gary (1991). "'On a Chariot of Fire': Sydney Newman's Tenure". In the National Interest: A Chronicle of the National Film Board of Canada from 1949 to 1989. University of Toronto Press. pp. 187–189. Sydney Newman.
  7. Aitken, Ian (2013). The Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film. New York: Routledge. pp. 340–341. ISBN 978-0-415-59642-8.
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