The Emotional Geographies of Québécois Cinema
This text examines four Québécois movies and their impact on the affective relation of the province to key aspects of its territory: La Mort d’un bûcheron (Carle 1973), Kanehsatake 270 ans de résistance (Obomsawin 1993), Les Racquetteurs (Brault and Groulx 1958), and Le Chat dans le sac Groulx (1964). This chapter is divided in two main parts that are devoted respectively to the experience of thresholds, frontiers, and territorial conflicts as well as to the concrete effect of seasons and weather on exterior movie settings and film equipment. It uncovers a long-lasting instability in the relation between the rural spaces of Québécois cinema and the commonly associated emotions, as well as a corresponding unpredictability in the actual filmic experience tied to weather elements not directly associated with sight and sound. Ultimately, the text calls for the integration of this instability and this unpredictability as critical tools in Canadian cinema historiography.