Pierre Vallières

Directed by Joyce Wieland

Canada, 1972 (experimental, 33 minutes, colour)

Image: © Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre

Film Description:
"A film of the mouth of the Québec revolutionary, Pierre Vallières, up close, as he talks about Mont Laurier, Quebec history and race, and women's liberation."
-- University of Toronto Library Catalogue (source)

Film Credits (partial):
Participants:	Pierre Vallières

(sources)

Notes about Pierre Vallières

Shown at the Women and Film International Festival (Toronto) in 1973.

(sources)

Quotes by the Director

"I liked the idea of concentrating on one small section of his anatomy, because it simplifies things. Here is a close-up hold of his mouth, on and through which you can meditate on the qualities of voice, the French language, revolution, the French Revolution, Géricault's colour, etc. These are some of the things I think about when I see my film."
-- Joyce Wieland (source)

"[Pierre Vallières] was a one-shot affair ... and shows the whole process of making the film, camera breakdown, Vallières pulling away after shots, and the final emptying of the camera ... I had over fifty feet in the magazine so I turned the camera around on the tripod and had it look out the window at the snow while it emptied itself."
-- Joyce Wieland (source)

Quotes about Pierre Vallières

"[In Pierre Vallières] Vallières' political rhetoric becomes an oppressive language, another colonising force (one becomes aware that the voices of the women film-makers are barely audible on the soundtrack). The effect is to raise questions about what Vallières is saying, his mode of delivery and, by implication, his politics. In this tension between masculine political discourse and suppressed feminine discourse, [Joyce] Wieland produces an investigation of the role of language in colonialism that is as relevant today as when Pierre Vallières was made, more than a decade ago."
-- Pam Cook (source)

"Perhaps the most pretentious (and longest subject) is Pierre Vallières, Joyce Wieland's 30-minute focus, in the literal sense of the term, on that former Quebec separatist revolutionary expressing opinions on Quebec minorities, women's liberation and other topics. The camera never leaves the area of Vallières's lips and teeth in what is not, in effect, a film, but a stultifying lecture."
-- A.H. Weiler (source)

Bibliography for Pierre Vallières

Brief Sections of Books

Lind, Jane. Joyce Wieland: Artist on Fire. Toronto: James Lorimer, 2001. (pp. 206-208)
Nowell, Iris. Joyce Wieland: A Life in Art. Toronto: ECW Press, 2001. (pp. 330-34)

Journal Articles

Holmes-Moss, Kristy A., and Barbara Stevenson. "Joyce Wieland: Interview and Notes on Reason over Passion and Pierre Vallières." Interview with Joyce Wieland. Canadian Journal of Film Studies / Revue canadienne d'études cinématographiques 15, no. 2 (Autumn 2006): 114-124.

Articles from Newspapers, Magazines, or News Websites

Cook, Pam. "Pierre Vallières." Monthly Film Bulletin, September 1983.