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24 heures ou plus
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Wikipedia article
'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.
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.
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, 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. 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. 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. When his offer to buy the rights was turned down, Groulx quit the Board in protest. The ban was lifted in 1976. The film received a "for all" rating from the on February 8, 1977, and was shown for the first time on February 10 at the Cinmathque qubcoise.
References
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