Movies by Hubert Aquin
September Five at Saint-Henri
This short film is a series of vignettes of life in Saint-Henri, a Montreal working-class district, on the first day of school. From dawn to midnight, we take in the neighbourhood’s pulse: a mother fussing over children, a father's enforced idleness, teenage boys clowning, young lovers dallying - the unposed quality of daily life.
Of Sport and Men
In 1961, philosopher Roland Barthes collaborated with filmmaker Hubert Aquin to produce a film, for Canadian television, intended to reveal the poetics of sport and spectatorship. The question 'what is sport' is answered by Barthes' eloquently scripted commentary. The recurring theme of purging violence from society into the spectacle of sport runs through the film.