Cinema of Pain

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Ebook in PDF format. Available for immediate download after we receive your order

DRM:
Watermark

Publication Year:
2020

ISBN-13: 9781771124348

<p>Since the defeat of the pro-sovereigntists in the 1995 Quebec referendum, the loss of a cohesive nationalistic vision in the province has led many Québécois to use their ancestral origins to inject meaning into their everyday lives. <i>A Cinema of Pain</i> argues that this phenomenon is observable in a pervasive sense of nostalgia in Quebec culture and is especially present in the province’s vibrant but deeply wistful cinema. In Québécois cinema, nostalgia not only denotes a sentimental longing for the bucolic pleasures of bygone French-Canadian traditions, but, as this edited collection suggests, it evokes the etymological sense of the term, which underscores the element of pain (<i>algos</i>) associated with the longing for a return home (<i>nostos</i>).</p>

<p>Whether it is in grandiloquent historical melodramas such as <i>Séraphin: un homme et son péché</i> (Binamé 2002), intimate realist dramas like <i>Tout ce que tu possèdes</i> (Émond 2012), charming art films like <i>C.R.A.Z.Y. </i>(Vallée 2005), or even gory horror movies like <i>Sur le Seuil</i> (Tessier 2003), the contemporary Québécois screen projects an image of shared suffering that unites the nation through a melancholy search for home.</p>