Manouane River Lumberjacks (1962)

Original title

Bûcherons de la Manouane

Directed by

Arthur Lamothe

Genre

documentary film

Country

Canada

Runtime

28 min

Rating

7.0 of 10 from 2 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This documentary follows lumberjacks working in the Manouane River area of Quebec. It shows their labor, daily life, and some of the tensions with the company that employs them.

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What happens

Manouane River Lumberjacks (French: Bûcherons de la Manouane) is a Canadian short documentary film, directed by Arthur Lamothe and released in 1962. Considered an important milestone in the Cinema of Quebec, the film is a portrait of lumberjacks working in the Manouane River area of Quebec, based in part on Lamothe's own history of having worked in the lumber camps before pursuing filmmaking. The film has faced some discussion of the fact that some of its content was censored. Because the film contained some allegations of mistreatment and exploitation of the lumberworkers, the National Film Board prevented Lamothe from explicitly naming the lumber company they were working for, and from drawing any political conclusions about the fact that the lumber company was owned by English Canadians while the workers were all québécois or indigenous. Later analysis has also highlighted the fact that the lumberworkers' dialogue in the original French version of the film was not directly translated by either subtitling or dubbing in the English version, but was simply overdubbed with commentary by the film's narrator. Despite this, the film is still seen as having a significant pro-worker political position, and as one of the first major Canadian documentary films to present a gritty direct cinema view of Quebec rather than a romanticized or folkloric image. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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