Underplayed Gems

The Great Ordinary Movie (1971)

The Great Ordinary Movie poster
Original title
Le grand film ordinaire
Directed by
Roger Frappier
Genre
documentary
Country
Canada
Runtime
1h 18m
Rating
9.0 of 10 from 1 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

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How it feels

This 1971 Canadian film mixes documentary footage of life in Quebec with a staged play. The play imagines Joan of Arc living in modern Quebec.

experimentalimprovisationalplayfulunconventionalobservationalquirkytheatricalcollage-like

What happens

The Great Ordinary Movie, or Joan of Arc is Alive and Well and Living in Quebec (French: Le Grand film ordinaire, ou Jeanne d'Arc n'est pas morte, se porte bien, et vit au Québec) is a Canadian improvisational docudrama film, directed by Roger Frappier and released in 1971. Created in collaboration with the Grand Cirque ordinaire, a Montreal theatre troupe active in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the film blends documentary scenes about contemporaneous life in Quebec with a filmed staging of the troupe's theatrical play T'es pas tannée Jeanne d'Arc, about Joan of Arc living in Quebec. The film had originally been envisioned as a straight documentary about the troupe, before evolving into its mixed docudrama form. The film premiered in February 1971 at Montreal's Verdi Cinema. It was later considered to be one of the first and most important progenitors of the independent film movement in Quebec in the 1970s. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

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