The Snowshoers

The Snowshoers (1958)

Les raquetteurs

This short documentary records the celebration and ritual surrounding a snowshoe competition in Sherbrooke in the late 1950s. The film marked the beginning of a new approach to reality in documentary and prefigures the trademark style of the NFB's newly formed French Unit. Today, "Les raquetteurs" is considered a precursor to the birth of direct cinema.

Date of release
1958-02-01
TMDB
5.7 / 10 (14)
Runtime
15m
Genres
Documentary
Director
Michel Brault, Gilles Groulx

Casting

Interesting facts

The Snowshoers is a 1958 Direct Cinema documentary film co-directed by Michel Brault and Gilles Groulx. The film explores life in rural Quebec, at a convention of snowshoers in Sherbrooke, Quebec in February 1958. The film is notable for helping to establish the then-nascent French language production unit at the National Film Board of Canada, and more importantly, the development of a uniquely Quebec style of direct cinema.

Production

Grant McLean, then head of production for the NFB, had been angry that what was to have been a three-minute vignette had quadrupled in length and ordered the film to be used for stock footage. However, NFB producers Tom Daly and Guy Glover interceded on the young filmmakers' behalf.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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