Pierre Perrault


Pierre Perrault was a Canadian documentary film director with the National Film Board of Canada. Over his 40-year career, he directed 32 films and was one of Canada's most important filmmakers, although he is largely unknown outside of Québec.

Early life

Perrault was born and raised in Montreal, the son of a prosperous lumber merchant, and attended the most prestigious private schools in the city. Due to rebellious behaviour, he was expelled from Collège de Montréal, and Collège André-Grasset before graduating from Collège Sainte-Marie de Montréal. While there, with Hubert Aquin and Marcel Dubé, he founded the student journal Cahiers d’Arlequin, in which he published his first play, Pierre en vrac.
In 1948, he entered the Université de Montréal Law School, where he was editor of the student journal and won three hockey championships. From there, he studied the history of law at the University of Paris and international law at the University of Toronto. He was called to the bar in 1954 but he had already realized that the law was not his calling.

Career

In 1955, Perrault began writing a weekly radio show at Radio Canada. In 1956, he permanently left the law and began writing for Le chant des hommes, a daily Radio Canada series about folk music.
By then, he had married archaeologist Yolande Simard, who was from the Charlevoix region, on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River. In 1956, with French folk singer Jacques Douai, the couple traveled through Charlevoix, interviewing locals and recording their music. These interviews and recordings became the basis of his weekly radio series, Au pays de Neufve-France which, in turn, was the inspiration for a CBC television series of the same name.
On that trip through Charlevoix, Perrault had met many artists and artisans, and he pitched the National Film Board of Canada on the idea of doing a film about them. The result, Master Artisans of Canada, was Perrault's first film, and it would introduce Perrault to the director, producer and cinematographer Judith Crawley, who handled the English versions of his work for the rest of his career. Crawley and her husband, Budge Crawley owned a film production company which employed the French director René Bonnière. Perrault and Bonnière came up with the idea of turning the Charlevoix interviews and recordings, and the resultant radio show scripts, into documentary shorts. From 1960 to 1963, the two would create 14 films, 13 of which would become the NFB series St. Lawrence North.
After his next film for the NFB, the critically acclaimed Pour la suite du monde Perrault became a full-time employee of the NFB in 1965. He went on to create another 16 films, most relating to Quebec's culture, society and environment. He retired in 1996 and died three years later, survived by his wife Yolande Simard Perrault and their two children.

Legacy

Canadian film historian Peter Morris wrote this about Perrault in his 1984 book The Film Companion: "The most famous direct cinema filmmaker in Quebec, who developed a unique 'cinema of speech' that has 'spoken' about Quebec, its land and its people, and that has been at once witness of its past and often prophecy of its future. His approach involves close collaboration with his cinematographers, direct involvement with the people or events, and later, a careful construction of scenes in the editing room. From the 1960s and early 1970s through his later films on Abitibi and First Nations people, he expressed the concept of 'ethnic class' that some feel avoids more basic issues, even though it gave voice to long-buried cultural aspirations."
Perrault's life and work were analyzed by Jean-Daniel Lafond in the 1986 documentary Dream Tracks .
The Rendez-vous Québec Cinéma film festival has established the Prix Pierre et Yolande Perrault for Best Documentary.
Perrault’s papers are held in the Pierre Perrault Archives at Université Laval.

Honours

All National Film Board of Canada
  • Master Artisans of Canada - documentary short 1957 - co-writer with Judith Crawley
  • Toutes Isles - documentary short 1960 - writer, producer, co-director with René Bonnière
  • St. Lawrence North: Winter Crossing at L'Isle-Aux-Coudres - documentary short 1960 - writer, producer, co-director with René Bonnière
  • St. Lawrence North: White-Whale Hunters of Anse-Aux-Basques - documentary short 1960 - writer, producer, co-director with René Bonnière
  • St. Lawrence North: Turlutte - documentary short 1960 - writer, producer, co-director with René Bonnière
  • St. Lawrence North: Three Seasons - documentary short 1960 - writer, producer, co-director with René Bonnière
  • St. Lawrence North: Soiree at St. Hilarion - documentary short 1960 - writer, producer, co-director with René Bonnière
  • St. Lawrence North: On the Sea - documentary short 1960 - writer, producer, co-director with René Bonnière
  • St. Lawrence North: The Land of Jacques Cartier - documentary short 1960 - writer, producer, co-director with René Bonnière
  • St. Lawrence North: Ka Ke Ki Ku - documentary short 1960 - writer, producer, co-director with René Bonnière
  • St. Lawrence North: Canadian Diamonds - documentary short 1960 - writer, producer, co-director with René Bonnière
  • St. Lawrence North: The Jean Richard - documentary short 1963 - writer, producer, co-director with René Bonnière
  • St. Lawrence North: Whalehead - documentary short 1963 - writer, producer, co-director with René Bonnière
  • St. Lawrence North: Attiuk - documentary short 1963 - writer, producer, co-director with René Bonnière
  • St. Lawrence North: Winter Sealing at La Tabatière - documentary short 1963 - writer, producer, co-director with René Bonnière
  • Pour la suite du monde - documentary 1963 - co-director with Michel Brault
  • The Times That Are - documentary 1967 - director
  • The River Schooners - documentary short 1968 - writer, co-director with René Bonnière
  • Beluga Days - documentary short 1968 -co-director with Michel Brault and Bernard Gosselin
  • Wake Up, mes bons amis - documentary 1970 - director
  • Acadia, Acadia - documentary 1971 - co-director with Michel Brault
  • Tickets s.v.p. - animated short film 1973 - writer and director
  • Un royaume vous attend - documentary 1976 - director
  • Le retour à la terre - documentary 1976 - director
  • Le goût de la farine - documentary 1977 - director
  • Gens d'Abitibi - documentary, 1980 - writer and director
  • The Shimmering Beast - documentary 1982 - director
  • Land Without Trees, or the Mouchouânipi - documentary 1983 - director
  • Les voiles bas et en travers - documentary 1983 - director
  • La grande allure - documentary 1985 - writer, director
  • Oumigmag or the Fickle Art of Documentary Filmmaking - documentary short 1993 - director
  • Icewarrior - documentary 1996 - writer, director

    Film Awards

Winter Crossing at L'Isle-Aux-Coudres
Pour la suite du monde
Acadia Acadia?!?
  • Festival international du film d'expression française, Dinard, France: L'Émeraude de Dinard - Festival's Grand Prize, 1971
Oumigmag or the Fickle Art of Documentary Filmmaking
Icewarrior
  • Festival du Film des Diablerets, Les Diablerets, Switzerland: Diable d'Or Award, Safety of Mountain Environment, 1996
  • European Nature Film Festival Valvert, Brussels: Third Place

    Literary Awards

  • Grand Jury Prize for Canadian Letters: Portulan, 1961
  • Governor General’s Literary Award: Au coeur de la rose, 1964
  • Governor General’s Literary Award: Chouennes: poems, 1961–71, 1975
  • Prix Victor-Barbeau, Académie des lettres du Québec: L’oumigmatique ou l’objectif documentaire, 1996
  • Governor General’s Literary Award: Le Mal du Nord, 1999