Gaspesian Exiles

This short program revisits a specific moment in Quebec history by bringing together three films that are virtually the only ones to have addressed it: the forced closure of villages in the Gaspé Peninsula in the early 1970s. Part of the Bureau d’aménagement de l’Est du Québec (BAEQ) regional development plan, these closure were met with resistance from the “Opérations dignité”. On the documentary side, Félix Lamarche’s Terres fantômes returns to these ghostly places, echoing Marcel Carrière’s firsthand account in Chez nous, c’est chez nous. On the fiction side, Jean-Claude Labrecque‘s Les smattes draws on this trauma to tell a story of exile, both geographical and mental.