Cinema of Quebec
The history of cinema in Quebec started on June 27, 1896 when the Frenchman Louis Minier inaugurated the first movie projection in North America in a Montreal theatre room.Most of the commercial feature films came primarily from four directors: Fyodor Otsep, Paul Gury, Jean-Yves Bigras, and René Delacroix.Notable films of this period include The Music Master (Le Père Chopin, 1945), A Man and His Sin (Un homme et son péché, 1949), The Nightingale and the Bells (Le Rossignol et les cloches, 1952), Little Aurore's Tragedy (La petite Aurore l'enfant martyre, 1952), Tit-Coq (1953), and The Promised Land (Les brûlés, 1959).Direct Cinema filmmakers Michel Brault, Pierre Perrault and Gilles Groulx all made their debut at the NFB.Commercial directors such as Denis Héroux became known for his films Valérie and Deux femmes en or [fr], two comedies with erotic overtones showing popular success not seen in Quebec since Jean-Yves Bigras' La Petite Aurore l'enfant martyre (1952).In 1971, director Claude Jutra released one of the most critically praised Quebec film to date, Mon oncle Antoine.Martin Photographe was selected at Cannes where Monique Mercure, the female star of the film, won Best Actress (tying with Shelley Duvall for 3 Women).The next year, 2003, was called "the year of Quebec cinema's rebirth" with Denys Arcand winning the foreign film Oscar for The Barbarian Invasions (Les Invasions barbares), the sequel of The Decline of the American Empire (Le Déclin de l'empire américain), and with Gaz Bar Blues and Seducing Doctor Lewis gaining both critical and public acclaim.The 2010s were marked by three consecutive Academy Award nominations for Quebecois films in the Foreign Language category,[13] namely for Incendies (2010), Monsieur Lazhar (2011) and War Witch (2012).[13] University of Berlin film scholar Claudia Kotte wrote Incendies, Monsieur Lazhar, Inch'Allah (2012) and War Witch, represent a break from focus on local history to more global concerns.[14] In May 2016, Xavier Dolan became the first Quebec filmmaker to win the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, for It's Only the End of the World.