Trailer
Speak Blanc is a visual reimagining of Sylvain Campeau’s poem of the same name, published in his 2019 collection Dire encore après from Éditions Triptyque. Campeau’s piece pays tribute to Michèle Lalonde’s iconic poem “Speak White” — famously performed at the Nuit de la poésie event in 1970 — and raises an important question: what form should this kind of literary statement take today, in our present context? Set against a frenetic series of images, the poem itself draws on a panorama of accounts from those whose lives, words, and speech have shaped Quebec. Many languages claim their place, the cadences of which have long resonated in this land.
| Director | Alain Lefort |
| Author | Sylvain Campeau |
| Editing | Alain Lefort |
| Narration | Sylvain Campeau |
| Cinematography | Alain Lefort, Camille Roppert |
Image tirée du film Speak Blanc // Image from the film Speak Blanc
Production
Alain Lefort
Following the pioneer of Land Art and Arte Povera in photography (Giuseppe Penone, Richard Long and Hiroshi Sugimoto) and in a renewed technical approach, Alain Leford is interested by the history of the site and by the imprint of life in its environment. The nature offers, to the photographer’s eyes, shapes, colors and contours, a pictorial material waiting to be precise by a framing work. By isolating a fragment of nature, the photographer appropriates it and transforms it into a painting. This obviously very fragmentary cut points towards the off-field, the immensity of the natural space from which it was extracted.
Alain Lefort lives and works in Montreal. Graduate of a major in photography from Concordia University (1995), the artist has been exhibited his work since the early 1990s. Taking as his subjects elements of nature and territory, his approach reach the photographic medium by sometimes confronting it by the limits of the real and the abstract. Alain Lefort has over fifty exhibitions, both individual and collective, in Quebec and abroad (Albania, the United States, Portugal …). His works have been acquired by Cirque du Soleil, theMusée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Loto-Québec and UMA (the House of Image and Photography). His work has also been the subject of several publications.
Biographical notes provided by the film production team
Alain Lefort lives and works in Montreal. Graduate of a major in photography from Concordia University (1995), the artist has been exhibited his work since the early 1990s. Taking as his subjects elements of nature and territory, his approach reach the photographic medium by sometimes confronting it by the limits of the real and the abstract. Alain Lefort has over fifty exhibitions, both individual and collective, in Quebec and abroad (Albania, the United States, Portugal …). His works have been acquired by Cirque du Soleil, theMusée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Loto-Québec and UMA (the House of Image and Photography). His work has also been the subject of several publications.
Biographical notes provided by the film production team
