ROBERT MORIN in person with PETIT POW! POW! NOËL

The Big Smash! Film Collective presents

ROBERT MORIN in person with

Robert Morin | Canada 2005 | 91min. | Video | French w/ English Subtitles

 

Saturday Nov. 20

Doors: 7:45pm

Film: 8:30pm

Robert Morin is a video virtuoso, and with his incendiary, falsely (?) autobiographic yarn, à la YES SIR! MADAME, he punches us in the gut once more.  With nothing more than a voyeuristic camera and an accusatory voice pacing around an elderly man in a hospital room, Morin delivers an ultra dense, dynamic, sometimes funny but mostly disturbing film.

PETIT POW! POW! NOËL is the story of a man (played by Robert Morin) who visits his dad (André Morin, Robert’s actual father!) on Christmas with the intent of making him suffer and eventually die for his crimes against his family. The catch is that whatever torture, psychological or otherwise, he inflicts on the old bastard, it pales in comparison with the daily pain and humiliation of having to be fed, washed and get your diapers changed.  Even though the protagonist is motivated by hatred, the evident loss of human dignity on display makes a striking pro-euthanasia case.  Morin's movie takes a situation often seen in Québécois cinema, the neglected son who confronts his father on his deathbed (see: Les invasions barbares, La vie avec mon père), but here it's devoid of superfluous flourishes, romanticism or pretension. Petit Pow! Pow! Noël is a thought-provoking, unforgettable real-life horror tale.

(Kevin Laforest, Montreal Film Journal)

 C'est la nuit de Noël. Caméra dans une main, seringue dans l'autre, un homme pénètre dans un centre hospitalier de longue durée pour faire le procès de son père et, éventuellement, l'exécuter. Complications : le vieillard est autiste et le personnel infirmier, dérangeant. Décompte : le huis clos s'étire sur 24 heures. Dérive : le justicier en vient à condamner toute sa famille, lui inclus. Finale : le tête-à-tête avec la mort prend fin autour d'une boîte de biscuits au chocolat.

Robert Morin | Canada 1984 | 19min. | Video | French w/ English Subtitles

 

A man loses his job and starts falling apart.  Phase one: welfare.  Phase two: moving to an unfamiliar, cheap and seedy neighbourhood. In phase three, his neighbours really start to upset his mental state. Thinking he's hallucinations about the people around him, and to help himself get back to a normal, banal objectivity, he starts filming his neighbours discreetly from the window of his squalid room. Once developed, the film footage – far from reassuring him – drives him from simple confusion into total psychosis.

 

DIRECTOR IN ATTENDANCE! Robert Morin has been enriching the world of Québec cinéma for over twenty-five years with his penetrating "interior views", each one more striking than the last. He has, from the beginning, imposed his own style and vision, leaving indelible marks on the collective imagination.