Concordia teams up with the Cinéma du Musée for a monthly 1970s film series
It’s been five decades since art-house cinema started taking up major space among the blockbuster films of the era — a shift that just so happens to coincide with Concordia’s founding.
To mark the university’s 50th anniversary, Martin Lefebvre, film studies professor and chair of the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, has partnered with the Cinéma du Musée for a series of film screenings highlighting cinema from 1974 and 1975 in Quebec, North America and abroad.
"What became the Mel Hoppenheim School was born at a time when international film culture was extremely rich,” Lefebvre notes.
“Screening the great films our students and professors discovered while they themselves participated in the development of film culture in our city seems like the best way to celebrate."
Nine feature films are screening as part of “1974–75 – Fifty years of cinema at Concordia,” which runs from September 2024 through May 2025 at the Cinéma du Musée. The series showcases films that were critically acclaimed upon release, as well as lesser-known, sometimes forgotten, yet influential titles that Lefebvre believes deserve to be rediscovered by cinephiles.
The first, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, showed on September 22 in collaboration with the Museum of Jewish Montreal. The Academy Award-nominated film is an adaptation of the renowned Mordecai Richler book by the same name. Actress and director Micheline Lanctôt spoke following the screening. Lanctôt, who was a part-time film production instructor at Concordia for more than 30 years, starred in the film.
Each screening will feature a presentation or a discussion hosted by a Mel Hoppenheim School professor or doctoral student. Lefebvre selected the films alongside Jean-François Lamarche, head of programming at the Beaubien, du Parc and du Musée cinemas.
‘A unique, fervent, internationally renowned moment’
Upcoming screenings include Senegalese satirical comedy XALA (1975) on October 27 and One Way or Another (1975), a part-documentary, part–narrative fiction film from Cuba, to be shown on November 3.
Released after Afro-Cuban director Sara Goméz’s untimely death, One Way or Another addresses the legacy of Cuba’s postcolonial society from a feminist and intersectional perspective.
Rosanna Maule, a cinema professor at Concordia since 2000, will speak at the film’s screening about its significance within Cuban post-revolutionary cinema and beyond.
“One Way or Another came out during the unique, fervent, moment of Third Cinema, with films internationally renowned yet conceived of within the context of political movements and counteraesthetics,” Maule says.
Her talk will explore Gómez’s decision to mix documentary-style realism and fictional narrative to address the gender, race and class dynamics of the country’s 1959 revolution.
“Cinema was an important aspect of the Cuban revolution. The films produced by the Institute of Cuban Cinema (ICAIC) aimed at opening debates among audiences in the urban and rural contexts where they were distributed. Gómez was the first female director to direct a feature film at ICAIC, and one of the few Afro-Cuban filmmakers active at the Institute.”
To purchase tickets to the One Way or Another screening and others, or to view the full program, visit the “Fifty years of cinema at Concordia” webpage.
The film series “1974–-75 – Fifty years of cinema at Concordia” began in September 2024 and runs until May 2025 at the Cinéma du Musée.
Find out more about Concordia’s Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema.
