Les brasiers de l’hexagone : les cinémas militants français à Montréal (1974)

Montreal’s Rencontres internationales pour un nouveau cinéma were the occasion for delegates from five French production and distribution collectives to discuss the future of militant cinema with their European, Latin American, African, Asian and North American equivalents. From the French perspective, the Rencontres also allowed the opportunity to provisionally take stock of militant cinema’s national situation, amidst the effervescence that had followed May 1968. Only a few weeks following the defeat of the Programme commun de la gauche in the French presidential elections, the Quebec meeting displayed the absences of unity and coordination amongst the French groups. This article seeks to analyse the different conceptions of French militant cinema that were being brought together in Montreal.