Co-presented with the grunt gallery and Dazibao
Co-presented with the grunt gallery
Initiated by the filmmaker Rodrigue Jean, Épopée is a collection of short films written and made in collaboration with male drug addicts and sex trade workers in Montreal. Set in the district known to residents as “the box,” an area bounded by the streets St. Denis, De Lorimier, Viger and Sherbrooke, the project was initiated following the shooting of the film Men for Sale (2008), whose participants expressed the desire to create fictional works in addition to the documentary.
Épopée followed from a series of writing workshops held at a drop-in centre for sex workers. The Fictions and Trajets (traces) are stories that often closely relate to the participant’s lives, blurring the boundaries between documentary and fiction. The two genres merge to yield a raw on-screen truth whose symbolic power gives meaning to the individual events they relate. The films provide us with a picture of our society, which is often impossible to grasp and ruled by exclusion. Translated as “epic poem,” Épopée is both a poetic and political gesture of resistance.
Two selections will be shown in Vancouver as part of QAF:
L’État des lieux (The State of the Moment) will be installed as an alternating projection at grunt gallery over the course of July 21-Aug 9, 2014. Attend the closing reception at grunt gallery on August 6, members of Épopée will be present at this event.
350 E 2nd Ave – Unit 116 Vancouver, BC V5T 4R8
Free admission
L’État du monde (82 m, 2013)
Theatre screening in the Roundhouse Performance Centre, Aug 5 7:30pm
Post-show talkback with filmmaker Rodrigue Jean and Serge-Olivier Rondeau, a member of the Épopée collective.
TICKETS $10 General Admission | $8 Youth/Seniors/Underemployed
This event is scent-reduced, and fully wheelchair accessible. For more information on how to support a scent-reduced event, please visit PeggyMunson.com. For a full accessibility audit of the space, visit Building Radical Accessible Communities.
The Radical Accessibility Mapping Project performed an accessibility audit for the Roundhouse in August 2011, and the space has remained the same since.
Access Overview: Just the Basics.
You can learn more about the Radical Access Mapping Project here.