By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 2 cats
Director: Catherine Martin
Original language title: L'Esprit des Lieux
Country: canada
Year: 2006
Running time: 90
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0832876/
Beth says: “Directed by French-Canadian Catherine Martin, this documentary was focused on a once remote part of Quebec called Charlesvoix. 30 years ago a photographer recorded images of the people and the places of this area, and Martin went back to find those same faces and locations to see what had stayed the same or changed during that timespan. This is an area I had visited a year and a half ago, and found really lovely, so I was looking forward to ‘going back’ – unfortunately, Martin kept the focus so narrow, I really didn’t feel like the film was anything more than a sequel to the photographic exhibit. Sometimes she’d recreate the original photo, sometimes she’d just film the owners of the houses in the photo as they reminisced – then, inexplicably, at times she’d shoot an image without a corresponding photo. The film was in chapters for each small village – but she chose to avoid completely the more well-known areas which have been most affected by the burgeoning tourist industry, thus providing the greatest changes had she used those photos. 2 cats”