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Les raquetteurs

Les Raquetteurs

(The Snowshoers)

Year: 1958
Language: French
Format: 35mm Black & White
Runtime: 15 min
Director: Gilles Groulx, Michel Brault
Cinematographer: Michel Brault
Editor: Gilles Groulx
Sound: Marcel Carrière
Production Company: National Film Board of Canada

This direct cinema documentary about the snowshoers congress in Sherbrooke, Quebec, in February 1958, provides a humorous but revealing and sympathetic portrait of ritual and communal life in rural Quebec.

Les raquetteurs is an important film that marked the true beginnings of the French Unit at the NFB. It also marked the first step toward the development of a particular Quebec style of direct cinema and established cinematographer and director Michel Brault as a major innovator in the documentary movement in Canada and abroad.