Year: 1970
Language: French
Format: 16mm Colour/Black & White
Runtime: 98 min
Director: Arthur Lamothe
Producer: Arthur Lamothe
Cinematographer: Guy Borremans
Editor: Francine Saia
Sound: Pierre Larocque
Production Company: Société Générale Cinématographique, Confédération des Syndicats Nationaux

A key film in the development of political cinema in Quebec – and the first feature sponsored by a union – Arthur Lamothe’s extraordinary portrait of the working and living conditions of construction workers transcends the boundaries of observational cinema and presents, through its editing structure, a clear yet complex analysis of the roots of worker exploitation.

An account of seven workers who were killed on the job, this film firmly established Lamothe’s vision of cinema as a tool for social commentary and activism. Le Mépris n’aura qu’un temps bears strong parallels to Lamothe’s first film, Bfcherons de la Manouane (1962), and had a profound influence on Denys Arcand’s Réjeanne Padovani (1973), particularly in terms of what Gerald Pratley has described as "its strong political overtones and caustic comments about businessmen and their deals with governments."