Guest
Louise Bourque began to make films in the late 1980s as a student at Concordia University in Montreal. Since the mid-1990s, Bourque’s films have dealt with plastic manipulation of the film plane, in the form of scratches, chemical alteration, contact printing, and tricks of time affected by way of optical printing. Scene of the Crime surveys Bourque’s work, from her early experimental dramas (Jolicoeur Touriste, The People in the House), to her abstract work (L’eclat du mal / The Bleeding Heart of It, Jours en fleurs, Remains), to her self-portraits (Self-Portrait Post Partum, Auto Portrait / Self-Portrait Post Mortem), with attention to her self-conscious use of the machinery and constitution of cinema, for example, the intrusion of shutters on the image, the layers of colour in emulsion; as well as the autobiographical suggestions of much of Bourque’s work, an exploration of trauma and a search for catharsis.
