My son, the movie maker

This past summer my son Nicolas (10) was given a wonderful opportunity. He was asked to participate in a summer film camp called Les P'Tits Loups.

The camp was sponsored by Culture, Communication et Condition Féminine Québec, The City of Montrèal, 80 rue, Aide aux Enfants en Difficulté, the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, Lozeau, Moog audio, Société de Transport de Montréal and 80, Ruelle de l'Avenir.

For 5 days Nicolas went to a school that had been taken over by 80, Ruelle de l'Avenir, a group of young Audio-Visual mavericks. They worked with three groups of kids in three weeks on creating a series of short animated films. Some of these shorts are available on the internet for viewing. If you are a member of Facebook you can click onto the search engine and enter Les P'tits Loups where the shorts are.

Nicolas has one called "Nico et Mat".

The main thrust of the camp, however was to produce a seven minute short for presentation at the 2009 Festival du Nouveau cinéma de Montréal. In fact the short was shown on opening night before the Montreal film community and V.I.P.s before the showing of the main feature. That means his short actually opened the festival!

Afterwards the short (titled "Porte Bonheur") was shown three times before a French animated film called "L'Histoire Vrai du Chat Botté".

We had the pleasure of attending the Saturday showing of "Porte Bonheur" on October 10th and were delighted. It consists of interviews with the kids interwoven with short animated snippets.

The great thing for me was the venue it all took place at. The film was shown at the Imperial Cinema in Montreal. the Imperial is the last of the old great Cinema palaces. It was designed and built in 1913 by the American architect Albert E. Westover.



It was equipped with a Wurlitzer organ and could seat 2000 spectators for the great old vaudeville shows. In the 1930s the theater was bought by Léo-Ernest Ouimet and in addition to variety shows it partially featured moving pictures. By the 1950s the theater was equipped to show movies in Cinérama.



You have to understand, I have a special place in my heart for the Imperial.

The Imperial closed down during the 1970s and most people thought it was going to go the way of many of the palace cinemas of its time. Many of those were either torn down or gutted and turned into Pharmacies.

By 1980 it was bought by someone and renovated to the tune of millions of dollars. It was newly wired for THX sound and 70 mm projection in 1981 when I was in college studying film and re-opened with "Raiders of The Lost Ark". I vividly remember every moment shared by the audience. The audience reaction to Indy shooting the Arab Swordsman drowned out the soundtrack for the next 120 seconds of the film. A long time, I can tell you! I was seated in the balcony (the show was sold out) and had vertigo from the extra height when Spielberg pans over a cliff to follow the German staff car that goes over during the truck chase.

The following summer I practically camped out there to watch "Star Trek - The Wrath Of Khan". Over the next few years I saw "Das Boot" there and "Top Gun", Jean-Jacques Annaud's "Quest For Fire" and James Cameron's masterful "Aliens". I did camp out there one night in May of 1983 to be the first ones in line to see "Star Wars episode VI - Return Of The Jedi".

Towards the end I saw "Gettysburg" in that theater. I went to the Fant-Asia film festival several times there when it ceased being a first run theater and was starting to show its age again. In recent years, with kids of my own, I have not had as much leisure to go "out" to see films. We mostly go to the huge multi-plex cinemas that have been built. In fact I thought the Imperial had been turned into office space.



To my great delight it has been renovated yet again at great expense. They even repaired the tear in the curtain that si irritated me over the years.



They also added a painted flourish in the crown moulded maw of the Lion above the screen. They kept the most beautiful features, paintings above the lobby entrance. The seats are plush. The sound was wonderful.

Thank-you Nicolas for bringing it all back for me and for the great little seven minutes I experienced watching your film.