mythology

On the winter of 2005, I got an e-mail from my friend Chris. It was a forward from a woman, discussing the moral of the artists. It mentioned also the movie director Arthur Lipsett. I never heard about him before. 

I did a little research and I found that he was very influential NFB director in the 60’s. And absolutely by chance he lived on the same street in Montreal, as me. I went there and met the concierge. He brought me to a big locker, where they were gathering all the unnecessary leftovers from the former tenants. I found a small notebook, blue, handwritten “Lipsett” on it. 

 
A page from the notebook.

 

I found everything inside this small notebook. Everything and nothing. Trying to re-construct someone’s life through those notes seemed impossible. This is how I decided to do this film.


Another page. Look at the bottom right corner. There is a note: SUICIDE - WHY?

 

 

He was a prolific writer and painter. His collages/storyboards/notes were famous for the quality of their artistic work. They were like diaries, mirrors of his life and his ideas. Most of them are completely lost, as he didn’t pay much attention to them, looking at them as storyboards of his movies and ideas.

Did I really find his diaries-collages in his small apartment on Côte-des-Neiges, or is this just a mystification?

With this movie, we imagine that those diaries have been recovered. From the dust and the garbage, saved accidentally…