ÉLEPHANT: KEEPING QUÉBEC’S CINEMATIC HERITAGE ALIVE

Since 2008, Éléphant: The Memory of Québec Cinema has been digitizing and restoring the movies that have marked Québec’s history and culture, and making them accessible to the general public. Éléphant celebrated its 10th birthday in 2018 and began its second decade by adopting a new visual identity that it unveiled in September of that year. Éléphant is now planning many new initiatives to reach new audiences and make Québec’s film heritage even more accessible to all generations, in particular by showing its films at Québec high schools and colleges.

Éléphant, a fixture at Québec film festivals

In 2019, Éléphant partnered with several major film festivals in Québec to screen some of the most important works in Québec’s cinematic heritage. In July, Éléphant presented the films Portion d’éternité (1989), L’assassin jouait du trombone (1991) and Le sphinx (1995) at the Fantasia International Film Festival. In September, it presented Valérie (1969) on its 50th anniversary and Post mortem (1999) at the Festival de Cinéma de la Ville de Québec. Lastly, in November 2019, Éléphant presented L’eau chaude, l’eau frette (1976), Le vent du Wyoming (1994) and La cuisine rouge (1980) at the Festival du nouveau cinéma. Many of these works had been almost impossible to see before Éléphant digitized and restored them. Thanks to Éléphant, they can now be seen again and, most importantly, discovered by new generations.