The land is in upheaval.
Republican and Revolutionary goals inspired by the French Revolution and wars of Independence in Latin America have caught fire in the hearts of downtrodden Canadians in both colonies of Upper Canada (present day Ontario) and Lower Canada (present day Quebec). The peoples of both lands are experiencing wide ranging economic depression and famine caused by crop failures. In Lower Canada, the French-Canadian habitants, farmers and professionals are doubly hard pressed because of racial oppression by the English mercantile minority.
The Revolution has failed.
Poorly organized, and badly trained, farmers, tradesmen, lawyers, and labourers fighting with pikes and old hunting rifles have attempted to take on excellently equipped and rigorously ordered British Imperial troops and Loyalist Volunteers resulting in heavy losses for the Rebel cause in Ontario and particularly virulent reactionary reprisals against the Quebec Patriote villages.
Hundreds have died in the fighting. Many are left homeless and many are widowed.
Show trials take place.
Executions follow for some, exile for many more.
A remarkable and overlooked convergence in the paths of Australian and Canadian history : Fifty-eight Canadiens from Lower Canada and eighty-three American and English-Canadian prisoners are exiled to the then penal colonies of Australia and Van Diemen's Land for their participation in attempting to overthrow the Government of Her Majesty the Queen.
The Australian Prison Journal of François-Maurice Lepailleur, exiled Canadien Patriote is the key historical text of this investigation.
To understand the disease’s origins is not equivalent to finding an effective therapy, but it is undoubtedly a crucial prerequisite.
A psycho-sexual poetic politico historico and reflective film about the Canadian identity and the failed revolution of 1837 - 1838.
Entre la Langue et L’Océan. Surréaliste, radical, esthètiquement riche et techniquement ambitieux, ceci est un film qui résiste toute classification.
A man tries to invent a liberated state and ends up in a penal colony. After awhile he hesitates to remember the cause of his incarceration.
He only remembers what he left behind not what he was hoping to attain. His goal now is to live without the monstrosity of hope other than the transcendence that is called his death.
The film is grounded in the documented exile experiences of François Maurice Lepailleur —a participant in the aforementioned rebellions.
Including a transgender New York messiah, a sado-masochist Governor General, and the diarist entries of the failed revolutionary.
Inspiré des écrits d’un prisonnier, François Maurice Lepailleur, exilé en 1840-42, ce film utilise une stratégie de montage et de collage à finde subtilement dévoiler son sujet...On découvre le Gouverneur Général de Canada qui prend sa pause-café avec des cochons, une révolutionnaire cracheur de feu, un bourreau qui a perdue sa mémoire, et quelqu’un du’un sexe ambigu, Jésus de New York: voici une vision extravagante et ludique d’un pays nommé “improbable et ridiculement chanceux”.
The film was also inspired by: The Imaginary Canadian by Anthony Wilden, a psychoanalytical reading of "the Canadian identity" problem. Anthony Wilden is a significant figure in the translating and interpreting Lacan's work, as well as being one of Canada's most insightful communication theorist.
Based on the exile diary of François Maurice Lepailleur — Canadian Revolutionary.
Thanks to The Canada Council for the Arts, B.C. Film & The National Film Board of Canada
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Le Devoir
October 10, 1992.
Pleins feux sur l’éternelle crise d’identité canadienne
Historique hystérique
L’auteur du film Entre la Langue et L'Océan
qualifie ainsi la fable qu’il nous propose avec, comme prétexte. La Rébellion de 1837/38. Le journal d’exil d’un patriote, François Maurice Lepailleur - béa frère du l’un des chefs infâmes de la révolte le notaire J. N. Cardinal, qui sera pendu au Pied du Courant - servira de il conducteur a cet expose sur la perpétuelle crise d’identité canadienne. Avec ce film satirique dialectique paillard Oliver Hockenhull ne risque pas de passer inaperçu.
Le film s’interrompt un moment. L’on croit à une coupure de censeur. Censure ou clin d’œil ? Ce qu’on ne voit pas sur l’écran obscurci, c’est le corps de Pierre Laporte dans le molli arrière dune voiture ! Entre les vastes étendues de forêts canadiennes entrevues par la fenêtre d’un train rapide de grands O se tissent, comme dans zéro, puis l’on aboutit a plus percutant: O…KA…entre la langue et l’océan se complait parfois dans des scenes que l’on pourrait relier a un humour noir susceptible de faire long feu:le cadavre presque putréfié de Chenier est atteinte de priapisme, mais l’on s’en sert comme d’un medium philosophe: il en va de mème lorsqu’on insiste sur les 12souris partageant les couche du Patriote exile, ou au moment vole gouverneur général déguste son thé... entoure de porcs. Hockenhull se moque de l'ineptie des coloniaux britanniques et de les pouvoirs. Il invite même le spectateur à revoir le film plusieurs fois à cumuler les lectures possibles.
Pour ma part je crois avoir aperçu une référence a un 32 décembre! L'auteur ne pose pas a l'oracle, il se fait intemporel surréaliste par moments. Hockenhull sait capter a la fois ''émotion et le ridicule de certain état d'âme. Il insère dans on film un clip superbe ou une cantatrice en robe du soir chante le plus sérieusement du monde Les Feuilles mortes de Prévert Kosma, tandis une geinte un violoncelle, en filigrane on aura perdu un commentaire su déchirements sporadiques entre Francais Anglais tandis qu'entre deux fusils archaïques des feuilles d’érable s’amoncellent avec en toile de fond la bataille des peines d’Abraham
Un personnage sénile sur son green de golf avouera nous n’avons plus de nouvelles idées. It faut se rappeler que le cinéaste a un faible pur l'underdog et qu il nous parle a la manière de James Baldwin de victimes qui se révèlent menaçantes des lors gu elles savent bien traduire en paroles leur sort . Patriote est ici synonyme de vaincu, mais les Américains eux ne chantent ils pas la Gloire de leur rébellion réussie ?
Doit on noter l’effet cumulatif de passages quelque peu sulfureux ? Un cure près d’un prie dieu récite un mandement épiscopal de 1840 adrets aux canadiens affliges tandis qu’un bagnard et sa mus prennent leur pied dan le lit tout a cote. Effet d’avant-gare comme suggère un magazine de Vancouver? Il n’y a pas la de Viridiana bis. Hockenhull fait dans la provocation avec insistance, il mélange rappels historiques et scènes contemporaines. Un chien se gave de fèves au lard en conserve tandis que l’on nous explique l’autoportrait de Champlain faisant le coup de feu contre les Indiens. C’est Richard Desjardins qui a choqué avec son Chiens de Francis, mais dans le film cela tourne court
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Hysterical History
This is how the author of Entre La Langue L'Océan describes the fable he offers us, using the Rebellion as a pretext. The Rebellion of 1837/38. The exile diary of a patriot, François Maurice Lepailleur - beatific brother of one of the infamous leaders of the rebellion, notary J. N. Cardinal, who was hanged at Pied du Courant - serves as the leitmotif for this exposé of the perpetual Canadian identity crisis. Oliver Hockenhull's bawdy, dialectical satire will not go unnoticed.
The film pauses for a moment. It looks like a censor's cut. Censorship or wink? What we don't see on the darkened screen is Pierre Laporte's body in the back seat of a car! Between the vast expanses of Canadian forests glimpsed through the window of a fast-moving train, large O's are woven, as in zero, and then we come to something more hard-hitting: O...KA...entre la langue et l'océan sometimes indulges in scenes that could be linked to a black humor likely to be long-lived: Chenier's almost putrefied corpse is afflicted with priapism, but it's used as a philosophical medium: the same is true of the 12 mice sharing the exiled Patriot's bed, or when the Governor General steals his tea. ... surrounded by pigs. Hockenhull pokes fun at the ineptitude of British colonialists and their powers. He even invites the viewer to watch the film several times to accumulate possible readings.
Hockenhull pokes fun at the ineptitude of British colonialists and their powers. He even invites the viewer to watch the film several times to accumulate possible readings.
For my part, I think I caught a glimpse of a reference to December 32! The author doesn't pose as an oracle, but becomes timelessly surreal at times. Hockenhull knows how to capture both the emotion and the ridiculousness of certain moods. He inserts a superb clip in which a singer in an evening dress sings Prévert Kosma's Les Feuilles mortes with the utmost seriousness, while a cello whines. A commentary on the sporadic rifts between the French and the English is lost in the watermark, while maple leaves pile up between two archaic rifles, against the backdrop of the Battle of Abraham's Sorrows.
A senile character on his golf green will confess we've run out of new ideas. It's important to remember that the filmmaker has a weakness for the underdog, and that he speaks to us in the manner of James Baldwin about victims who prove threatening when they know how to put their fate into words. Patriot here is synonymous with defeated, but don't Americans sing the glory of their successful rebellion?
Should we note the cumulative effect of somewhat sulphurous passages? A parish priest recites an 1840 episcopal mandement to afflicted Canadians, while a convict and his mus take their foot off the bed nearby. Avant-garde effect, as suggested by a Vancouver magazine? This is no Viridiana bis. Hockenhull is insistently provocative, mixing historical reminders with contemporary scenes. A dog feasts on canned baked beans, while Champlain's self-portrait of the Indians is explained. It was Richard Desjardins who shocked us with his Chiens de Francis, but in the film, it's a short-lived affair.
Beginning with a Confession
As if there was a choice—writing confesses our shared guilt in the dead of naming. Cursed with the inefficiencies of partial disasters in a land of grace and extremes.
A Canadian.
Beginning with an exile, driven by the need and desire for communal memory within a disparate common. Confessing one’s nationality as a means of seeking utopia, as if there were a more worthy direction.
A Repressed Enthusiasm: The Case of The Missing Vital Sign of Canadian History: 1836/1837
Spin doctors and fake news were at work long before the internet or television.
Conservatively written histories dismiss the nationalistic and idealistic forces of this revolution, labeling it a mere ‘farmers rebellion’—an anomaly that highlights a compliant population. The absence of further revolts against imperialism wasn’t due to fear but a sensible respect for authority.
“This was almost too much for human patience... the city would have been ours in an hour probably without firing a shot; hundreds of our friends waited to join us at its entrance; the officials were terror-struck; Gov. Head had few to rely on; the colony would have followed the city; a convention and democratic constitution been adopted, and a bloodless change from a contemptible tyranny to freedom accomplished. But 800 ran where no one pursued, and unfortunately ran the wrong way.”
- William Lyon Mackenzie, Canadian Revolutionary, 1838.
The value of the nation-state aligns with its mythological qualities, equating its political worth to historical events that signal Justice, Freedom, Equality, Intelligence, and Respect. These Enlightenment and Revolutionary ideals, this heritage of radical approaches to social structure, remain unfulfilled.
The nation-state in our global oligarchical system: quaint venues for maintaining tourist trades and placebos for marginal cultural, social, and technological Luddites—struggling lumpen proles.
THE WORLD
The perpetual war of Capital has come home to roost as the struggle for subsistence, magnetized under the invisible velvet-gloved iron hand of the New Right-New Left—the old fascism on technological speed.
Now, Individualism = The Pathological Eccentricities of Everywhere Narcissism.
Corporations have become the rationale for government existence. People and the very possibility of articulating difference have become subsumed under the logos of the dominant consumer product/lifestyle. The ideals from Liberalism and the Democratic Revolutions that created Nation States have been co-opted by consumerism.
As capital becomes increasingly mobile, the worker, the citizen, the culturally defined, and the nation-state itself become sideshows to the transit and speed of power. Every place becomes either a factory or a tourist trap.
“To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it 'the way it really was'. It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger... Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the spark of hope in the past who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if the enemy wins. And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious.”
- Walter Benjamin.
At the very least, the currency of dialogue and rhetorical tropes has been introduced to leverage power by calling out the hypocrisy and injustices of the State.
St. Benoit surrenders. Jean Joseph Girouard, leader of this group, flees. He describes the events: "A considerable number of the inhabitants were assembled in my courtyard and two cannons placed in the gateway were aimed at them while they were told they would be exterminated in a few minutes... No insults or outrages were spared, no threats withheld to intimidate them into declaring the hiding places of their leaders. Scenes of devastation and destruction more atrocious than any seen in a town taken by storm followed. After completely pillaging the village, the enemy set fire to it, reducing it to ashes. They then spread out, ravaging and burning on their way, reaching as far as St. Scholastique."
In Quebec and the rest of Canada, the defeats of 1837/1838 have had both subtle and overt consequences throughout our history. They resonate in the animosity between Quebec and the rest of Canada, between Native and non-Native communities, reflecting the Canadian inferiority complex and the inability to control our destiny. While I can't predict an alternative future had the Revolution succeeded, it would have ended colonial rule, establishing a collaborative English and French Republican-Revolutionary government. This would have been an auspicious start to collaboration between peoples, providing universal suffrage to the Native population—something the Canadian government only recently granted. It would have created an environment of certainty regarding the nation's viability.
“Politics is the science that teaches the people of a country to care for each other.”
- William Lyon Mackenzie, 1836.
An interesting anecdote—the fate of one Revolutionary leader: “Chénier's heart had been pulled from his body, examined by British Military doctors... an autopsy was performed at The Black Bull, a tavern in St. Eustache. They sought to discover the reason for his death. He had been shot outside the Church, falling by the gravestones in the adjoining cemetery. He was the chief rebel of the St. Eustache Patriotes...”
The official story claims everything was in order. However, war is disorder. The British Government condoned violent reprisals against the Patriote Villages. Why perform an autopsy? What morbid curiosity demanded this 'medical' intervention? Was it not plain that the man died from a gunshot wound?
The unofficial story suggests his heart was used as a symbol of derision, displayed as an item of curiosity, carried through the defeated village on a bayonet. The truth is irrelevant; in the mind of a nation, there are only positions of power and the myths that prop them up.
To be placed is necessary for any concern to be born. To recognize and enter into a relationship with a people, with an environment, is first to envision, to be part of, and to create within the mythologies of that place. Canadians are not so much searching for an identity but are ashamed of not having achieved one.
See the analysis of Syberberg's "Mourning Work" by Elsaesser in New German Review, Aug. 1982.
When the real is no longer what it used to be, nostalgia assumes its full meaning. Here we suffer the mythology of the present, a present that has never tried so hard to eliminate the subversion and doubt that is the past. In the contemporary schizophrenic climate, the individual only mirrors the pulse of a senile opportunism. The pure, all-pervading pressure of a loss brilliantly disfigured as the now.