Denys Arcand

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

NY Times, June 7, 2003

SATURDAY PROFILE
Quebec Filmmaker Takes Pulse of a Generation
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS

MONTREAL ? As Quebec's most distinguished movie director and screenwriter, 
Denys Arcand has etched a jagged path through life along much the same 
curve as his province's over its last four tumultuous decades.

The son of a riverboat pilot and a deeply religious mother, he dreamed of 
becoming a saint at age 12 while the Roman Catholic Church was still the 
dominant social force here.

As a young man, influenced by his Marxist history professors at the 
University of Montreal, he made documentary films about exploited textile 
workers and the fiery 1980 campaign over Quebec separation.

In middle age, as the hot coals of political rebellion here petered out, he 
turned his attention to more personal themes, like how people find or fail 
to find intimacy. Along the way, he has lived with three women, divorcing 
one, before settling over the last decade with his current producer, Denise 
Robert, and their 7-year-old daughter, Ming Xia, whom they adopted from China.

Now approaching 62, living in an understated red-brick town house, Mr. 
Arcand is taking the measure of his generation in his new movie, "The 
Barbarian Invasions," and he has found little to cheer about. His 
close-cropped hair and mustache now totally gray, he is also contemplating 
his own mortality.

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/07/international/americas/07FPRO.html


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