Prolific Quebecois filmmaker, Denis Côté, explores the world of work in Joy of Man's Desiring (Que ta joie demeure), a poetical and hybrid study of industrial life, factories and the meaning of labour. The semi-documentary begins with a woman talking over her shoulder, seemingly making an amourous pact with someone. In fact, it becomes apparent she is an embodiment of the workplace itself, and the potential lover is every worker. This enigmatic film, with its mesmerizing soundtrack, offers a stimulating poetic montage of ideas about labour, leisure and humanity's higher satisfactions and aspirations.
It is released together with the documentary essay Bestiaire which premiered at the 2012 Berlin Film Festival, 'Denis Côté's mesmerizing meditation on the relationships between animals and people through the seasons at a Quebec safari park. This strikingly gorgeous work about the act of looking slyly blurs the line between observer and observed (the film opens with art students sketching taxidermied creatures). And despite lack of a traditional narrative, there is dramatic tension in each exquisitely framed shot: a cage door under attack from a growling lion; the scurrying striped legs of zebras in a pen; the long stare of a bull, straight into the camera. Contemplative and enthralling, Bestiaire is cinema at its purest.' (Fandor)
Sundance Film Festival
Berlin Film Festival
Toronto Film Festival
London Film Festival
Denis Côté Director
Filmography Selected
Born in 1973 in New Brunswick, Canada, he works as producer and director, a radio show host and film critic. He made his first feature film, Les Etats nordiques, in 2005 (Winner, Golden Leopard, Locarno Film Festival). Since, Denis Côté has won acclaim and awards in Canada and internationally for his independent features and documentaries. A former film critic, Côté writes, directs and produces distinctive films that are starkly minimalist, strangely poetic, dryly funny and thematically enigmatic. His deadpan style and marginalized characters have earned him an international reputation as one of Canada’s leading auteurs.
Among his award winning films, Elle veut le chaos(2008), a reveng story set in the hinterland, received the Best Director prize and a special jury award at the Locarno Film Festival, while Curling (2010), earned him a second Best Director award at Locarno. In both Curling and Vic + Flo ont vu un ours (Vic + Flo Saw A Bear,2013), a movie about a lesbian couple just released from prison that won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, the threat of violence looms over the characters and the countryside where the action unfolds.
Côté’s non-fiction work is as unconventional as his dramatic films. Joy of Man's Desiring (Que ta joie demeure, 2014) is a meditation, partly dramatized, on the impact of working with factory machines. Carcasses (2009) depicts an eccentric man who spends his days continually dismantling and re-building the old cars he piles up in the scrap yard he calls home. Programmed at Cannes and the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), most of the film is shot in long takes that dispassionately observe its subject going about his seemingly absurd daily rituals, scenes that are layered into staged moments. In Bestiaire (2012), which screened at the Berlin, Sundance and Toronto Film Festivals, zoo animals stare out from the screen in extreme close-ups. The film is clearly designed to provoke viewers into asking uncomfortable questions about purpose and meaning.
Awards
- Best Editing(Seconde valse), Atlantic Film Festival (2001)
- Bronze Prize (La sphatte), Brno B16, Czech Republic (2004)
- Golden Leopard – Video (Les états nordiques), Locarno International Film Festival (2005)
- Indie Vision Grand Prize (Les états nordiques), Jeonju, Korea (2006)
- Best Directing (Elle veut le chaos), Locarno International Film Festival (2008)
- Special Mention from the Youth Jury (Elle veut le chaos), Locarno International Film Festival (2008)
- Best Canadian Film (Elle veut le chaos),Festival international du cinéma francophone en Acadie (2008)
- Best Directing (Curling), Locarno International Film Festival (2010)
- Best Experimental Feature (Bestiaire), Greenpoint Film Festival (2012)
- Alfred Bauer Prize (Vic and Flow Saw a Bear), Berlin Film Festival (2013)
- Best Screenplay (Vic and Flo Saw A Bear), FIFF Namur (2013)
- Jury Special Mention (Que ta joie demeure), FICUNAM Mexico (2014)
| 2005: Les états nordiques / Drifting States (91 min.) |
| 2006: Nos vies privées / Our Private Lives (82 min.) |
| 2007: Maïté (17 min.) |
| 2008: Elle veut le chaos / All That She Wants (105 min.) |
| 2009: Carcasses (72 min.) |
| 2010: Les lignes ennemies / The Enemy Lines (43 min.) |
| 2010: Curling (92 min.) |
| 2012: Bestiaire (72 min., Berlin Forum 2012) |
| 2013: Vic + Flo ont vu un ours / Vic + Flo Saw a Bear (95 min. Berlin 2013) |
| 2014: Que ta joie demeure / Joy of Man's Desiring (70 min. Berlin Forum 2014) |
ON JOY OF MAN'S DESIRING
'...meticulous and poetic study of industrial labor... this is chiefly an experiential exercise; the amazing sound design, courtesy of Frédéric Cloutier and Clovis Gouaillier, turns the mechanical clang into arrhythmic music, making the toil seem like dancing.'Drew Hunt,
The Chicago Reader'...fascinating... entrancing...something of an intoxicating cautionary tale'John OUrsler,
The L Magazine
'Denis Cote's Spare and Elegant Joy of Man's Desiring Is an Illuminating Labor Portrait'
Melissa Anderson, The Village Voice (Critics' Pick)
'...Côté returns to the poetic documentary-essay mode of his Carcasses and Bestiaire in a film that uses factories and workshops as the setting for a formalised, sometimes theatrical - and entirely mesmerising study... it offers a stimulating poetic montage of ideas about labour, leisure and - as suggested by the Bach composition heard sporadically - humanity’s higher satisfactions and aspirations. The music is part of a terrific sound design - by Frédéric Cloutier and Clovis Gouaillier - that turns mechanical noise into a rhythmic ‘score’ as mesmerising as anything by Kraftwerk and their ilk.'
Jonathan Romney, Screen International
'... a study in different kinds of beauty—human, mechanical, and musical (the Bach cantata that gives its title makes a welcome appearance)—and the work of a filmmaker whose every move from film to film feels free.'
Adam Nayman, Reverse Shot
ON BESTIAIRE
'...essential viewing'
Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
'Fascinating and beguiling, BESTIAIRE is filmmaker Denis Côté's mesmerizing meditation on the relationships between animals and people through the seasons at a Quebec safari park. This strikingly gorgeous work about the act of looking slyly blurs the line between observer and observed (the film opens with art students sketching taxidermied creatures)... Contemplative and enthralling, BESTIAIRE is cinema at its purest.'
Fandor
'Bestiaire (2012), that wonderfully controlled vérité tour of a Safari park whose animal inhabitants effortlessly hold and reflect the camera’s gaze.'
Adam Nayman, Reverse Shot
'Bestiaire Ponders What Transpires When We Look at Animals... absorbing documentary...'
Melissa Anderson, The Village Voice
'Bestiaire deftly forces us to consider our fascination with other creatures and the cost to them of being placed for our scrutiny in artificial environments.'
David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter
