For the first time, the NFB brings together all the historical and political documentaries by the Oscar-winning director of The Barbarian Invasions, Denys Arcand. Produced between 1962 and 1980, these three feature films and seven short films establish the thematic and formal foundations of the cinematic body of work of the director of The Decline of the American Empire.
More than 20 years have passed, yet Denys Arcand's documentaries remain strikingly relevant.

Viewers will take pleasure in discovering, through his documentary work, the filmmaker he has always been: an inventor of powerful imaginary worlds, such as the Machiavelli who comments on the 1980 Quebec referendum on sovereignty, or the mysterious schoolteacher who, in Québec: Duplessis and After..., walks around reading the 1936 "Voters' Catechism," an invention of the great "Cheuf" himself!

Includes the original censored version of the film On est au coton after more than thirty years in purgatory.

2004, 758 min