MY FATHER’S STUDIO
72 min, Documentary, Quebec, Canada, 2008Directed byJennifer Alleyn
Produced byJeanine Gagné (Amazone Film)
LanguageFrench
An insider’s look on how art impacts life.
Buy the DVD
Film details
Synopsis
In November 2001, Quebec Painter Edmund Alleyn (1931-2004) agreed to be filmed in his Montreal studio by his daughter, filmmaker Jennifer Alleyn. There, something unexpected happened : an authentic encounter, with no beating around the bush, no mask. From a few existential questions –about life, painting, death- thruth emerged. The artist died of cancer in December 2004 before Jennifer could film him again. After inheriting his studio, she found herself in this sacred space, still imbued with the presence and imagination of her father. Her film is an attempt to prolong the dialogue, to find the missing fragments of her father’s life. Edmund Alleyn was an intense and complex man of integrity who left his mark on Canadian art history.
Credits
Script, Direction, Narration : Jennifer Alleyn
Direction of Photography : Jean-Claude Labrecque, Jennifer Alleyn
Direction of Production and Assistant Director : Katia Paradis
Sound Design : Bruno Bélanger
Editing : Annie Jean
Music : Simon Bellefleur, Jean-François Ouellet
Production : Jeanine Gagné (Amazone Film)
Financial Partners
Fond canadien de télévision
SODEC
Conseil des Arts et des lettres du Québec
PRIM
Radio-canada télévision
artv
Direction
Jennifer Alleyn
Jennifer Alleyn is an award-winning Canadian filmmaker, writer and photographer living in Montreal.
Born in Switzerland in 1969, Jennifer Alleyn obtained a degree in Film Production at Concordia University in 1991. She jumped right away into The Race Around the World (Canadian Broadcasting Corp.) to shoot 26 documentaries within 26 weeks on 5 different continents, on her own.
In the last ten years, she has been directing and producing independent films, switching from fiction to documentary, art house cinema and television. In 2005, she directs 13 episodes of Canadian Casefiles (Group Fairplay) and a short film, Svanok, Winner of Best fiction at New York FF.
Alleyn wrote and directed a segment “Aurore et Crépuscule” of the 1997 the collective feature film Cosmos; winner of the CICEA award in Cannes in 1997 at the Directors’ Fortnight. In 2008, she made My Father’s Studio, a portrait of Canadian artist Edmund Alleyn. The film won Best Canadian film at the International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA) and also received a Gémeaux Award. She directed the 2010 film Ten times Dix about painter Otto Dix, which received the ARTV Springboard to the World Award.
In 2018, she directed and produced her first feature, Impetus, a hybrid drama which blurs the frontier between fiction and Cinema-vérité, for which she receives the Creation Award 2019 for her “outstanding contribution to the development of Québec cinema” from L’Observatoire du cinéma au Québec in collaboration with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of the Université de Montréal
Her practice now includes installation and photography. She has exhibited her work at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (Canada), Galerie C (Switzerland) and her films have been distributed and released on television and in theatres in America and Europe. Her recent projects explore grief and inner exile.
Filmography
Impetus (2018)
Ten times Dix (2011)
A few lost words (2011)
My father’s studio (2008)
Jacques Monory’s imaginary life (2006)
Svanok (2002)
Cosmos (1997)