Rodrigue Jean
Dance, theatre, film: director, scriptwriter and producer Rodrigue Jean has been active on numerous creative fronts. After studies in biology, sociology and literature, he worked as a choreographer before making his first short film, La Déroute, in 1989. He followed this up with the documentary La voix des rivières, which took the Telefilm Canada Award for Best Medium-length Canadian Film at the FICFA, and the short film La mémoire de l’eau, a prizewinner at the Atlantic Film Festival in Halifax.
Two popular and critically acclaimed dramatic features came next: Full Blast (Special Jury Citation, TIFF, 1999), and Yellowknife (critics’ choice for Best Québec Film of 2002). The documentary Living on the Edge (2005) paid tribute to his Acadian roots, focusing on the poetry of Gérald Leblanc. His 2007 documentary Men for Sale looked at male prostitution in Montréal.
Lost Song, his third feature-length fiction, garnered Jean the award for Best Canadian Feature at the 2008 TIFF.
Following Men for Sale, Jean launched Épopée, a group that for over five years now has used cinema as an instrument of freedom and community. Projects to date include the feature-length films The State of the Moment, The State of the World and Insurgence as well as the website epopee.me. His most recent feature-length film, Love in the Time of Civil War (2014), resulted from Épopée’s writing workshops with sex-trade workers.
