© Jenny Cartwright, Parc-Ex, 2016
Parc-Ex
Jenny Cartwright
Current project
Soutien à la création
Parc-Ex, as local residents call the area, sits between a railway track, Highway 40, the Outremont rail yard, and the affluent town of Mount Royal, from which it is separated by a fence. It is a little-known part of town and for many—new arrivals as well as cross-town commuters—it simply serves as a thoroughfare.
Parc-Ex is a short film about one of the country’s most multi-ethnic neighbourhoods and, more particularly, the people who live there. Made up of a series of tableaux, it is a slow and contemplative film that straddles genres and lies somewhere between an experimental cinematic essay and an ethnographic documentary film.
Stills from the film will also be shown in a multi-projection as part of the summer residency programme Catalyseur d’Imaginaires Urbains. This parallel project will be presented at the end of September, on the future site of the Outremont campus.
Jenny Cartwright
Since 2001, Jenny Cartwright has collaborated on the production of documentary films in Montréal, Burkina Faso, Mali, the Ivory Coast, Israel, Iceland, Sri Lanka, and France, distilling visions of the world into films that are at once sensual and crude.
Cartwright began shooting of her first feature-length documentary, ya wooto (that’s just how it is), almost by accident, while on a humanitarian mission in Ouagadougou. She then made LIKE IT, a short fiction film made on a microscopic budget, and Les Chanceuses, a pseudo-documentary created in 72 hours as part of the creative program at the Festival du Documenteur in Rouyn-Noranda.It was then that she fell in love with this medium and its potential for humour. Next came Golden Tuna – Montreal Sessions, a quirky mockumentary that defies categorization.
Cartwright writes, directs, produces, edits and distributes her films. Her years leading protests in the cultural sector and her involvement in community organizations and militant groups have taught her to do a lot with a little, allowing her to work independently, maintain a punk attitude and keep a critical eye on society.