To the Rhythm of My Heart

To the Rhythm of My Heart
FrenchAu rythme de mon cœur
Directed byJean Pierre Lefebvre
Produced byJim Kelly
CinematographyJean Pierre Lefebvre
Edited byJean Pierre Lefebvre
Production
company
Cinak
Distributed byJ.A. Lapointe Films
Release date
  • September 11, 1983 (1983-09-11)
Running time
80 minutes
CountryCanada
LanguageFrench

To the Rhythm of My Heart (French: Au rythme de mon cœur) is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Jean Pierre Lefebvre and released in 1983.[1] Made during his national tour of Canada for a 1981 retrospective of his films compiled by the Canadian Film Institute, the film is a video diary documenting both his philosophical and creative discussions on the co-operative movement in cinema as part of the tour and the concurrent illness and death of his wife, film editor and producer Marguerite Duparc.[2]

The film's origins were in a short "video postcard" that Lefebvre had planned to record for film studies students at Ryerson University after hosting a workshop there in 1980.[3] Much of the film was shot with an old Bolex camera that had to be frequently rewound, leading Lefebvre — long known for films that had a slow, languid pacing — to quip "Don't be worried, there are no long shots, so it's my fastest film."[3]

The film premiered at the 1983 Toronto International Film Festival.[4] Jay Scott of The Globe and Mail positively reviewed the film, writing that "The images he finds are wonderful: a long sequence, scored to a Moog he reports he purchased "from Radio Shack", of lights flickering on water; a black Labrador, suspicious in the white snow; a kitten, worrying a baby mouse to death; and a ferry with railings stark and rigid in formal frontality, like a Christopher Pratt print reconstituted for the silver screen. To The Rhythm of My Heart is experimental and non-linear - "the emotion is really in the form of the film," as Lefebvre puts it - but it is usually fascinating and never forbidding."[3]

The film received a Genie Award nomination for Best Feature Length Documentary at the 6th Genie Awards in 1985.[5]

  1. ^ Patrick Schupp, "Au rythme de mon coeur, Réalisation :Jean-Pierre Lefebvre, Canada (Québec), 1983, 80 minutes". Séquences, Issue 115 (January 1984). pp. 32-33.
  2. ^ Peter Harcourt, "Jean Pierre Lefebvre's Au rythme de mon cœur / To the Rhythm of My Heart". Cinema Canada, April 1984.
  3. ^ a b c Jay Scott, "Festival of Festivals: An intriguing 'film diary'". The Globe and Mail, September 13, 1983.
  4. ^ "World premieres set for festival". The Globe and Mail, September 7, 1983.
  5. ^ Jay Scott, "Bay Boy reels in 11 Genie nominations". The Globe and Mail, February 15, 1985.