Denys Desjardins

Denys Des­jardins is a “mul­ti­fac­eted film­mak­er with an end­less­ly curi­ous spir­it whose bound­less love of cin­e­ma per­me­ates his entire out­put.” He first dis­cov­ered cin­e­ma as a child, when his father would shoot, edit and project films on their base­ment walls. A rev­e­la­tion! While study­ing film, Des­jardins worked as an order­ly in a men­tal health care insti­tu­tion and dis­cov­ered the world through the eyes of those mar­gin­al­ized and for­got­ten by soci­ety. There­after, his cam­era became a tool for build­ing rela­tion­ships and telling the world’s sto­ries — one film at a time. Tru­ly pas­sion­ate about the art of cin­e­ma, Des­jardins has put his hand to every aspect of film pro­duc­tion, from cam­era oper­a­tor to direc­tor, in addi­tion to writ­ing, research, and edit­ing. In 1990, he launched his own pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny, Les Films du Cen­tau­re. Since then, he has direct­ed and pro­duced some 20 films as well as numer­ous web­sites, work­ing both in the pri­vate sec­tor and with the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da. With the lat­ter, he also col­lab­o­rat­ed on the DVD box sets of the films of Gilles Groulx, Michel Brault, and Pierre Per­rault. A social­ly engaged film­mak­er, Des­jardins has for the past three decades been part of the ongo­ing bat­tle to defend and uphold artis­tic insti­tu­tions. He has served on numer­ous boards of direc­tors, includ­ing the Soirée des Jutra (now Gala Québec Ciné­ma) and the Ren­dez-vous du ciné­ma québe­cois (now Ren­dez-vous Québec Ciné­ma), and is a found­ing mem­ber of Québec Ciné­ma. Pro­duc­er and cre­ator of the web­site cinemaduquebec.com, he is also the founder of DOCfest – Pour la suite du DOC, an annu­al fes­ti­val held on Isle-aux-Coudres that’s ded­i­cat­ed to the future of doc­u­men­tary filmmaking.