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Cournoyer Michèle
Born in Saint Joseph de Sorel, Quebec in 1943, Michèle Cournoyer studied graphic arts, photography and animation in England and Italy. She then worked as a set designer, art director, costume designer and sceenwriter on a number of groundbreaking Quebec films of the 1970s, including Mireille Dansereau's La vie rêvée (1972) and L'arrache-coeur (1979) and Gilles Carle's La Mort d'un bucheron (1973).
She also made several independent films of her own: L'homme et l'enfant (1970), Spaghettata (1976), Toccata (1978), Old Orchard Beach, P.Q. (1981) and Dolorosa (1988). She uses a variety of techniques within highly original hybrid works that are full of humour and charm.
In 1989, Cournoyer won the NFB French Animation and Youth Studio's 9th Cinéaste recherché(e) competition, enabling her to make the animated short A Feather Tale/La basse cour (1992). Her next film, An Artist/Une artiste (1994), part of the Rights from the Heart/Droits au coeur collection, used the technique of digital rotoscoping.
For The Hat/Le chapeau (1999), she adopted a more direct approach, using black ink on paper. The recurring image of a man's fedora on a woman's body expresses a deep-seated obsession with the painful childhood memory of incestuous rape. The film garnered many awards, including the Jutra for best animated film.
Accordion/Accordéon(2003) also uses ink on paper and continues graphically where The Hat/Le chapeau left off. But Cournoyer has refined her technique, moving closer to pure surrealism as she depicts a virtual love affair through powerful imagery and mind-bending transformations.
Her most recent NFB film is Robes of War/Robe de guerre (2008).
