Feux Follets
1966 · 9m · Canada
Directed by Jean-Claude Labrecque
Genres: documentary, musical
Tones: sensual, theatrical
Montreal's Les Feux Follets dance company performs a Plains betrothal dance drawn from First Nations tradition and a frenetic go-go number. The two pieces display the troupe's range from amateur roots to professional virtuosity.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 1966 doc that genuinely doesn't know if it wants to canonize folk tradition or blow it up with go-go energy—and honestly, that schizophrenia is the only interesting thing here, because Labrecque refuses to resolve the tension.
Labrecque's structural elegance in the juxtaposition—Plains ceremonial against frenetic modernity, both held with equal formal weight—positions this film in a lineage of dance cinema that respects both anthropological archive and avant-garde form without collapsing the distinction.
The pivot between the betrothal dance and the go-go number hinges on a single editorial decision: letting each sequence breathe in its own temporal logic rather than cross-cutting between them, which forces the viewer to hold two incompatible truths about what 'virtuosity' means.