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GROWING TOGETHER OR APARI?
MINORITIES IN QUEBEC DOCUMENTARY
ON IMMIGRATION AND SCHOOL
—t1o>
DERVILA COOKE!
ABSTRACT
This paper focuses on Claude Godbout’s 2008 documentary about immigrant
schoolchildren in Québec, La Génération 101 and some comparable films
(Aloisio’s Les Enfants de la Loi 101, 2007; Groulx’s La Classe de Madame
Lise, 2006; Bertucelli’s La Cour de Babel, 2014). Godbout’s film showcases
current and former high school students in Québec of immigrant status or
extraction who attend or attended multicultural schools (with few if any
Québécois classmates). I argue that the film both highlights and questions the
notion of integration of immigrants. Solidarity with Québec is shown by some
students of immigrant extraction who have become socially engaged (and
perfectly Francophone) adults, having come to understand Québec’s marginal
position in North America because of their own transition through cultural
and linguistic marginality. Other, more recent, students are vocal about
their wish to understand Québec too, yet others have a more ambivalent or
instrumentalist attitude to French and “integration” into Québécois culture.
I look at the dynamic Godbout sets up between solidarity with the Québecois
and the more distanced attitude described above, while also analyzing
differing perceptions of Québec “values”.
INTRODUCTION
This article focuses on Claude Godbout’s 2008 documentary about immigrant
schoolchildren in Québec, La Génération 101 and some other comparable
films (mainly Anita Aloisio’s Les Enfants de la Loi 101, 2007, with reference
also to Sylvie Groulx’s La Classe de Madame Lise, 2006, and the French
director Julie Bertucelli’s La Cour de Babel, 2014).” Godbout’s film looks
1
Dublin City University.
? Anita Aloisio, Les Enfants de la Loi 101, Montreal, Virage, 2007; Julie Bertucelli, La Cour de
Babel, Paris, Les Films du poisson, 2017; Claude Godbout, La Génération 101, Montreal, Les
Films du 3 mars, 2008; Sylvie Groulx, La Classe de Madame Lise, Montreal, Les Films du 3
mars, 2005.
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