A good witch 

Michel Giroux

Far from Where?                                                                                   Supervisor of restoration

Nowhere, the Sea                                                                                 Supervisor of restoration

Zero Tolerance                                                                                       Editor

Prisoners of Beckett (TV version)                                                        Editor

Spoon                                                                                                       Editor

New Memories                                                                                       Editor, Delegate producer

MG: She was looking for humanity, anything she could do to take off and break down the masks. It gave me the idea that I could try things because I like humanity very much. It doesn't mean I like humans — that's different. I look for humanity! Probably, Spoon was a golden opportunity for that. Talking to Spoon[1] today was incredible because it reminded me how this person, who has been in prison for over forty years, is such an incredible force of humanity.

MF: It was your idea to use all the little jokes between Michka and Spoon that got recorded in their phone conversations.

MG: When we started to edit Spoon, Michka had his spoken poetry as material. Recording these poems on the phone in those conditions — speaking in a maximum security prison in the United States is quite a journey — you have to allow for a lot of time and a lot of words. I felt that everything apart from the poems, everything they talked about, was still a human relationship in itself — a peripheral route to talk about something. So, I felt comfortable saying to Michka, "Can you listen to everything that I’ve heard in your recordings and see if there's anything you think is good?" I know it hadn’t occurred to her to use the small talk, and sometimes it can become awkward. But I always had a lot of respect for Michka in that process, and we managed to find little things. She was having fun with the project, and she wanted me to have fun as well.

MF: I like the idea of arriving at a destination peripherally. Michka taught me that art is oblique and equivocal. You have to arrive as "indirection."

MG: For me, art is about taking a peripheral approach to life. I could not approach life head-on. I pass through art to see the beauty. I’m sure there are many people who feel the same.

MF: She spoke about you got her to use the “little games” with Spoon, the small talk, and how she didn't want her voice to appear in the film. Then she understood how beautiful it was and that these are the moments that touch people the most.

MG: Those are also the moments that are the “freest” in the film.

MF: There's a moment, too, that it becomes meta and comments on the form. It happens when Spoon says, "You didn’t record that, did you?" and she says, "It’s recording everything." And then they laugh. There's also the question of dancers. She wanted to use them, but you weren't convinced.

MG: In the end, there were things that worked well. It’s true I was afraid. I’ve worked a lot in the world of contemporary dance, and I’ve met very few people with a background in "art". They know the culture of dance and the body, but they often don't go beyond that. Asking them to represent Spoon’s life, when they have no experience of his reality, I thought was a bit much. But Michka managed to engage these dancers. She proposed things that were not just contemporary dance. The silent cry is almost like Artaud, for me. I had serious reservations, but I was wrong. I don’t mind being wrong when it turns out well like that.

MF: There was also the scene where one of the dancers took a solo. Michka told me that she had read Spoon's book.

MG: Yes, it wasn't just improvisation. She invented something out of thin air, something she felt.

MF: When you’re looking for humanity, how do you know when you've found it?

MG: I feel I've found it when I feel something that expresses humanity with the minimum of filters, the minimum of masks, the minimum of defences. When you open up. In Zero Tolerance, she went to find a policeman in the men's room to convince him to talk. She managed to get someone to open up who was basically shouting "No!” He assumed disappearing into the washroom would stop Michka. On the contrary.

MF: Tell me about your decision-making process with her. You worked together for hours and hours at a time.

MG: It's a good thing I wasn't paid by the cut. There were days when we didn't make any cuts, where we discussed, evaluated the context, all the material — sound, image, light, all that it could "say". It can’t be just cosmetic. All the elements have to be alive and connect with each other. Things are transmitted in the music, too. Music in Michka's films speaks volumes in all her films.

MF: In the master class at the University of Montreal, she describes you as a conductor.[2] 

MG: Ha! You go on a quest. You look for something but you don't even know what it is. In documentary, that's really what it’s about. When I look for humanity, I try to read through the images and sound that I receive to articulate what I really feel. The only way I can connect to someone else’s emotion is because I have felt something a bit similar. It's strange to say, but when I think about that, I think about Spoon, even though I’ve never been in prison.

Michka wore a lot of armour for protection, but if she felt safe, everything could change, in life and in art. She could question everything, right until the last moment. Like, "Okay, take that out, let's put this in instead. We'll try it, we'll see it again." Because we felt there's an energy that can be transmitted more easily if you do that. She also had ideas. In the morning, she would say, “I thought we should at least try this idea." It fascinates me because it keeps you off balance. Even though maybe I'm on the right track, everything's going well, we're going to try something else.

MF: That's another thing she taught me: questions are always more interesting than answers.

MG: It's like the quest for the grail. If you're going to reach the grail, it will happen if you are “present” in the moment. You do the quest and the grail will emerge. It's like the truth. Searching for the truth? In a documentary? It's hard to even understand reality, let alone imagine the truth. She wrote a story, and I tried to help her story be as strong as possible. But it’s only one possible version of a truth, a piece of reality.

MF: She got irritated when people asked, "What did Spoon do? Why is he in prison?" She said, "That's not the story I'm telling. I’m not a detective. I'm only here to talk about poetry."

MG: Often, humans have a morbid fascination. We want to know what the prisoner has done. Death seems more interesting than life. When Carlos premiered his film on Walter Benjamin,[3] there were lots of people talking about his death with great interest. Carlos just took the microphone and said, "You know Mr. Benjamin did a lot more in life than just die. That was only the last thing that happened to him.”

MF: She was furious and sad when Yuri Turovsky[4] died, and all the media were talking about his illness first and not his contribution to music.

MG: We're all going to die, but surely what’s interesting is what we did in our lives.

MF: Do you want to speak about Prisoners of Beckett?

MG: We could, but I can’t take credit for the editing. I did the "Philistine" version for television, which Michka was okay with. I felt we came up with something strong, but there's not much glory in getting 52 good minutes out of a great film. The most beautiful thing about the experience were the exchanges we had about Beckett, and Waiting for Godot. We talked a lot about it. “What did he just say? What is he saying?” We're not sure if we're dreaming or if we're in reality. Both of us felt there was a universal quality to Beckett. Reality may not be what we think it is. What we dream is even more real.

MF: So you have to go from 85 minutes to 52 minutes, and you have to keep the humanity in the film. Was that difficult?

MG: Are you kidding! In Prisoners of Beckett, there is something very human, even in our celebrated director, Jan, who I thought was a bit precious. At the same time, what he did with those people was incredible. He brought Beckett’s play into a prison. What an environment to express the feelings of Godot. It was made to go into a prison yard. What do you take out of a film like that? The prisoners all say things that touch the heart, like the one who describes how the cement walls of the prison suck water out of the body. It's a beautiful metaphor. These are the things that we found most special, that we tried to keep. I think we took out a lot of Jan's solo performance, although Michka was fond of him.

MF: Zero Tolerance was the first film you edited with her.

MG: It remains the “straightest” of her films.

MF: The credits kill me every time — the sirens, and the police cars.

MG: Michka told me there was nothing in the interviews she did with the police. "It’s all wooden. They’re protecting themselves and won’t say anything." Yet I remember the Black policeman who wouldn't talk. She followed him into the men's room and said, "What you told me, it has to be brought into the light. These things have to be said, they have to exist in the public domain.” The man in the toilet said, "Okay, we'll do the interview.” That's Michka. Here is someone completely closed, with impenetrable armour, and he opened up completely in a few minutes. I saw her as a good witch.

MF: Do you remember the police announced a policy on racial profiling just before the film was released? They were trying to pre-empt criticism.

MG: Before we had a big public screening, the police saw the film. I was at the NFB[5] when they came in four or five cars. It was simply to intimidate us. We didn't invent anything, we didn't hide anything in there. And yes, the police gave lip service to racial profiling but nothing has happened since then. It’s the same thing with systemic racism today. 

MF: Michka said the English-language media were more on the side of the "people," and the French-language media protected the police. Having lived for many years in France, where people are more sceptical of authority, she was always surprised by the defence of the police in Quebec.

MG: Quebec really stands out for how it’s prepared to defend the police. It's the same as defending systemic racism today. My daughter is Black, my granddaughters are Black. People will say there's no racism here, but I think it's even more systemic. I just switch between the English CBC and the French Radio Canada, and the difference is huge in terms of the kind of journalists you see on the screen, even today. I have never been totally proud to be a white francophone Quebecer when I see this kind of behaviour.

Even though Zero Tolerance is not one of her greatest films artistically, she made it with all her heart because it's essential and it had the impact she wanted. For that, I doff my chapeau because there are things that we don’t want to see that she talks about in the film.

MF: There were headlines in The Gazette[6] twice in the same week related to the film.

MG: Michka was always there to remind me that the privileged position of white people is something you have to constantly reflect on, that you question everything. We're talking about humanity. Michka had this ability to put herself in the place of the Other.

MF: Tell me about New Memories in terms of finding humanity. It's a film that was difficult, especially for Michka, but still you see people expressing themselves. It's the little moments that I love the most.

MG: When my old girlfriend saw this, she said, "I don't go to Toronto very often, but I would love to go to Kensington Market to see these people." Not just Anne, but this little gang that lived there. It shows you can have a good life outside what’s considered “normal”. They are pretty much all outsiders, and yet they have a community, as Anne said. It doesn’t matter that we never learn their personal stories. You're there, in that moment, with them, and it’s enough.

MF: When we talk about Anne, as a character and as an artist, she also seeks humanity. You can see it in the way she takes pictures. I'm not like that. It's very difficult for me to talk to strangers like Anne does.

MG: Michka was like Anne in that way.

MF: Maybe if you have a camera, and you're obviously an artist, it gives you permission.

MG: Absolutely. The camera is an intermediary, a third eye, that changes the way you see what's in front of you. It changes your gaze, your access to others. I've done some camera work, and felt that, too. With the camera in hand, you can do anything, even something crazy.

MF: Maybe, to finish, we can talk about Michka's humanity outside of film. I have a friend who has never seen any of Michka’s films, but she loved her. She still talks about her generosity. I've never met such a generous person as Michka.

MG. Neither have I. The first time I met her in a small restaurant she had brought little gifts that she put on the table. It created a space of intimacy that opened the door for me. Even though I didn't know her, she was capable of that. She was exceptional. I still have the first gift she gave me. She would walk around all the time thinking about the gifts she could give to friends.

MF: She used to wear a dozen bracelets. If she met someone, and didn’t have anything else, she would take a bracelet and give it away.

MG: That I didn't know. It's wonderful to learn that. Her generosity was really over the top.

MF: Her motto in life was "Too much is never enough."

MG: That's exactly Michka. She never held back. And you had to be faithful to her. She used to say I was unfaithful, and sometimes she even yelled at me.

"You haven't called me for six months. OK, I don't exist." 

"Michka, it's not that..."

"If I did exist, you'd think of me."

She was right, too. We loved each other, yes. Not a romantic love, but a friendship. She was the one who taught me to have a certain constancy and respect in relationships. You have to give of yourself. Then, in the search for humanity, she showed me ways to cultivate that humanity. She could accept you with all your faults. There is something magical about that.

[1] Spoon Jackson, a Black American imprisoned for life without possibility of parole, is the subject of Spoon, a film by Michka Saäl (2015). Knowing that Michel was arriving to Mark’s place for the interview, he called from the prison in California to speak with him. They had only spoken once before, during post-production of Spoon in 2014.

[2] Observatoire de cinéma au Québec (Mardis OCQ) — Université de Montréal, 2014.

[3] 13, a ludodrame about Walter Benjamin, a film by Carlos Ferrand (2017).

4] Yuli Turovsky created I Musici, a chamber orchestra in Montréal, in 1983. He appears in The Violin on the Canvas, a film by Michka Saäl (1995).

[5] National Film Board of Canada.

[6] Daily English-language newspaper in Montréal.