On 19 May 2017, the statue of the Confederate general Robert E. Lee is removed by the City Hall of New Orleans;
11 and 12 August, demonstration by White Supremacists in Charlottesville to protest the removal of the statue of Robert E. Lee. There are violent clashes and a counter manifestor, Heather Heyer, is killed by a car plowing in the crowd, fifteen other people are wounded;
16 August, following those events, four Confederate Statues are removed by the City Hall of Baltimore;
23 August, being forbidden to remove the statues by an injunction of the State of Virginia, the City Hall of Charlottesville decide to cover the statues of Robert E. Lee and of Stonewall Jackson withblack cloth, in sign of mourning for the death of Heather Heyer.
28 August, we travel by car from Cananda to go shoot images of empty pedestals in Baltimore, of the envelopped statues in Charlottesville and of the still visible statues on Monument Avenue in Richmont.
direction, shooting, editing, animation, drawings, production : Pierre Hébert
animation assistant : Clémence Renaud-Allaire
shooting assistant : Sylvie Massicotte
musical fragments : René Lussier
sfinal ound mixing : Luc Boudrias
distribution : Vidéographe
Festivals and screenings : World premiere at Festival du nouveau Cinéma in Montreal, Wedenesday October 10 2018; Journées internationale du film sur l’art, Auditorium du musée du Louvre, Paris, January 2019; Cinema on the Bayou, January 2021; Canadian Cultural Center in Paris, February, 2021; retrospective at eh Tehran International Animation Festival, March 2024.
Extract :
General informations about the Places and Monuments Series