Nelligan


Release Information: September 27, 1991; Montréal; Library and Archives Canada - Canadian Feature Film Database (LAC)

Budget: Budget: $2,750,000

Production Details


Executive Producer: Gérald Ross; Robert Sésé; Marie-Andrée Vinet; Doris Girard; Doris Girard; Doris Girard; Doris Girard; Marie-Andrée Vinet

1990

Loved by a possessive mother who places all her hope in him, a foreigner to an Irish father whom he considers an enemy, and at odds with a literary community favouring a comme il faut style of poetry, Émile Nelligan, adolescent genius, rejects the norms imposed on him and sets off on an unequivocally avant-garde poetic quest. Shunned by all, he starts drinking and associates with society's fringe. His behaviour and his works create a scandal, and he is committed to a mental institution. To save his reputation and his memory, some of his poems are collected in an anthology, but almost all of his manuscripts disappear. His mentor Louis Dantin seals the poet's fate in his first words in the preface: "Émile Nelligan is dead..." Also dead and gone is his surprising modern poetry, the poetry of a precursor poet who lived in a mental institution until his death but who never abandoned his poetic quest.

Source: Library and Archives Canada - Canadian Feature Film Database (LAC)

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Nelligan

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