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1-46 of 46
- Thibault de Montalembert was born on 10 February 1962 in Laval, Mayenne, France. He is an actor, known for All Quiet on the Western Front (2022), The King (2019) and The Tunnel (2013).
- Actor
- Soundtrack
- Writer
Raphaël Roberge was born in July 26th, 1996 in Laval, Quebec. From a young age Raphaël realised He was a movie buff as well a music enthusiast. He took classes of all kind; Theater, camera acting, musical theater, Diction and Improvisation; He quickly realised that he wanted to act. In 2010, he started to take singing classes to add it to his resume... He got caught because now he has two passions, singing and acting. From that moment on he participated in tons of amateur singing contest. Several TV credits including Ni plus Ni Moi, C.A, Un Tueur si proche (in French) and even some projects in English including: This Life and Compiling as well as stage plays and musicals. In 2014, he was selected from more than 6000 candidates for a singing competition called Mix4 that was broadcasted on Vrak, a popular channel for teenagers in Quebec. It was an enriching experience that gave him the occasion to meet people with the same passion as him, industry people and to tour across the Quebec and New-Brunswick for 50 representations, including the Francofolies, a concert 15,000 persons attended. In the summer of 2015 he performed more than 15 times in solo including: St-Jean Richelieu balloon festival, le festiblues, etc.). In September 2015 he was cast in l'Aventure Magique as Peter Pan. They did more than 60 shows across the Quebec and Ontario. This show gave him the occasion to explore a more theatrical style of acting. Raphaël is really implicated socially; in 2015 he was the spokesperson in Ste-Thérèse (where he lives) for the week of intellectual disabilities. It's a cause that's really important to him because he believes everyone should be treated equally. Raphaël was a judge for singing contests as well as well as for oral presentations contests. He released his first single «Libre Comme L'air» on June 15, 2015. The single reached a peak of #4 on the iTunes French Pop chart and #60 in one the L'adisq charts. The song has 10,000 plays on Spotify and more 9000 views on YouTube. He also released a single called «Menaces Invisibles» and his first single in English «Alive». His first EP was released on December 15, 2015 and reached the top 12 on the iTunes French pop chart. He wrote or co-wrote all the songs. He launched the EP on December 14 to a sold-out crowd.- Actor
- Writer
- Art Director
Martin Matte was born on 14 April 1970 in Laval, Québec, Canada. He is an actor and writer, known for Les beaux malaises (2014), Les Beaux Malaises (2016) and Nitro (2007).- Actor
- Writer
- Stunts
François Papineau was born in 1966 in Laval, Québec, Canada. He is an actor and writer, known for Route 132 (2010), La bouteille (2000) and Unité 9 (2012). He has been married to Bénédicte Décary since 2013. They have one child. He was previously married to Sylvie Moreau.- Actor
- Music Department
Gordie Brown was born on 15 June 1963 in Laval, Québec, Canada. He is an actor, known for Twice in a Lifetime (1999), An Evening at the Improv (1981) and Life with Louie (1994).- Camille Felton was born on 21 October 1999 in Laval, Québec, Canada. She is an actress, known for Noémie: Le secret (2009), Fires (2016) and Matthias & Maxime (2019).
- Éléonore Loiselle was born on 27 February 2001 in Laval, Québec, Canada. She is an actress, known for Goddess of the Fireflies (2020), Désobéir: le choix de Chantale Daigle (2023) and Falcon Lake (2022).
- Actor
- Art Department
- Writer
Michel Courtemanche was born on 11 December 1964 in Laval, Quebec, Canada. He is an actor and writer, known for The City of Lost Children (1995), Casanova (2005) and The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne (2000).- Actor
- Writer
Quebecois stand-up comedian and screenwriter, born in Montreal in 1968. He is the creator, writer and main character of the successful comedy series "Les Pêcheurs" (season 1 and 2) (IciRadioCanada télé 2013, 2014). His first film Starbuck, has seen two remakes, Delevery Man (Dreamworks) and Fonzy (Made in PM). He is famous for is award-winning one-man shows and for hosting comedy galas at Just for laugh's.- Actor
- Writer
- Director
Yves Pelletier was born on 15 January 1961 in Laval, Québec, Canada. He is an actor and writer, known for Les aimants (2004), Karmina (1996) and Face Time (2010).- Vanessa Pilon was born on 26 July 1985 in Laval, Québec, Canada. She is an actress, known for Jo for Jonathan (2010), Devil's Rose (2005) and Y2o (2013).
- Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang was born on 18 June 1989 in Laval, France.
- Writer
- Producer
Alexandre Daigle was born on 7 February 1975 in Laval, Québec, Canada. He is a writer and producer, known for Palm Springs Jump!, TSN Hockey (1987) and Chosen One: Alexandre Daigle (2024). He is married to Genevieve Daigle.- Alexandre Despatie was born on 8 June 1985 in Laval, Québec, Canada. He is an actor, known for Taking the Plunge (2007), Taking the Plunge 2 (2009) and Bye-Bye (1968).
- Henri Rousseau (Le Douanier) was born on May 21, 1844, in Laval, Northern France. His father was a plumber. Young Rousseau finished the Lycee in Laval and started as a lawyer's clerk. From 1863-1868 he served in the French Army. From 1869-1893 Russeau worked in a toll booth on the edge of Paris, as a municipal toll collector. For that job he was called "Le Douanier." He never really was a customs officer, but a second-class clerk; he was never promoted on his job and basically collected a fee from farmers coming to Paris markets.
Rousseau began painting in his forties. In 1884 he obtained a permit to sketch in the national museums and spent many hours sketching classical art masterpieces in the Louvre. His job as a toll collector gave him little income, but much time to paint. He also earned some cash as a street musician. Rousseau was self-taught, although he admitted he had received some advice from established Academic artists, including that of Jean-Leon Gerome. Rousseau was inspired by the jungle, but he never was there. His sources of imagination were illustrated books and visits to the Zoo and Botanical Gardens in Paris. He also used images from a drawing book of his daughter. He could paint bananas growing upside-down and in a few paintings he grouped animals from different continents, that in reality could never have been seen together. It was the genuine feeling and high decorative quality of his paintings that brought him attention from other artists. Pablo Picasso saw a painting by Rousseau being sold on the street as a canvas to be painted over. Picasso bought Rousseau's paintings in recognition of his genius.
His child-like art was created in the Post-Impressionist period and was categorized as Naive or Primitive. From 1886 Rousseau exhibited every year at the Salon des Independants along with the works of Georges Seurat, Armand Guillaumin, Odilon Redon, Paul Signac, Paul Gauguin, and other Post-Impressionists. His greatest wish was to master an academic style, and he genuinely believed that his pictures were real and convincing. Rousseau himself was such a sincere and genuine person, that he interpreted even sarcastic remarks literally and took them as praise. His positive disposition helped him endure great poverty. His working class background was seen as his big drawback by many contemporary critics. Finally the innocence and charm of his works won him the admiration of the leading artists. In 1905 he exhibited his large jungle composition 'The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope' along with Henri Matisse at the first showing of Les Fauves (The Wild Ones).
Rousseau had an influence on such artists as Pablo Picasso, Robert Delaunay, Wassily Kandinsky, Félix Vallotton, Paul Gauguin, and many others. In 1908 Pablo Picasso bought a few works from Rousseau and gave a banquet at his studio in Rousseau's honor. At the banquet Rousseu was praised by Guillaume Apollinaire, Robert Delaunay, Max Jacob and by other artists in a manner, which was half-serious, half-burlesque. Rousseau sincerely believed in the serious half, and later told Picasso: "There are only two real artists in the world, you in "Egyptian style" and I am in "Classical." That's how different and naive was the world of Rousseau, whose genuine views impressed Pablo Picasso as much as his works. During 1909 and 1910 many of Rousseau's paintings were acquired by the dealers Ambroise Vollard and Joseph Brummer. Rousseau's paintings were shown posthumously in 1911, in a retrospective exhibition at the Salon des Independants. Rousseau's works were chosen by Wassily Kandinsky for the first exhibitions of Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) in 1911 and 1912 that toured Germany. The surrealist movement later considered Rousseau as one of their forerunners.
Henri Rousseau died on September 2, 1910, in Paris, and was laid to rest in the Cimetiere de Bagneux, in Paris, France.
Guillaume Apollinaire wrote the epitaph on Rousseau's tombstone:
We salute you Gentile Rousseau you can hear us
Delaunay his wife Monsier Queval and myself
Let our luggage pass duty free through the gates of heaven
We will bring you brushes paints and canvas
That you may spend your sacred leisure in the light of truth
Painting as you once did my portrait
Facing the stars - Jean Galland was born on 28 May 1887 in Laval, Mayenne, France. He was an actor, known for Le jugement de minuit (1933), The Adventurer of Seville (1954) and Fantômas (1932). He was married to Germaine Dermoz. He died on 18 July 1967 in Évian-les-Bains, Haute-Savoie, France.
- Art Department
- Production Designer
Hélène Bourgy was born on 17 December 1959 in Laval, Mayenne, France. She is a production designer, known for French Kiss (1995) and Olivier, Olivier (1992).- Actor
- Director
Zilon was born on 25 July 1956 in Laval, Québec, Canada. He was an actor and director, known for Y.U.L. (1998), Testament (2023) and Seasonal Depression (2019). He died on 27 July 2023 in Montréal, Québec, Canada.- Abdel-Aziz Essayed was born on 3 September 1972 in Laval, Mayenne, France. He is an actor, known for For a Fistful of Diamonds (2009), Vertiges (1997) and Casting sauvage (2013).
- Sound Department
Marie-Claude Gagné was born in 1963 in Laval, Québec, Canada. She is known for The Barbarian Invasions (2003), Brick Mansions (2014) and Ma vie en cinémascope (2004).- Director
- Cinematographer
- Producer
Leo-Ernest Ouimet, the French Canadian film pioneer who built the first, first-rate movie cathedral that was the forerunner for all the huge North American movie palaces that came after it, was born in Laval, Quebec, north of Montreal, in 1877. Educated as an electrical engineer, he entered show business by chance in 1901, when Montreal's Le Theatre National contracted with the 24-year old engineer to rewire its theater. In just two days, Ouiment not only rewired the theater, but he installed a lighting system of his own devising that wowed the theater patrons and critics. Quebec City theater-owner Paul Cazeneuves hired him to do the same for his Le Cartier Theatre, and the results were even more astonishing.
The next step in Ouimet's metamorphosis into a movie pioneer was his engagement by Le Theatre National as a lighting designer. His acquaintance with the movies was about to begin, as Quebec law forbade Le Theatre National from operating on Sundays in any closed venue. To get around the provincial blue laws, Le Theatre performed in Montreal's Sohmers Park on Sundays. The park, which featured a 5,000-seat, open-air pavilion, began showing animated movies between intermissions in 1902. The park projectionist, an American yclept Ben Fenton, taught Ouimet about the projector, an Edison Co. kinetoscope. Intrigued, Ouiment soon bought one himself.
Ouiment became a representative for Edison for Eastern Canada, and subsequently, he opened up his own Ouimet Film Exchange to distribute films. His fascination with film encouraged him to make his own films, mostly short subjects, and by 1904, he had become an innovator in the world of cinema. During the Canadian general election in November 1904, he used his kinetoscope to project election returns onto a white sheet tacked to the front wall of the Montreal newspaper Le Patrie. He took the opportunity afforded by this all-day exhibition to recalibrate and fine-tune the kinetoscope to produce a better image.
He began traveling with his improved kinetoscope to give exhibitions of films, drawing large crowds, primarily from the working class, who could not afford the luxury of the legitimate theater or vaudeville. In 1906, Ouimet converted an abandoned cabaret on Ste.-Catherine St. into a 500-seat nickelodeon.
As movie theater impresario Marcus Loew had said, "We sell tickets to theaters, not movies." His Loew's Inc. own and ran Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as a subsidiary from its New York headquarters. Hundreds of movie theaters eventually were constructed in Canada in the period of 1910 through 1930, mostly in Ontario and Quebec.
Filmmaking was literally the tail that wound up wagging the dog, as in the early days of the cinema, most filmmakers got into the barely acknowledged "Seventh Art" as a means of ensuring product for their theaters. Due to the dominance of the Edison Patent Trust over cameras, projection equipment (the kinetoscope), and film stock, many a would-be movie entrepreneur had to resort to "inventing" their own equipment from extant models, and importing their film stock from overseas
Like the later innovation Technicolor, which tightly controlled the use of its product, mandating Technicolor consultants on films using its cameras and color stock ensure that the aesthetic results fell within the accepted corporate parameters, Edison too controlled the aesthetic use of his product. No film could be more than one reel, and the facility for projection equipment to throw a large picture was restricted, in order to keep the venues small.
Quebec native Ouimet was no different than the entrepreneurs outside the Edison Trust who made a go of it south of the border. He modified the kinetoscope that he had bought from Edison to improve its luminosity, and he improved the claw-mechanism for advancing film before the shutter to reduce its habit of damaging the negative. He also added a second shutter to reduce the optical glitch that gave rise to the early movies being called "flickers" by the anglophones. He so modified his original projector, he dubbed his "new" creation the Ouimetoscope, which he used to project film images on a larger screen than was possible before his transformation of Edison's contraption.
Many other pioneers in North America were doing the same, modifying Edison's kinetoscope or other projectors illegally imported from Europe, then making films and showing them with their bespoke equipment to crowds starved for entertainment. Where Ouimet bested the entrepreneurs in the lower 48 was in his ability to project a larger image while not sacrificing quality. This enabled him to build what was at the time the largest movie theater in the world.
Tearing down his old theater, Ouimet constructed a 1,200-seat cathedral of cinema he called, after his projector, the Ouimetoscope. He brought to Montreal the first movie theater constructed as lavishly as any first-rate, legitimate house. His mission was "to provide the best moving pictures and illustrated song exhibition that can be provided." The theater not only was huge, but it was air-conditioned, a first for a movie palace. The Ouimetoscope was opened on August 31, 1907.
According to Toronto film historian Hye Bossin in the 1950s, the Ouimet was the first movie showcase to challenge the legitimate theater by offering movie patrons first-class comfort and appointments at a reasonable price that the average citizen could afford. Bossin said that the Ouimetoscope theater was unique, as it was a testament to Ouimet's belief that the movies, as an art and as an industry, were not a fad, but were here to stay. Many entrepreneurs, like Loew, bought up old vaudeville houses in order to present their pictures, but they hedged their bets by continuing to offer live entertainment between shows. In fact, the process of offering live entertainment at the Loew's Inc. chain of 400 theaters lasted until Marcus Loew's death in 1927. Loew was never a gambler, and was unsure whether the movie boom would go bust, even after twenty years in the industry.
Ouimet was committed to a quality experience for his patrons, hiring the best musicians to accompany the silent films. He booked only the best movies, and carefully planned each showcase. Ouiment even published a program for his audience, akin to the show bills distributed at legitimate theaters. A Quebecker, Ouimet also was committed to the francophone cinema, bringing in pictures from France for his Montreal audience, and translating the inter-titles of English-language films into French. He was truly the father of Quebec cinema, an idealist as well as a business-cum-showman.
Increasingly, just like Canadian cinema today, Ouimet faced fierce competition from the studios in the U.S., who flooded the province with product. In addition, Ouimet had to face the economic backlash caused by a conservative Catholic clergy, who inveigled against movie-going on Sundays, and successfully lobbied the provincial government to ban Sunday-showings of films. It was an ordinance that lasted until the 1960s, when, after a social revolution that saw the dawn of French Canadian nationalism, as noted in Denis Arcand's Oscar-wining "The Barbarian Invasions" (2002), the good people of la belle province split with the church and its patrimony.
Worn out from the battles with New York- and Hollywood-based movie-makers, fed up with the interference from the church, Ouimet sold his theater, which was renamed Le Canadien after his departure. Quebec's movie pioneer said "au revoir" to the province and decamped for Hollywood in 1922, where he formed a production company, Laval Photoplays, that made "Why Get Married?" The film was not as big a success as Ouimet anticipated, and he abandoned commercial movie-making.
Returning to Montreal, he leased a movie theater on Bleury Street, but he was financially ruined in 1935 after two people were killed in a fire at his movie house, and he was successfully sued by their survivors. Ouimet retired from the industry he loved forever, though he continued to experiment with movie technology. He took a job as a store manager for the Quebec Liquor Commission.
Leo-Ernest Ouimet died on March 2nd, 1972, at the age of 94. He did not die unhonored, as Le Canadien was renamed Ouimetoscope in 1966. The federal government at this time was undertaking the biggest building boom of cinemas since the initial 20-year boom was crushed by the Great Depression, erecting cultural centers with cinemas to commemorate the 1967 Centennial of the Confederation in 1967. A year after the centennial celebrations, which put Montreal on the international map with Expo '67, the last great World's Fair, Cinematheque canadienne put a plaque on the Ouimetoscope building to commemorate the 60th anniversary of its opening.
Thus, in his old age, during a revival of French Canadian identify that would revolutionize Quebec's relations with the rest of the Confederation, the province remembered Ouimet. It remembered the old gentilhomme not just for bringing bonhomie to his `patrie,' but for his technical innovations and for his faith in the future of cinema. It hailed him for opening up the province of Quebec to the world, and for making the world cognizant of Quebec, all through the magic lantern that was the Ouimetoscope.- Olympic diver, Roseline Filion was born in Laval, Quebec, Canada. Her parents are Helene and Marc Filion. Growing up in Laval, she began competitively diving when she was 10 years old. Roseline attended the University of Montreal, earning a Bachelor of Communications degree. Joining Canada's national team in 2005, she competed in 3 Olympics (Beijing 2008, London 2012 and Rio 2016) and won 2 bronze medals. After retiring from competitive diving in 2017, she resides in Montreal and is a sports columnist.
- Alfred Jarry was born on 8 September 1873 in Laval, Mayenne, France. He was a writer, known for Ubu (2023), Ubu król (2003) and Král Ubu (1996). He died on 1 November 1907 in Paris, France.
- Actor
- Additional Crew
Eric Paulhus was born on 8 January 1979 in Laval, Québec, Canada. He is an actor, known for The Barbarian Invasions (2003), Let Go (2017) and Les Argonautes (2013).- Composer
- Music Department
Michel Smith was born in 1958 in Laval, Québec, Canada. Michel is a composer, known for Katryn's Place (2002), Cosmos (1996) and Mort subite d'un homme-théâtre (2012).