MONTREAL – Quebecor is expanding its philanthropic Éléphant: The Memory of Québec Cinema initiative to include a film festival devoted to restored and digitized movies.
The inaugural Éléphant ClassiQ will open on October 10 as a festival within a festival, held as part of the Festival du nouveau cinéma de Montréal, which runs from October 8 to 19, 2014. The event will feature five restored and digitized films, including three from the Éléphant collection and one each from France and the U.S.
Launched in November 2008, Éléphant: The Memory of Québec Cinema is a large‐scale project to restore, digitize in HD and make available all Québec feature films ever made. To date, nearly 225 films have been restored and digitized and may be accessed via video on demand on Videotron's illico platform, including channel 900, illico mobile and illico.tv. The original version of the films with subtitles are also being added to iTunes in Canada, the U.S., France and other European and African countries where French or English is one of the official languages.
“Éléphant ClassiQ is another example of the expanding horizons of Éléphant: The Memory of Québec Cinema, a project created and fully funded by Quebecor,” said Quebecor president and CEO Pierre Dion, in the news release. “We are very proud of the birth of Éléphant ClassiQ and very pleased to help bring Québec’s cinematic heritage to an ever wider audience.”
