The beauty of Michka                        

Jelena Popovic

role in Michka’s films

Zero Tolerance —  production manager

JP: Wait, I'll get my Zero Tolerance production book...  Here we go. The working title was The Difference. The book includes authorization from the director of the police department: "As a follow-up to your e-mail of June 13, 2002, in which you mentioned your project for a documentary film on the Francophone police in a multi-ethnic environment, this is to confirm that the Montreal Police Department will enthusiastically collaborate on this production.”

MF: Were you there for the entire shoot?

JP: Yes, we shot the whole thing together. Sometimes we did night walks with officers. Sometimes we interviewed people in the police force. Sometimes we shot in the parks.

There were young people we interviewed who said, "Even if we're just sitting in the park, there are police who tell us we have to move.” Michka asked tough questions: "Why aren't young people allowed to be in the park?” Well, the police said, "There are some who are drug dealers. If they’re doing that, we have to arrest them.” But Michka insisted the job of the police was to arrest criminals, not to tell young people to stay out of the parks. That's where it starts to degenerate into profiling or telling people of colour they shouldn’t be in the parks.

Michka believed the police was a force of peace and not a force for order. If you build relationships with communities, you end up with different profiles of people inside the police force. It becomes a force of peace. The film starts from that position. And, in fact, several police officers in the film talked about this positive approach where the police force built ties with the community in different Montreal neighbourhoods.  

 MF: We did a screening of the film a few years ago at Café Obscura in Montreal. There was a moment where people burst out laughing because there's a police officer, I think in administration, who was talking about community policing. And then she says something like, "Yes, that's all very nice, but who's going to do the oppression?"

JP: Yes, while the team was shooting, one of my roles was to transcribe interviews « live » wherever possible. And I remember looking up in surprise at what she said. Yes, it was both discriminatory and naive. We all dream of a healthy and just society, and I think the film was useful on that score. I remember, years later, that Michka had received a request from the Quebec legislature that wanted to screen the film to members of the Quebec parliament during the debate of a law against racial profiling.SJ: We wrote that many letters!

MF: Were the police comfortable during the shoot?

JP: Everyone was at ease while we were shooting. Some of the police, even the higher ranking ones, opened their hearts to us a little bit. When you sit with someone for a long time in their police car, you start to take in their routine, and understand their reality. For example, one police officer told us that even when it's very cold, he keeps the window open. He can't just see the city. He has to hear to understand its spirit and the soul. We didn't ever expect to hear something so poetic.

Michka wanted to paint a picture of their routine but also show the reality of young people, who are sometimes racially profiled by certain police officers. So she also asked difficult questions.

When we shot during Carifesta[1], six policemen suddenly arrived to arrest a single Black man. They held his arms and legs, face down on the asphalt, and they held him like that until they brought him to the police car.  And then other police on horses suddenly came into the frame. It was completely surreal.

Sixteen years later, after George Floyd and Black Lives Matter, the film is just as relevant, if not more so. Racial profiling continues to be an issue around the world, but not necessarily in everyone's heart. Racism exists sometimes unconsciously. To highlight or address unconscious racism, it must first be identified. And to identify it, you have to ask questions. Then you have to juxtapose certain answers — certain words — to unmask it.

I often say that I learned the most in my professional life by assisting good directors, including Michka. I really think she was transparent in her interviews. She was asking complex questions about racism. It's not necessarily in the final cut. But if someone had listened to all the interviews .... they were provocative questions.

Michka had an outsider's perspective because she wasn't born here. Her final film (Mavericks) is a love letter to Quebec for all the beauty of the diversity that Michka fell in love with. Some people misunderstood her intentions with Zero Tolerance. Michka was simply pointing out the problem of racial profiling, which clearly still exists as we saw with Joyce Echaquan.[1] You can't change mentalities without talking about it. Sometimes you have to provoke to start a conversation.

MF: I always think of a scene in her first film, Far From Where? A young man walks with a hockey net on his shoulder, an image par excellence of belonging to Quebec. And then he passes a wall where the viewer sees the name Anthony Griffin[2], who was killed by the police.  And then you hear sirens.

JP: And that's the power of Michka's cinema — to juxtapose the visual and sound elements to create a new level of understanding. They are "point of view" films and those points of view are important in an open society. I personally don't think they can be considered biased when all sides are given a voice, and when all parties are given so much screen time. It's not easy to make a film like that. Michka's point of view was to reveal parts that are difficult to identify. And for that, it took courage. It required transparency, which she had from the start. And that's the most important thing, I think.

I always regretted not being able to be part of Michka's next film, Prisoners of Beckett, which remains for me a masterpiece of documentary. But with Zero Tolerance I really got an early masterclass from a top filmmaker. She gave me hope, showing me that you have to believe, that you have to give it your all, that you have to dare, that you don't have to be afraid, that you have to build and nurture relationships with the crew and the subjects of films.

MF: Do you think the fact that you and Michka are both immigrant women had an effect?

JP: It probably connected us more, but our connection was not necessarily about being immigrant women. When Michka told me about all her Tunisian, Israelien, Quebecois and Canadian adventures, it was as if she had several lives. It reassured me, and even influenced how I saw my own life. It was like having a big sister. That was the beauty of Michka. She was never preachy. She was very good at saying "No" in a gentle yet unwavering way. I'm still discovering all this by reading La Lune des coiffeurs. But from the day we first met, she was like this. She knew she had someone young next to her, but she had confidence in me. And it’s not just me. I've seen lots of people she's worked with. She taught a lot of things without ever trying to teach. That's why she left such a mark on us. She marked us for life.

MF: I'm glad you mentioned La Lune des coiffeurs, her book of autofiction. You organised an evening with women filmmakers so they could watch clips from her films to introduce Michka's work. And then you gave a copy of the book to each of them.

JP: I realized, through Facebook, that Xi Feng and I had a mutual acquaintance — a young female director working in animation — and that gave me the idea that it would be great to introduce Michka's work to all these young women filmmakers, animators and visual artists. So I invited them to a “Meet the Artist” event. We watched Loin d'où?, which is a very poetic film, and excerpts from some of her other films. Xi and I shared our respective experiences with Michka and her career and her approach as a filmmaker. It was a wonderful gathering. I think they were moved, all these women, by this spontaneous tribute to Michka. And, yes, I gave each of them a copy of La Lune des coiffeurs.

[1] An annual festival of music, culture and culinary art of the Caribbean community Montréal.

[2] Joyce Echaquan, a 37-year old Atikamekw woman, died at the Centre hospitalier de Lanaudière à Saint-Charles-Borromée on September 28, 2020. Before she died, she filmed a Facebook Live video that showed her in distress and being ignored by hospital staff.

[3] Anthony Griffin, a 19-year old Black man, was killed by police on November 11, 1987. The police officer claimed that his firearm went off accidentally. He was acquitted in two different trials.ou have 60 seconds remaining.