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Sin and sovereignty: the curious rise of Cinepix Inc.

Article Excerpt
Perce Rock is one of the biggest tourist attractions along the Gaspe Peninsula, even when there isn't anyone having sex on it. In 1971, visitors to the 70-metre-high rock formation surely would have done a double take when they noticed a demonstrative couple on the peak, helicoptered there by the upstart Montreal film company Cinepix Inc. to publicize its latest offering, a sex farce called Loving and Laughing. The RCMP, however, were not amused. Called in to remove and arrest the offenders, the Mounties were left floating in a boat just offshore, unable to make it up Perce Rock. "All the papers were grabbing it--that kind of stuff gave us a big hit!" recalls former Cinepix president John Dunning with a chuckle.

Even in the first decade of their 40-year careers, no one--not even the Mounties--could deny Cinepix partners John Dunning's and Andre Link's flair for showmanship. In the wake of a political and cultural renewal that took shape throughout Quebec in the 1960s, Cinepix established itself at the heart of low-budget film production in Canada. Fostering the careers of budding filmmakers such as Ivan Reitman and David Cronenberg, Cinepix was home to many of Canada's most controversial films, including Shivers, Ilsa the Tigress of Siberia and a series of spicy Quebecois sex comedies. With a profound ability to capitalize on their evolving audience. Link and Dunning were able to take the lead in commercial film with distinctively relevant genre pictures that pushed the very boundaries of the Canadian film industry.

Cinepix's rise to prominence closely mirrored Quebec's own coming of age after the death of long-reigning conservative premier Marcel Duplessis. Elected into office in 1960, Jean Lesage's Liberal government attempted to assert Quebec's autonomy by freeing the province's social services from the influence of the Catholic Church. In a six-year period that has come to be known as the Quiet Revolution, broad and sweeping reforms were introduced in an effort to regain control of the province's economy from Ottawa, and to secularize welfare, education, health care and culture. Under Lesage, Quebec emerged from the strict morality of Catholicism in the sexually permissive 1960s and early 1970s with a newly discovered sense of self. For some, like Dunning, it was a "breath of fresh air," but for others, it was nothing short of a culture shock, tantamount to being stranded in the St. Lawrence alongside those frustrated RCMP officers at Perce Rock.

Nowhere were these insurgent notions of free love and...