Nationality Canadian Movies Transgender Parents | Years active 2002-present | |
Full Name Mireille Huberdeau Born 1981 Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada Residence Toronto, Ontario, Canada Education University of Manitoba (degree in Native Studies) Institut National de l'Image et du Son (graduated 2009) | ||
Q a with director r my huberdeau transgender parents
Rémy Huberdeau is a filmmaker from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He is transgender, and many of the films he has worked on or directed touch upon the topic of being transgender. He is currently based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He has worked on films in both French and English.
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Artist talk with r my huberdeau
Biography
Rémy Huberdeau (born circa 1981) was born and raised in the primarily French-speaking neighbourhood of Saint-Boniface in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, as Mireille Huberdeau, a name under which some of his early films were released. For his post-secondary education, he studied at the nearby University of Manitoba, where he acquired a degree in Native Studies. He is Franco-Manitoban. After university, Huberdeau moved to Montreal, Quebec, to pursue his passion of film-making. In 2009, he graduated from the Institut National de l’Image et du Son (INIS).
Career
Huberdeau focuses his film-making on the documentary genre. His directorial debut, Love letter to Saint-Boniface (2002), is an experimental short documentary film about his hometown, and the homophobia he has experienced there. He directed this film when he was just 21 years old with the help of Video Pool, a non-profit film co-operative based in Winnipeg. When speaking about the content of this film, specifically on French-Canadian culture, Huberdeau has stated:
"Sometimes French culture seems strange to me because it can be out and extravagant but then it has this protectionist side because the language is in recession, at least on the surface. I guess like many languages it can be lost in a generation, but that seems to be on people's minds here, and it's strange as well, I got these thoughts sometimes as if French culture was contemplating suicide. You know it's not thoughts of genocide, but suicide."
Years later, Huberdeau released another experimental short documentary film, Home of the Buffalo (Au pays des esprits), in 2009, the same year he graduated from INIS. The school was involved in the making of this film, as it originated from a school-related exercise. This film has been categorised as a visual letter from Huberdeau to his father, while also combining archival photographs of working-class people from the 1920s.
In 2010, Huberdeau worked as an editor on a documentary about the residential school system in Canada, titled Courage to Remember: Stories of our Labrador Residential School Experience.
In 2013, Huberdeau released his most well-known film, a forty-six miniute documentary titled Transgender Parents. As its title suggests, this film revolves around a few transgender people and how they raise their children, how they may differ from society's expectations, and their children's reactions to their transitions. He became involved with making this film after meeting Rachel Epstein, a co-founder of the Dykes Planning Tikes program in Toronto.