Claude Jutra, pictured above, has been accused of being a pedophile in a new book. Screenshot via YouTube
On Wednesday, Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre said the city will begin the process of renaming parks and streets dedicated to Claude Jutra, a legendary Quebec filmmaker and also an alleged pedophile, according to a new book.
The claims, featured in a new biography by film critic and author Yves Lever, occupy only a small portion of the book—around five pages in total. Yet they have dominated headlines due to Jutra’s prolific reputation as Quebec’s “father of cinema.”
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The book details sexual encounters between Jutra and boys as young as 14 and 15—with the author alleging that, based on interviews he conducted with some of Jutra’s victims, his sexual interest in children had an effect on his filmmaking. This week, more allegations surfaced after La Presse quoted a confidential source who said he was sexually assaulted by Jutra from the age of six, and that the abuse escalated over the period of a decade.
“In his films, nothing is very explicit or pornographic,” Lever writes. “We simply notice the pleasure in showing beautiful adolescents, sometimes nude.”
Coderre, who responded to the allegations today by announcing the city would be removing Jutra’s name from various locations across Montreal, called the claims against the filmmaker “indefensible.”
“I always said you can’t defend the indefensible,” Coderre said. “And we have to act quickly.”
Québec Cinéma, the organization in charge of the Jutra Awards named in his honor, hastily announced today that it would be renaming the award show, which is set to happen on March 20. The move follows pressure from Quebec Culture Minister Hélène David to kill the Jutra name.
“I’m very, very troubled and so sad by what I have read,” David told reporters this week.
“We have to take it seriously, and given the insupportable criminal act, we have to ask that the name of the Jutras be changed.”
According to the CBC, the organization has not come up with a new name for the show or the name of the trophies themselves, but the move accompanies a similar announcement from the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television to strike the “Claude Jutra award” from its list of awards.
“Our role is not to do an inquiry about this or organize a trial,” Patrick Roy, president of Québec Cinéma, said during a news conference Wednesday afternoon. “We are just making a decision about an award today. That’s all we are doing.”
Jutra, who killed himself in 1986 after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, has a legacy that carries serious weight in Quebec film. Mon oncle Antoine (1971), in particular, is regularly cited as an essential piece of Canadian filmmaking, garnering inclusion in the Criterion Collection. His films throughout the 70s and 80s won numerous provincial and national awards, and he worked internationally with the likes of Francois Truffaut.
Arnie Gilberta, a Canadian filmmaker who knew Jutra, told CTV that it was known in the film community that Jutra was attracted to males who tended to be in their teenage years, but that, to his knowledge, they were not children.
“They weren’t children. I mean they were young men, 16, 17, 18,” he said.
The allegations against Jutra claim that he had relationships with both those who worked with him, and that he also had relationships with the children of fellow actors.
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