Jean-François Monette

Documentarist, Director, Editor, Producer, television
Quebec CA
Lives in
Montreal , QC
Quebec CA

Documentarist, director, editor, producer. Versatile Concordia-trained Monette is a rare combination: a favorite of the queer community festival short film circuit who actually earns a living making bread-and-butter queer documentary programming for cable. His prize-winning shorts Where Lies the Homo? (1998, see R of T, ch. 10) and Take-Out (2000,) are both about the pain and excitement of coming out, respectively an autobiographical documentary and a moody urban fiction about a teenager whose meeting with a mysterious adult male sparks self-discovery. Where Lies offers an innovative use of movie clips, home movies and dramatization to articulate troubled memories of self-affirmation: Snow White will never look the same again! The same talent as a compilation editor had already surfaced in the NFB documentary Anatomy of Desire (1995, sharing the directing credit with then partner Peter Tyler Boullata) about the evolving modern science of sexual identity—undervalued despite its festival prizes. Equally at home working in English and French, Monette has also been responsible for several “reality” documentaries including the feature Coming Out (2000-01) and the series Out in the City/Out à Montréal (2001-2002), all for cablecast but popular at the queer festivals. One highlight of the latter diverse panoply of urban queers transpires when the straight dancer son of the gay cop whose coming out we’ve been following finally reveals that he’s not so straight after all—not that sharp-eyed spectators ever doubted.