Marc-André Lussier accumulated film magazines for decades, which he ended up donating to the Cinémathèque québécoise. While moving the boxes around ten years ago, he had a fall. Arm fracture.
“That didn’t stop him from writing his blog with his left hand for weeks. This shows how great Marc-André’s professionalism was,” said his colleague and friend Marc Cassivi, Wednesday evening, at the Cinémathèque québécoise.
Marc-André Lussier has highlighted cinema throughout his career. But on Wednesday, he was the one honored. Colleagues from La Presse, journalists from other media and personalities from the film industry gathered at the Cinémathèque to salute the passionate and rigorous critic that he was, but also the kind and caring man that he was . Marc-André Lussier died suddenly in June, around ten days after having heart surgery.
Marc Cassivi told some anecdotes about his friend’s career on the microphone. Self-taught, Marc-André Lussier was already writing short film reviews by hand in a Canada notebook in the 1980s. He has already driven almost 1000 km round trip to meet Catherine Deneuve in Toronto. “For him, cinema came first,” summarized Marc Cassivi.
It was at the very end of his speech that Marc Cassivi’s voice cracked, when talking about the friendship between him and Marc-André Lussier. His colleague Alexandre Vigneault finished reading for him, holding his hand. “He was much loved. And paying tribute to him like that, as a gang, there is something of a catharsis,” said Marc Cassivi.
On Wednesday evening, we felt this love towards Marc-André Lussier very clearly, both from his colleagues at La Presse and from journalists from competing media. Le Devoir, Le Journal de Montréal, Le Journal de Québec, Radio-Canada, Le Soleil: they were all there. “The first time I went to cover the Cannes Film Festival, Marc-André was there. He welcomed me like a colleague, with kindness, confided Éric Moreault, of the daily Le Soleil. Marc-André never looked down on anyone. Never. »
“He will be missed in the cinema,” said Odile Tremblay, cultural columnist at Le Devoir.
“His approach was respectful, without complacency, always fair,” summarized Claude Deschênes, former cultural journalist at Radio-Canada.
In a tribute video, several Quebec filmmakers testified, including Philippe Falardeau, who stressed that Marc-André Lussier always went to see Quebec filmmakers when they presented films at festivals abroad. “Often, moreover, and this is known, on one’s own vacation time,” specified Philippe Falardeau.
For the distributor Louis Dussault, Marc-André was a cinematographic reference. And his death also marks the disappearance of all this knowledge and all these references accumulated over so many years. “We all wanted to have Marc-André to cover our films, because we knew he had the culture, that he had perspective,” said Louis Dussault.
As a tribute to Marc-André Lussier, the Cinémathèque québécoise screened Wednesday evening The Last Metro, by François Truffaut, one of the film critic’s favorite films. Filmmaker Stéphane Lafleur attended the screening. “We felt that, even after all the films he had seen, Marc-André still had the passion,” he said.
Actress Julianne Côté, also present at the screening, said she encountered Marc-André Lussier in the street a few days before his death. He was smiling, bright, she remembers. “It was a beacon in the night of culture,” she observed.
At the microphone, François Cardinal, deputy editor and vice-president of information at La Presse, stressed that very few journalists would be entitled to such a tribute.
“The fact that we are there, as much colleagues, colleagues, as the world of cinema that Marc-André covered, that says a lot about him,” he concluded.
