Twenty years, thousands of workers, one massive dam — then the lights go out.
Documentary filmed at the end of the Manic-Outardes hydroelectric projects on the North Shore of the St. Lawrence (1978) to pay tribute to the men and women who participated, for 20 years, in the first collective project in modern Quebec. Le Temps de la Manic allows us to follow live the moving end of this era in the company of Jean-Noël Laprise nicknamed “the Switch”, Andrée Laprise (Grenier) his partner, their 4 children Carole, Serge, Yvan and Hélène, by Édouard Hovington and Véronique Hovington, by Camille Brisson, Léo Boisclair, Denis Ouellet, Gérard Debigaré and Fernande Buissière. Everyone has experienced the time of the Manic adventure from the inside. The Prime Minister, Mr. René Lévesque, also appears in the film.
Direction
Three directors, one coherent elegy for a vanished world.
Writing
Monique Miller's narration — unsentimental, devastating.
Director
Claude Bérubé
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The Manic-Outardes projects were Quebec's 'conquest of the North,' explicitly modeled on TVA-era American nationalism — but with Catholic working-class solidarity instead of individualist frontier mythology.
Director Daniel Le Saunier was a former electrician at Manic-5 himself; the 'Switch' nickname in the film is a sly self-reference to his own past trading labor for lenses.
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