Carole Ducharme

female
Born
1963
in
Montreal , QC
Canada
,
Quebec CA
Lives in
Vancouver , BC
Canada
,
British Columbia CA
Biography

Director, scriptwriter, lawyer, producer. Trained at U. de M. and a Québécois refugee in the Vancouver film industry, Ducharme is best known to queer audiences for her prize-winning one-of-a-kind Straight from the Suburbs (1998, 25). The only work on the international queer circuit to have been shot in the north shore Montreal suburbia/siberia of Laval, this cartoonish satire of social guidance films and homophobia turns the tables in a primary-coloured place where the women wear terrible wigs, and where, worst of all, it’s an embarrassing shame for the Barbie-doll heroine to start having erotic feelings for the opposite sex. Brimming with political darts (a sharp one at Customs Canada, who ended up buying her film for their employees’ resource centre), one scene was put in clearly to explain why Ducharme’s amateur cast are all speaking their cheery satirical English with a Québécois accent: this is Quebec and everyone here once spoke French, but that disappeared and only the accent remained. Ducharme has also made documentaries, including a probably less campy work for TV Ontario (French) on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, Les enfants du quartier (1999).