Pauline Julien would have been 90 years old in 2018. Twenty years after her death, the latest documentary by Pascale Ferland captures the essence of the iconic Quebec singer—a passionately committed and eternally free spirit. Composed of a meticulous selection of interviews, performances and photos drawn from a vast and rich archival collection, Pauline Julien, Intimate and Political follows Julien on a journey from the 1950s to the 1990s. Uncompromising and at times vulnerable, the artist tells her story through personal anecdotes, songs and excerpts from her diary. As the filmmaker sketches the arc of Julien’s extraordinary life, including her relationship with poet Gérald Godin, she offers a memorable lesson in Quebec history, painting a portrait of an inspiring woman whose sovereigntist and feminist ideals continue to resonate today.

Pauline Julien would have been 90 years old in 2018. Twenty years after her death, the singer continues to project the image of an eternally youthful woman, unwaveringly free and passionately in love. The contagious smile, the wild hair—this is how the fiery muse of feminism and sovereignty appears, from one decade to the next, in Pascale Ferland’s new documentary. The filmmaker sketches an original and introspective portrait, plunging at times dreamily into the psyche of a complex woman of deep convictions.

And who better to talk about Pauline Julien than the songwriter, composer and singer herself? Through a meticulous selection of interviews, performances and photos, drawn from a vast and rich archival collection, Pauline Julien, Intimate and Political takes us on a journey from the 1950s through the 1990s, following in the footsteps of this icon of Quebec song. Uncompromising, genuine and intense, the artist tells her story candidly through personal anecdotes, songs, and excerpts from her diary.

As a counterpoint to these archives, Pascale Ferland shifts the camera’s gaze toward visual artist Alan Glass, Pauline’s closest friend, who, with great emotion, reveals lesser-known moments of the singer’s life that he had been privileged to witness. Glass starts by recalling a train trip he took with the singer. Pauline was weeping, staring off at the horizon, and he asked her what was wrong. “This…! This…!” she answered, gesturing at the vastness of the countryside. Referring to the novel L’avalée des avalés [The Swallower Swallowed] by Réjean Ducharme, Glass evokes the endless anguish that drove this deeply sensitive artist.

Born in Trois-Rivières on May 23, 1928, Pauline Julien devoted herself to becoming an actor. In 1950, she married actor Jacques Galipeau, with whom she would have two children. From 1951 to 1957, Pauline lived in Paris, where she acted on stage and sang in cabarets. On the Pont des Arts bridge, we see her sing about love with the cheekiness of Édith Piaf and the elegance of Jeanne Moreau.

After conquering France with songs by Ferré, Vian and Weil, Julien returned to Quebec, where she mesmerized audiences with the lyrics of Vigneault, Langevin and Lévesque, whom she would later introduce to the French. “Pauline Julien is a tough little tree, at once knotty and fragile, who captures you through a spirit and obstinacy that we call presence,” wrote smitten journalist Jacques Godin in Le Nouvelliste in 1961.

After separating from Jacques Galipeau, Julien confirmed in an interview that she had no regrets, as in the song. She also confessed her admiration for Marilyn Monroe and the extreme sensitivity that comes across in her films and songs. “Her death affected me deeply. In a way, I understood her. I understand people who commit suicide…” she confided, as if envisioning her own fate.

Although she consistently refused to be a committed protest singer, the nationalist wave that swept 1960s Quebec—as well as meeting poet Gérald Godin, who would be her husband until death parted them—transformed Pauline Julien. Already an ardent feminist, she would embrace the nationalist cause. Around the same time, she began writing her own songs. Worshipped in Quebec and English Canada alike, she would vigorously defend, in charmingly flawed English, her nationalist convictions to journalist Patrick Watson during a visit to the Queen City.

Even as she recounts Julien’s incredible destiny and love story with Godin, drawing on his poetry and excerpts from their ample correspondence of more than 500 letters, set against a backdrop of jazz that gives the couple a French New Wave allure, Pascale Ferland delivers a vibrant lesson in Quebec history. In so doing, the filmmaker gives new life to the songs immortalized by Pauline. When she sings “Bozo les culottes” in the aftermath of the FLQ and the War Measures Act, in which Julien and Godin became ensnared, or “La danse à Saint-Dilon,” after Godin was elected in the Mercier riding in 1976, or “Mommy,” following the failed 1980 referendum, each song assumes its full meaning.

Claimed by brain cancer in 1994, Gérald Godin left his muse and companion to mourn after 32 years of shared life. Four years later, suffering from degenerative aphasia, she killed herself. “It already seems so very, very long ago. It’s the fate that awaits us all. We will all be forgotten,” Alan Glass declares as he discusses his dear friend’s suicide on October 1, 1998. All of us? Not Pauline, who remains forever young and free in Pascale Ferland’s moving documentary.

I met Pascale Galipeau, daughter of the late singer Pauline Julien, in 1999, not long after her mother’s death. Stricken with degenerative aphasia, Pauline, an icon of a defining era in Quebec history, had already retired from the public scene years earlier. The idea of a film crossed my mind then, but the family was reeling. I felt it wasn’t the right time, and besides, Pascale had sealed her mother’s archives for 10 years.

In the fall of 2014, I went through my old notebooks, and I rediscovered a few entries about Pauline Julien. Over the decades, memory of her had faded, as it has for most of the players in Quebec’s Quiet Revolution.

So, I reconnected with Pascale to propose a film about her mother. I had no intention of idolizing Pauline, as Pascale feared. Rather, I wanted to underscore her strength of character, independent spirit, and her artistic, social and political commitment. This angle also allowed me to revisit a pivotal time in our history from a woman’s perspective.

Straightaway, Pascale gave me access to career and family archives, excerpts from the diaries Pauline had penned from her early years until her death, as well as love letters between her and Gérald Godin, which spanned some 30 years. How do you approach so much information, both private and public, and shape it into an original film that reflects such a rich life? That was my biggest challenge.

From the outset, I decided not to build my film around current-day interviews, but instead to use archival footage and photographs. Only Alan Glass, whom Pauline had met in her 20s, and with whom she remained friends until her death, occasionally interjects in the story.

Adored in Europe and respected in English Canada, despite her strong positions on feminism, the French language and Quebec independence, Pauline Julien was a ubiquitous presence in the media of the day, and I hoped to find enough material so that she could speak for herself. So, I set about searching a very broad spectrum—in every country involved—to reconstruct her artistic and political journey.

Pauline’s inner world was the hardest part to convey on film. But she had taken up the habit of writing to calm her fears. So, it was through her diaries and correspondence with Gérald Godin that a dreamier, more metaphorical film treatment took shape. This allowed me to explore the evolution of both Pauline’s political struggle and, on a much more personal level, her battle with illness. Her lover, Gérald Godin, was claimed by a brain tumour at age 56, shortly after Quebec’s first referendum on independence, on October 12, 1994. It was at this trying time that her own illness, degenerative aphasia, became known, a condition Pauline had long kept secret. After witnessing the failure of the second referendum in 1995 and the waning of the idea of Quebec independence that followed, Pauline, gradually deprived of words, grew weaker, and committed suicide on October 1, 1998.

This daunting project has resulted in a highly personal film. Not just because it was conceived free of any constraints, but because I had the honour of getting to better know Pauline Julien, a woman whose defence of a more just and inclusive Quebec inspires and resonates strongly across generations.