Thanks to the generosity and hard work of Matthew Hays, who teaches film
and journalism at Concordia University and is one of Montreal's finest journalists,
Seven Up was screened at the Cinema du Parc on Park Avenue.
Roland Smith, who used to run the Verdi Cinema in the good old days,
rescued this cinema just three years ago. Here I sat through
a screening of the original version of 7Up, the way I created it in 1964.
The cinema was very nicely filled thanks to the superb writing skills
of Billie Brownstein, and the high esteem in which the Gazette holds him,
placing his article on me on the front page of the Arts Section of the Gazette,
on Wednesday morning. I was amazed and delighted to see so many braving
the rain to come and see this documentary which had never before been
screened in Montreal. I was so pleased to greet my old friend the
distinguished actor Gilles Pelletier and his wife Francoise,,,
...and my former assistant Charles Faubert who now
helps run a big internet company.
I myself had not seen it in its original state since I left England
almost fifty years ago. What an emotional screening!
I couldn't stop the tears filling my eyes as I was back again
with those little lads and lasses — some of whom seemed at the time,
erroneously, to have had so little chance in life. But as the series,
(continued by Michael Apted) shows, the human spirit is indomitable
and helps one survive against all odds. But of course at that screening,
I wasn't thinking about the future, I was only immersed in the lives of
those wonderful children whom I chose for the documentary.
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