Empress Blue – music video
A 7 year old boy sits in the back seat of his parents car, driving along Sources Blvd in the West Island, looking out the window. Somewhere along the drive, an old abandoned stone house catches his eye, slightly out of place in this 1988 sprawling Montreal suburb. The boy’s eyes sparkle as dreams of adventures and abandoned treasures crowd his mind. What would he find behind those crumbling cobble walls were he to escape his parents gaze long enough to explore?
The little stone house has long ago been replaced by a series of senior citizens home. This personal memory, however, has been resuscitated through the Empress Theatre’s art-deco facade. On my way to the Loyola campus during my university days, the 105 bus would invariably take a left on Sherbrooke street, hop over the Descarie expressway, and drive past the old abandoned theatre. My childhood desires urged me to explore the intestines of this old Egyptian-style building that closed after a fire back in ’92.
You can imagine how excited I was when the opportunity came up to make a documentary about the building’s past vocations and the current effort by a community organization called Renaissance Empress to turn it into a multidisciplinary cultural center for the NDG community. I will give more info about the documentary when it comes out in the spring. However, in the context of the Empress Theatre documentary, I had the chance to collaborate with Scott MacLeod, a NDG musician, artist, and filmmaker. He wrote the song Empress Blue, which describes the various stages and uses of the Empress Theatre – a film theatre, a showroom, a repertoire cinema – and evokes the hope that the building will find new life. This song became the backbone of the doc and I felt it deserved to have a video to showcase it, as well as the artist who created it.
Here is the music video to the song Empress Blue:
In the end, the ornate walls of the theatre were hiding a lot more than my imagination could dream for. They allowed for a collaboration that I hope can serve as yet another example of the building’s potential.
You can also find out more about the Empress community center here.
Song Credits
Written by G. Scott MacLeod
Performed by G. Scott MacLeod and Paul Cargnello
Sound Engineering by Paul Cargnello
Mixing and Mastering by Stacy Le Gallee
Video Credits
Directed and Edited by Emmanuel Hessler
Cinematography by Seb Rist and Katherine Macnaughton
Produced with the help of Tim Schwab and Paul Aflalo
January 19th, 2011 at 8:42 am
Great work, sooo nice!!!!!! I love it, sooo many things I feel is spreading in regards to great artists and their art milieus here in Montreal, I mean more people are taking a liking to Montreal! Which is great for this city!!! We have such great stories to tell!!!! I have even wrote a song about Montreal and share this with everyone on youtube, under title, City D’amour, just enter the title and you will be able to view it!!! We are now even working on a feature film about Montreal, titled, Saldani’s Enigma, it is going to be released in 2012!!!! AMazing! ROCK ON MONTREAL!!!! XOX
January 19th, 2011 at 9:04 am
Hey Karen.
Thanks for the support and good luck with your stuff too.
It is absolutely exciting how much creative energy there is in this city. That is why I am so proud to be living and creating here.
Cheers
January 19th, 2011 at 8:42 pm
Scott and Paul,
This is a concrete way to get me to see your vision for an NDG Arts Center. These old buildings lend themselves to the task.Good job on the video. Should be entered into some short video festival.
Daryl Zoellner
January 19th, 2011 at 11:36 pm
Thanks for the support.
Will definitely be trying to spread the word about this as much as possible.
January 20th, 2011 at 1:42 pm
Read the article about “Empress Blue” that appears in the Montreal Mirror (20th of January, 2011) by Elisabeth Faure.
Follow the link here.
June 22nd, 2011 at 4:08 pm
[...] for a documentary that is being made on the Empress Theater in NDG. You can view the video on our blog and read the Mirror article here. Also in the works are several new top secret exciting projects [...]
June 22nd, 2011 at 4:18 pm
[...] le théâtre Empress dans le quartier de Notre-Dame-de-Grâce. Vous pouvez visionner la vidéo sur notre blogue et lire l’article du journal Mirror ici. Nous travaillons également sur plusieurs projets [...]
March 28th, 2013 at 2:36 pm
Both teams lost in a day of upsets, and
with that loss, they were taken out of the picture for a national championship appearance.
The challenge for the game ranger is to keep everyone happy and entertained ‘ from grandmothers to teenagers to children. Online golf academies are becoming more and more popular because they allow many people to learn the game at their own convenience and give them access to instructors that otherwise they would not have the opportunity to work with simply due to distance.