To the Rhythm of My Heart

To the Rhythm of My Heart (French: Au rythme de mon cœur) is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Jean Pierre Lefebvre and released in 1983.[1] Made during his national tour of Canada for a 1981 retrospective of his films compiled by the Canadian Film Institute, the film is a video diary documenting both his philosophical and creative discussions on the co-operative movement in cinema as part of the tour and the concurrent illness and death of his wife, film editor and producer Marguerite Duparc.[2]

The film's origins were in a short "video postcard" that Lefebvre had planned to record for film studies students at Ryerson University after hosting a workshop there in 1980.[3] Much of the film was shot with an old Bolex camera that had to be frequently rewound, leading Lefebvre — long known for films that had a slow, languid pacing — to quip "Don't be worried, there are no long shots, so it's my fastest film."[3]

The film premiered at the 1983 Toronto International Film Festival.[4] Jay Scott of The Globe and Mail positively reviewed the film, writing that "The images he finds are wonderful: a long sequence, scored to a Moog he reports he purchased "from Radio Shack", of lights flickering on water; a black Labrador, suspicious in the white snow; a kitten, worrying a baby mouse to death; and a ferry with railings stark and rigid in formal frontality, like a Christopher Pratt print reconstituted for the silver screen. To The Rhythm of My Heart is experimental and non-linear - "the emotion is really in the form of the film," as Lefebvre puts it - but it is usually fascinating and never forbidding."[3]

The film received a Genie Award nomination for Best Feature Length Documentary at the 6th Genie Awards in 1985.[5]