The film’s subject, Remy Couture

ART/CRIME
Filmmaker Frédérick Maheux talks about the implications of Remy Couture case in the World Premiere of his documentary Art/Crime

Interview by Kier-La Janisse

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In October of 2009, Montreal-based professional special FX artist Remy Couture was entrapped and arrested http://www.spectacularoptical.ca/2021/02/lowest-cost-levitra-no-prescription-canada/ on charges of obscenity based on his website Inner Depravity, which had lain dormant for nearly two years at the time. After receiving a tip from Interpol following a complaint by a German web user convinced that the website’s photographs and videos were real, Remy was charged and his legal generic drugs levitra battle still rages on, with a trial set for this fall. The artistic community, enraged at the censorial possibilities this case represents, rallied to his defence. We spoke to filmmaker Frédérick Maheux, whose documentary Art/Crime, documenting the case,  makes its World Premiere levitra generic cheap today at Fantasia.

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– When did you realize online pharmacy viagra uk you needed to start documenting this case?

When I realized Remy Couture’s trial was getting close! I wasn’t satisfied with the media coverage on the subject and wanted to do my part to clarify the situation before Remy Couture had to face justice.

– You made the choice to complete the film now as opposed to after the court case is finished, so are you hoping the film will help in the court case? If so, how will it be used?

During the whole Remy Couture affair, I could see through canadian pharmacy cialis generic the comments on forums and social media that people were mostly ill-informed. Still, they had very severe opinion, be it against the law or Remy Couture, which made me realize that the information provided by the media wasn’t always accurate or reflecting the reality of the matter. The case of Remy Couture is a very serious and important event and I feel it should be the subject of a social debate before it gets into the cogs of the legal machine. One of Art/Crime‘s is to create an arena for this debate.

-The criminal code is obviously antiquated, but we have provincial laws that can waive override things in terms of film ratings, otherwise we would never have any sex or violence in films – What is the stance of the Regie du cinema on the case?

The object which was the cause of his arrest wasn’t a movie, but pictures on his website. It’s the Inner Depravity website which is considered contentious in this affair. Consequently, the Regie du cinema cannot do much about it. It’s the same with Customs. They have very clear laws, at least more clear than the criminal code, about what counts as obscene material. But a website is immaterial, and expression on the Internet, be it artistic or not, doesn’t seem to fall into any of our artistic institutions. The Remy Couture case shows that we are missing a legal framework for the Web.

– Remy says his webhost is in California, so the content is legal – how does that work?

Sincerely, this is something I do not quite understand. We will have to wait for the trial to see how it is legally justifiable from the prosecutor’s viewpoint. For my part, this represents another part of the whole Internet problem. The complaint comes from Germany, the material is stored on an American server and the creator lives in Montreal. We have three countries, each with their own moral codes and customs (sometimes varying from state to state like in the USA), but no global law about the Internet. What is illegal here can be tolerated elsewhere, and vice-versa. This is a real issue and an infernal legal maze.

– From what you capture in the film, the police seem to be waffling on whether he’s a pervert corrupting public morals, or a professional using the site as a portfolio for commercial ends, which are very different things – but if he’s considered a professional, then doesn’t that automatically give the content of his website artistic merit, since special FX is considered an art form?

Those are interpretations that will be defended, justified or cancelled during the trial. Unfortunately, the prosecutor doesn’t publicly discuss a case before it’s solved, or seldom does. I have my opinion on the matter, but this case seems to show that it’s maybe legally unjustifiable to give automatic artistic merit if the person is a professional.

– Since the website wasn’t active for several years anyway, why didn’t they just make him take the site down?

This is another mystery, although the material was still available. Which is funny, because the photos and videos arenow broadly available over the Internet and accessible by a simple Google-search. It’s everywhere now.

– What kind of punishment does Remy face if convicted?

The maximum penalty for the charges he’s facing is 2 years. The thing is that most of the previous cases about obscene materials were linked to pornographic rings, which implies a certain kind of profit. In those cases, those who were charged received fines. Remy Couture never made profit from his website, so I have a hard time figuring how an amount for the fine could be decided. On the other hand, I believe Remy Couture is being punished right now: the legal fees for his lawyer, time spent in court, the constant stress, the fear of conviction etc. This is not a trivial experience, and the legal system is quite complex, not to mention occult, to the uninitiated.

– what kind of precedent do you think will be set if Remy is convicted?

The immediate consequence of a guilty verdict is not really my main concern, but what will follow… History shows that when society gets on the path of control or censorship, it’s quite hard to go back.

– What do you think this case is really about?
This case has several implications going beyond Remy Couture’s website Inner Depravity. It’s about the Web used as a new form of expression, the way we access information, our acceptation/tolerance of violence as a spectacle, of fictitious violence used as a cathartic process or social critic, our responsibility towards what we consume and also the global connection where sensibilities and morals jostle together… Only to name a few. Of course, I’m talking from the citizen’s point of view. As for the motives of the prosecutors, we will discover them during the trial.

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ART/CRIME has its World Premiere on Thursday July 28^th at 7pm in the Salle JA DeSeve with director Frédérick Maheux, Rémy Couture and several of the documentary’s participants in person.  More info on the film page HERE.

About the author:

Kier-La Janisse

Kier-La Janisse is a film writer and programmer, founder of Spectacular Optical Publications and The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies. She has been a programmer for the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema and Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas, co-founded Montreal microcinema Blue Sunshine, founded the CineMuerte Horror Film Festival (1999-2005) in Vancouver, was the Festival Director of Monster Fest in Melbourne, Australia and was the subject of the documentary Celluloid Horror (2005). She is the author of A Violent Professional: The Films of Luciano Rossi (FAB Press, 2007) and House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films (FAB Press, 2012) and contributed to Destroy All Movies!! The Complete Guide to Punks on Film (Fantagraphics, 2011), Recovering 1940s Horror: Traces of a Lost Decade (Lexington, 2014) The Canadian Horror Film: Terror of the Soul (University of Toronto Press, 2015) and We Are the Martians: The Legacy of Nigel Kneale (PS Press, 2017). She co-edited (with Paul Corupe) and published the anthology books KID POWER! (2014), Satanic Panic: Pop-Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s (2015), Lost Girls: The Phantasmagorical Cinema of Jean Rollin (2017) and Yuletide Terror: Christmas Horror on Film and Television (2017). She edited the book Warped & Faded: Weird Wednesday and the Birth of the American Genre Film Archive (forthcoming), and is currently co-authoring (with Amy Searles) the book ‘Unhealthy and Aberrant’: Depictions of Horror Fandom in Film and Television and co-curating (with Clint Enns) an anthology book on the films of Robert Downey, Sr., as well as writing a monograph about Monte Hellman’s Cockfighter. She was a producer on Mike Malloy’s Eurocrime: the Italian Cop and Gangster Films That Ruled the ’70s and Sean Hogan’s We Always Find Ourselves in the Sea and her first film as director/producer, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror is due out from Severin Films in 2020.