In Quebec during the early 1930s, young poet Félix Leclerc befriended Frank Randolph Macpherson, a Jamaican chemical engineer and university graduate who worked for a pulp and paper company. An inveterate jazz fan, Macpherson inspired Leclerc, who wrote a song about the log drives and entitled it “MacPherson” in honour of his friend.

In the heart of a wintry nation, a white man and a black man bask in the warmth of a friendship buoyed by melodies of jazz, traditional Quebec folk tunes, Jamaican mento and a Schubert sonata. The magical hands of Martine Chartrand, director of Black Soul, have created an animated film that bursts with a pulsating hybrid of poetry and music, employing painted glass frames shot with a 35mm camera. Somewhere between documentary and fiction, MacPherson, based on Leclerc’s famous song, depicts turning points in history and, with great sensitivity and lavish imagery, evokes the deep feelings shared by the Jamaican engineer and one of Leclerc’s sisters.

A film brimming with exuberant, colourful images.