La Raison Avant La Passion1969

Joyce Wieland's films are among the most endearing ever seen, making her point and sealing the issue in a womanly way without any concern for ragged edges. LA RAISON AVANT LA PASSION is a whirlwind view of Canada with an anti-dialectical premise." – Douglas Pringle, ArtsCanada "REASON OVER PASSION, then, is Joyce Wieland's major film so far. With its many eccentricities, it is a glyph of her artistic personality; a lyric vision tempered by an aggressive form and a visionary patriotism mixed with ironic self parody. It is a film to be seen many times." – P. Adams Sitney, Film Culture "This film is about the pain and joy of living in a very large space: in fact, in a continent. It is painful, because such an experience distends the mind, it seems too large for passionate reason to contain. It is joyous, because 'true patriot love,' a reasonable passion, can contain it, after all. But what is remarkable, for me, is that all its urgency is lucidly caught, bound as it were chemically, in the substance of film itself, requiring no exterior argument." – Hollis Frampton