Yvan Patry

Who is Yvan Patry?

Yvan Patry was a Québécois documentary filmmaker.

Yvan was born in Iroquois Falls, Ontario.

During the 1970s he worked as a professor at Montmorency College in Laval, Quebec, where he produced several educational films.

Yvan's short film Octobre 68 was included in the SRC's public television series "Les temps changent". The NFB produced his first feature Ainsi soient-ils - a fiction film centered on Quebec youth and the new cultural mentality that came about after 1968. In 1974 Yvan Patry teamed with Bernard Lalond, Roger Frappier, Guy Bergeron, and André Gagnon to direct On a raison de se révolter, a film on workers’ conflicts that was intended to politicize Quebec workers.

Throughout the 1980s Yvan made several trips to Nicaragua. He co-directed Nicaragua/Honduras: Entre deux guerres, followed by Nicaragua: La guerre sale; two significant documentaries on the war fought by the Contras against the population of Nicaragua. Yvan Patry and Daniel Lacourse continued to film together in regions of conflict through the 1980s and 1990s until Yvan's death in 1999. Their most notable works include The Rwandan Series, a 5-part in-depth look at the central African country. Hand of God, Hand of the Devil; Sitting on a Volcano; and Chronicle of a Genocide Foretold recount the horrifying crimes that took place before, during, and after the Rwandan Genocide.