31st Montreal International Festival of new cinema and new media. (Festival Wraps).

10/10-20/02

Claire Valade

The audience numbers were significantly up at this years FCMM, with reportedly close to 100,000 visitors of all sorts taking Ex-Centris, the Cinema du Parc and Cinematheque Quebecoise by storm for 11 straight days. Each section of the festival enjoyed its round of sold--out screenings, more than any year before. Press coverage was extensive, diversified and highly appreciative, as critics generally hailed the overall selection as one of the most impressive in years: a gathering of the best and most thought-provoking titles from the world's most important festivals combined with a number of prestigious tributes--luminaries Michael Snow and Gena Rowlands; British television screenwriter Dennis Potter; French documentary filmmaker Nicolas Philibert; Canadian video artist Nelson Henricks; and Polish animator Jerzy Kucia--and North American premieres.

Above all, friends of the FCMM, old and new, answered the call without fail and sent their striking and unusual works. English-Canadians and Quebecers intrigued many with their unique cinematic and artistic visions such as Guy Maddin's Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary, Manon Labrecque's Silences nomades, Robert Morin's controversial Le Neg', Peter Mettler's Gambling, Gods and LSD, which was awarded the Best Documentary Prize, and Carlos Ferrand's Casa Loma, which received a special mention from the documentary jury. French legends Raymond Depardon with Un Homme sans l'occident, Agnes Varda with Deux aus apres, and Chris Marker with Le Souvenir d'un avenir (co-directed with Yannick Bellon) shared screens with the likes of younger talents such as Loic Connanski (Empire II: Le Retour), Pierre Carles (Enfin pris?) and Delphine Gleize (Carnages).

Aki Kaurismaki's The Man without a Past opened the festival and Elia Suleiman's Divine Intervention, which received the Special Jury Prize, seduced the public while regulars like Alexandre Sokurov (The Russian Ark), Robert Cahen and Rob Rombout (Canton la Chinoise), Larry Clark and Ed Lachman (Ken Park), Jia Zhang-Ke (Unknown Pleasures), Abbas Kiarostami (Ten), Werner Schroeter (Deux), Todd Haynes (far from Heaven), Pedro Almodovar (Hable con ella) and contemporary art-house darling Eija-Liisa Ahtila (Love Is a Treasure) displayed their strengths with a renewed intensity. And let's not forget Abderrahmane Sissako, the Mauritanian filmmaker who had delighted audiences a few years back with his charming La Vie sur terre, who went on to win this year's Louve d'Or or Golden She-Wolf, the festival's most prestigious prize, with his remarkable En attendant le bonheur. Many made the trip to meet with Montreal audiences, including Atom Egoyan, Larry Clark and Elia Suleiman, as well as notabale jury members, Stanley K ubrick's producer Jan Harlan, Kandahar star Nelofer Pazira and French digital filmmaker extraordinaire, Alain Escalle.

Festival landmarks and highlights? Obviously, judging only from the works, artists and filmmakers already mentioned, the festival had many. It started red hot, with its symbolic black she-wolf howling on crimson posters and T-shirts everywhere, and ended in scintillating white, under the very first snowfall of the season. Passion versus reflection; blood and turmoil versus water and innocence in all their incarnations; fiery red versus luminous white: without a doubt, these were this year's FCMM's true colours and the embodiment of the event's two poles of attraction. Many selected works referred to these thematic images, while some even made them integral parts of their stories and narratives, from Balthasar Kormakur's promising The Sea and Quebec first-time feature filmmaker Kim Nguyen's uneven but interesting Le Marais, to Philippe Grandrieux's haunting La Vie nouvelle and Atom Egoyan's troubling Ararat; from Alanis Obomsawin's essential Is the Crown at War with Us? And the provocative collective work 11'0 9'01, to Japanese documentarian Seiichi Motohashi's beautiful Alexei and the Spring (winner of the Critic's Prize for Best Documentary) and Dennis Potter's still more relevant than ever Blue Remembered Hills; from the impressive art directors Julien Fonfrede and Karim Hussain, to the exquisite simplicity of Nicolas Philibert's Etre et avoir and the gripping political comment of Stephane Elmadjian's short Je m'appelle, which got a special mention from the short film jury.

Long-time festival organizer and senior programmer Claude Chamberlan realized one of his greatest dreams by bringing Gena Rowlands to Montreal for a four-day whirlwind tour. The surprisingly accessible American independent film legend spoke to a room full of hyperattentive fans in Ex-Centris's aptly named Cassavetes Theatre. Contemporary art legend Michael Snow was given a major tribute by the festival and the Daniel Langlois Foundation. He was seen enjoying encounters with audiences at the retrospective screenings of his films and the launch of the new DVD devoted to his entire body of work. And last, but not least, the audience roared with laughter at the staggering social comment of festival favourite Michael Moore's in-your-face but indispensable documentary Bowling for Columbine, winner of the Audience Award.