Le Festival du Nouveau Cinema (10/14-24/04).

The programmers and organizers of Montreal's Festival du Nouveau Cinema perform this year, given the timing of their event. The festival kicked off at almost the same moment that Telefilm and SODEC were attempting to decide who would win the Montreal festival sweepstakes. FCMM was one of four groups which have applied for the money that was previously earmarked for the Montreal World

However, FCMM delivered on what has become an increasingly tricky high wire act. On the one hand, the festival has tried to present exciting feature films that have gained buzz after the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF)--this year, it included Todd Solondz's pleasingly strange Palindromes, Niels Mueller's The Assassination of Richard Nixon, Jonathan Caouette's Tarnation, Catherine Breillat's Anatomy of Hell, Mike Leigh's Vera Drake, Olivier Assayas's Clean and Almodovar's Bad Education among others--and at the same time, the festival has had to work hard to avoid the impression that it's merely TIFF redux. FCMM does make an effort to highlight short works by more experimental filmmakers, maintaining a degree of focus on film artists like Montreal-based Nelson Henricks, careful not to leave the impression that these filmmakers are pushed to the back of the bus. Simply put, like the Toronto event, FCMM is expected to be all things to all people.

The strength of this festival is that it manages to be a number of different things while not seeming to suffer from any kind of identity crisis. If there was a crisis for a filmgoer, it would probably be the sense that they were losing one's mind; there were a lot of crazy movies in 2004. I, myself, felt certain lapse in sanity, but can be forgiven, seeing that I sat through a series of big-screen meditations on sanity and identity. There was Palindromes, in which Solondz creates a sequence of sublime absurdity involving a crew of disabled children singing Christian--themed ditties, 'N Synch style. Then there was Anatomy of Hell, which plays like a parody of a Catherine Breillat film, in which an Italian porn star lodges a garden rake up the behind of its leading lady. This was followed by The Assassination of Richard Nixon, in which Sean Penn munches on ample scenery as a down-on-his-luck American everyman loser. Taken with Tarnation, in which the audience is treated to a hallucinogenic reflection on a seriously troubled childhood and mother/son relationship, and you've got one messed-up movie marathon.

FCMM gains by giving more with less. Unlike the much-maligned MWFF, which favours volume by letting in what seems like anything and everything from everywhere and anywhere, FCMM attendees were treated to such a strong lineup that they could be assured of seeing something worthwhile, and what some films lacked in formal experimentation, they tended to make up for in content. Craig B. Highberger's feature documentary on one of Andy Warhol's drag entourage, Superstar in a Housedress: The Life and Legend of Jackie Curtis, offered up titillating anecdotes about a funny and vital figure in Manhattan's cultural underworld.

The festival's local card was Francis Leclerc's Memoires affectives (Looking for Alexander), another entry in the recent spate of Quebec existential let's-get-obsessed-about-mortality movies (a Denis Villeneuve specialty). This one starred the ubiquitous Roy Dupuis. But the local star of the festival was undoubtedly Ryan Larkin, the infamous NFB animator who, after making a number of exhilarating shorts in the 1960s and early 1970s (including the Oscar-nominated Walking), faded into a life of severe substance abuse, homelessness and panhandling on Montreal streets. A tribute was given to Larkin with a screening of his early films, followed by two NFB movies, Chris Landreth's 14-minute documentary/animation hybrid Ryan (a short the NFB is pushing for Oscar consideration) and Laurence Green's Alter Egos, a fantastic documentary about Larkin and the making of Ryan. Green manages to unearth some fascinating Canadian film history here, including the fact that part of Larkin's trouble was dealing with his own homosexuality. It's a thoroughly engaging documentary, one that is as much about the struggles documentary filmmakers face as it is about Larkin himself. Larkin was present at the affair and occasionally heckled the screen when he saw or heard something he didn't like.

The intimacy of the evening made for an incredible festival experience. After the screenings, the audience was invited to meet with Larkin and the filmmakers in the courtyard of the Ex-Centris cinema complex. There, the filmmakers mingled with the public and a number of noted members of Montreal's film community, from SODEC's Harry Gulkin to Daniel Cross (director of S.P.L T.) to NFB veterans Barbara Doran and animator George Ungar. The sense of community was tremendously powerful, as was the sense that the public was having a unique opportunity to connect with cinema in a way that serves as a reminder of what these festivals really should be about. As FCMM grows (and it will grow considerably if Telefilm and SODEC choose it as the new recipient of government funding), a key challenge will be for organizers to maintain this spirit of intimacy and community, something that has sadly been almost completely lost at larger events like TIFF.