Montreal World Film Festival: lots of buzz.

The "world" has come for the past 21 years to the Montreal World Film Festival, held in conjunction with the International Film, Television and Video Market (August 22-September 2). The Montreal audience makes it one of the best-attended film festivals in North America. It offers the chance to view 413 films from 50 countries.

"The World Film Festival has given itself the mission of supporting cinema of quality and new talent," said Serge Losique, founding president of the festival. "In the beginning of our third decade, we hope to continue our objective by being open and generous to all cinema."

Since Montreal attracts an international crowd, the International Film, TV and Video Market has always been an integral part of the event. The market has evolved in the past two years into a high-tech meeting place of buyers and sellers complete with a video screening room and a cybercafe.

"We were one of the first who saw the future of markets to use more technology rather than traditional stalls to sell," said Market Director Gilles Beriault. "There are more than 850 industry participants, and more than 30 were contacted in advance to make appointments on our popular Web site."

Business started on the first day of the market with the Toei Company's sale of their new film Lost Paradise (directed by Yoshimitsu Morita) to Alliance for an undisclosed "large amount of money." And so the market was off and running.

"A good cross-section of buyers from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and Latin America have helped the market come around, [what] with new channels and satellite relying on TV sales and films," said Beriault. "The new Canadian specialty channels are just starting new productions, so this has not yet made a big impact, but the regulation of keeping Canadian content for primetime TV has kept Canadian programming alive."

Montreal Film Festival and TV Commission representative Andre Lafond said that this crop of 54 feature films and made-for-TV movies shot in Montreal represented a 15 percent increase over 1995. Lafond said that a total of $293 million was spent last year to shoot films, TV shows and commercials. Lafond anticipates that more than $380 million will be spent on production in Montreal in 1997.

"I've been coming to Montreal for the past 15 years. It is my favorite festival to see films for HBO and Cinemax," said Jim Byerley, director of Film Evaluation at HBO."I resent a festival were you can't view films, but here you can really see films," he explained.

The market included two seminars, "The Independent Producer," which dealt with the future of independent producers in the global marketplace and was chaired by Michel Zgarka of ZCA Communications, and "Co-Productions," which delved into TV and film co-productions.

The seminar "Direction Asia: A Rapidly Expanding Market" was organized by the Center of Studies of the Media; it focused on the audiovisual industry in Asia and on Asian partnerships. Participants included Tony Watts, head of Star TV Movies in Hong Kong; Simon Chang, president of Taiwan Video; Pierre-Paul Brassard, president of Canada Live News; and Antony Kent, international sales manager of the National Film Board of Canada, which showcased 15 productions (including three new co-productions) at the festival.

"The Center of Media Studies is organizing international seminars to bring more skills to Canadian producers," said the Center's communications representative, Christine Ducas. "Today the trend is to expand and target the Asian market. For example, Canada Live News sells its CTV news programs to Asian broadcasters, dubbing their news in Mandarin for China. Taiwan Video and the National Board of Canada have developed links."

The festival kicked off with the French film An Air So Pure, directed by Yves Angelo. Then Montreal's mayor threw a rousing reception at a chateau on top of the mountain. Looking out over the sparkling lights, actress and jury member Jacqueline Bisset remarked, "I never knew Montreal was so beautiful and delightful."

Many of the films in the competition were diligently hand-selected by Daniele Cauchard, vp of the festival. All were subtitled, 37 of them with Softitler's pioneering titles system, according to Softitler founder Fabrizio Fabiano, who is now working on DVD for Warner Bros. and on simultaneous translations for RAI TV news.

Films that accumulated some buzz at the festival included sweeping Chinese epic The Opium War, directed by Xie Jin and commissioned for the Hong Kong handover; Czech film An Ambiguous Report About The End of The World, directed by Juraj Jakubisko; Dutch film The Dress, directed by Alex van Warmerdam; American independent film Mr. Vincent, directed by Robert Celestino; rousing comedy The Scottish Tale, directed by Mack Polhemus; and She's So Lovely, directed by Nick Cassavetes.