The 21st annual Les Rendez-vous du Cinema Quebecois.

Les Rendez-vous du cinema quebecois has certainly taken its thrashings over the years. Celebrating its 21st year, what some see as a vital showcasing of the previous 12 months' film and video from Quebec, others disparage as largely redundant. The festival has had its politically charged moments; several years ago, festival organizers raised some eyebrows when they allowed English-language films to be screened even when they lacked French subtitles (previously a strict no-no). Last year, Les Rendez-vous faced charges (from Montreal filmmaker Julian Samuel) that the festival excluded people of colour. One filmmaker (Mary Ellen Davis)) whose film had been accepted, actually withdrew her documentary in protest.

Whatever its problems may be, I would argue this festival serves as a vital 11 days of reckoning, a chance for the press, film community and entire public to catch up on what they missed the previous year. After all, although Quebec generally fares a bit better than English Canada, we still do suffer from the syndrome of producing films that just don't get seen by the locals. Getting screen time on our own screens doesn't appear to be getting any easier as the years roll by, in Quebec or the rest of Canada.

Films about race and political identity were in full view at this year's Les Rendez-vous. Of particular interest was Brehda Keesal's feature debut, Jack & Ella, in which the relationship between. a black man and a Jewish woman is explored. The film touches further on social issues such as alcoholism. Keesal manages to evoke sincere emotion with her work, while never succumbing to the maudlin. She is a young Montreal filmmaker to watch. The documentary Undying Love, which features some incredible interviews with Holocaust survivors who met up in Hitler's death camps, is pretty astonishing. The stories are well told, touching and rife with & irony. As some of the interview subjects put it: "Hitler was our matchmaker." This is documentary filmmaking that's as surreal as it gets.

Cool biographies were also plentiful here. Claude Futra, portrait sur film, Paule Baillargeon's loving ode to her late friend, was screened. Luc Picard won a richly deserved Genie for his work in Mario Azzopardi's The Savage Messiah, in which he plays the nasty and notorious Roch Theriault, the cult leader who was imprisoned after a number of his wives mysteriously disappeared. The film itself is perhaps a wee bit clumsy; but that doesn't take away from Picard's artful performance.

Les Rendez-vous offered a series of awards to participants, and during its run, Quebec's own film awards ceremony, Les Prix Jutra, took place (on February 23). Les Rendez-vous winners this year included Jerome Labrecque for his sublime Le Boulevard Saint-Laurent, opera mamerique surrealiste en trois actes, which took the Prix a la creation artistique du conseil des arts et des lettres du quebec. The Prix Radio-Canada du meilleur premier scenario de long metrage de fiction mis a l'ecran went to Ricardo Trogi, Jean-Philippe Pearson and Patrice Robitaille for their hit feature Quebec-Montreal, directed by Trogi, also a big winner at Les Prix Jutra.

Here are some of my additional unofficial honours; personal choices for various Quebec film and video types, in no particular order: Most Worthy Resutrection of an Unsung Hero: Merrily Weisbord and Tanya Ballantine Tree deserve serious kudos for their Ted Allan: Minstrel Boy of the 20th Century, an in-depth look at the superb left-wing novelist and screenwriter Allan. They even got the divine actress Gena Rowlands to chime in. Best Illumination of Local Dire Situation Made Even Worse By Unthinking Authorities: Squat!, Eve Lamont's take on the struggle for local homeless people to find shelter in a decreasingly livable Montreal. Most Endearing Look at Vintage Montreal: Les Rossy, Jennifer Alleyn's documentary profile of the family behind the famous Quebec chain of shops. Strangest but Truest Tall Family Tales: Ole Gjerstand's NFB documentary My Doukbobor Cousins, a film about the cultural experiences of the Doukhobors that demands to be seen. Gutsiest Political Doc: Maxime, McDuff et McDo, in which the inimita ble Magnus Isacsson tackles the Golden Arches, the youth who work beneath them and their struggle to unionize. Most Trailblazing Animation that Dermands to Be Seen Again (and Again): Flux, the sublime NFB-pro-duced seven-minute-and-40-second ode to the life cycle, brought to us by Chris Hinton, the animation genius behind such oddities as Blackfly and Watching TV.

Mattbew Hays is am associate editor for Montreal's Hour Magazine and a regular contributor to The Globe and Mail and Take One.