As the organizers of the first edition of the New Montreal FilmFest lift the curtain on their brand-new event this week, they know they are executing a high-wire act of Cirque du Soleil proportions.
On the one hand, they are launching the festival at that point in the calendar year when no one in the country really wants to hear about yet another festival. Montreal's World Film Festival (WFF) had its final screening just two weeks ago, while the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) concluded on Saturday.
And the New Montreal FilmFest (NMFF) organizers know that all eyes are on them during their initial run. Created by L'Équipe Spectra, the group behind such venerable Montreal institutions as the International Jazz Festival and FrancoFolies, NMFF is seen as the replacement for Montreal's other large-scale film festival, the World, which finished its run on Sept. 5 (a feat many felt it would never be able to accomplish).
One of the principal challenges for the festival will be to arrive on a positive note. After all, this is an event born out of acrimony. After more than a decade of loud grumbling from figures in the Quebec film industry, including Roger Frappier, arguably the province's most influential producer, Telefilm Canada and the Société de développement des entreprises culturelles du Québec (SODEC) decided to yank their annual $1-million subsidy to the WFF last year. Critics had long charged that the WFF was in decline from its glory years in the eighties, while WFF president Serge Losique was deaf to constructive criticism. After rescinding the funding, Telefilm and SODEC then solicited bids from other organizations for another large-scale film-festival event. L'Équipe Spectra was the winner.
The NMFF organizers are aware that they face an uphill battle. They need to appeal to public taste and ensure robust attendance at their screenings; they need to please the city's film critics, who soured on the WFF and Losique and have already had harsh words for the NMFF; and they must also please the industry, which desperately wants a film festival it can do business with. NMFF will also be under the scrutiny of the International Federation of Film Producers Associations (FIAPF) to decide if the event will earn its crucial blessing as an A-list competitive film festival.
While onlookers will have to wait and see what the public's response to NMFF is, the industry's distributors have already voted with their product. The country's main distributors, including Alliance Atlantis and Seville Pictures, have a number of films screening at the NMFF, but had none at the WFF. While distributors are reluctant to go on the record, one bluntly stated that "things have to be concluded on this front. Having so many film festivals and such a lack of clarity is not a good thing. It is ridiculous in Quebec that we can't get the festival situation together."
Moritz de Hadeln, the head of programming for NMFF, has already acknowledged that the current situation facing Montreal's film festivals is "unhealthy." But he also argues that the lineup for the NMFF is "extremely good" and that "the situation will be resolved within a year or so." The NMFF, he insisted, "has a future."
As for its programming, the NMFF has mustered some intriguing entries, even if NMFF programmers are sensitive about being perceived as a TIFF lite (by offering too many titles that already screened at the Toronto festival), but given that TIFF wrapped 24 hours before NMFF began, some overlap was bound to occur. Indeed, David Cronenberg's A History of Violence, Atom Egoyan's Where the Truth Lies and Robin Aubert's Saints-Martyrs-des-Damnés, all of which screened at TIFF, will also screen at NMFF. Films competing for NMFF's Iris of Montreal Awards include the latest from German auteur Doris Dorrie ( Men), The Fisherman and his Wife: Why Women Never Get Enough, French filmmaker Cédric Kahn's The Plane and Argentine director Eduardo Raspo's Tattooed.
In keeping with its mandate to work closely with the local industry, NMFF includes tributes to two Quebec luminaries. An Iris Hommage Award will go to Michel Brault ( Les ordres), and the late Robin Spry will be feted with a retrospective.
Toronto-based filmmaker Albert Nerenberg ( Climate for Murder, Stupidity) will premiere his latest gonzo documentary, Escape to Canada, at the NMFF. The film examines the results of Canada's relaxing of its marijuana laws at the same time that same-sex marriage became legal. Those two legal developments and Canada's abstention from the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq made the country something of a haven for progressive Americans. In a series of interviews, Nerenberg examines the media hype surrounding Canada's new image.
"Something had to be done," said Nerenberg, a Montreal native. "I think there was a fair bit of confusion about the festival situation here. I don't think the World Film Festival necessarily reflected what was going on cinematically in the international scene. The new festival represents a real chance for change."
NMFF continues in Montreal to Sept. 25. For details, see .