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Events and Releases



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Maldoror Screening (2000)
September 28, 2007 to October 08, 2007


Rare screening of the 16mm print of Maldoror (2000), a unique collaborative epic super 8 collage made by 15 individual directors working with one of either two underground film collectives, Filmgruppe Chaos (Germany) or Exploding Cinema (London). Another in a long line of important esoteric programming ventures by Montreal’s film co-op, Cinema Abattoir.

+ Click here to see the website for more information.

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Hong Sang-soo Retrospective
September 05, 2007 to September 14, 2007


A retrospective of one of Korea’s most high profile arthouse directors, Hong Sang-soo. Director Sang-soo made his mark as a rigorous formalist with such films as The Day the Pig Fell Into the Well (1996) and The Power of Kangwon Province ?? (1998). The program, which is curated by Mi-jeong Lee at Cinematheque Quebecoise, will feature all seven of his feature films, including hismost recent from 2006, ??The Woman on the Beach.

+ Click here to see the website for more information.

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Hong Sang-soo Retrospective
September 05, 2007 to September 14, 2007


A retrospective of one of Korea’s most high profile ar thouse directors, Hong Sang-soo. Director Sang-soo made his mark as a rigorous formalist with such films as The Day the Pig Fell Into the Well (1996) and The Power of Kangwon Province (1998). The program, which is curated by Mi-Jeong Lee at Cinematheque Quebecoise, will feature all seven of his feature films, including his most recent from 2006, Woman on the Beach.

+ Click here to see the website for more information.

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Sex and Violence 2nd Edition
July 31, 2007 to August 31, 2007


Regular Offscreen contributor Roberto Curti has released his fourth book, Stanley Kubrick: Rapina a mano armata, a close formal-textual analysis of Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing. Although the book is smallish at 155 pages and restricts itself to the one film, it is ambitious in breadth, contextualising the film within film noir (both classic film noir made before the film later neo-noir) and Kubrick’s other works (and critical history). In the same year, 2007, Curti has seen the release of the second edtion his co-authored (with Tommaso La Selva) book Sex and Violence, which was reviewed here in Offscreen. The second edition is not simply a touch-up but a major revision, with approximately 130 extra pages (620 up from 490). Chapter 7 on extreme Asian cinema and the concluding chapter 10 have been rewritten from scratch and considerably lengthened. The final chapter has been completely updated to incorporate the cycle of recent ‘survivalist’ and ‘hardcore’ (or ‘hardgore’) horror (Fred Vogel’s August Underground trilogy, Hostel, Wolf Creek, etc.). Sections have been added on Greek cinema, Brazilian sexploitation (the pornochanchadas), and Ken Russell. An indispensable book has become even more so.

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+ Click here to see the website for more information.

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The Passing of Antonioni and Bergman: Cinema Loses Two Giants
July 30, 2007 to August 30, 2007


By some strange, cruel fate, two cinema giants were taken from us on the same day, July 30, 2007, at the respective ripe ages of 89 and 94, Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni. They were contemporaries whose careers followed each other closely, with their first and last films coming only a few years apart (1943/2004 for Antonioni and 1946/2003 for Bergman). The modern cinema associated with the influx of post-World War 2 New Wave cinema could not be thinkable without these two directors, whose respective visions of a humanity at odds with this modernity shaped the language of cinema forever. Antonioni’s rupture from classical narrative was so abrupt that his film L’Avventura was hissed at and jeered by a hostile Cannes audience when it showed in 1960. Such was the power of Antonioni’s daring use of formal language to express characters at odds with their physical (and emotional) surroundings. While Bergman concerned himself with the world of the sacred —religion, faith, the existence of God— Antonioni was preoccupied with the growth of the rational and scientific world and its relationship to the growth of the human moral world. As one Italian critic aptly put it, Antonioni was the only secular Italian director. And while Bergman may have begun at a profane place, he slowly worked his way through his Lutheran Protestant upbringing toward a position of bleakness and hopelessness not that far removed from Antonioni’s. As one person wrote in their eulogy for Bergman and Antonioni, in their own different ways they were both ‘searchers’ of the proverbial ‘mysteries of existence’. Looking back at their careers one can see parallels: both made their international marks with ‘trilogies’ at approximately the same time. Bergman with his ‘faith trilogy’ –Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light (1962) and The Silence (1963)– and Antonioni with his ‘alienation’ (or ‘sick eros’) trilogy –L’Avventura (1960), La Notte (1961), and L’Eclisse (1962). Both directors also had a preference for female protagonists, with some critics going as far as referring to these actresses as important ‘muses’ (Monica Vitti for Antonioni and several for Bergman, including Liv Ullman, Bibi Andersson, Ingrid Thullin). Because of this, their films were strongly championed by the first wave of feminists in the late sixties/early seventies (although they also had their enemies among feminists, especially Bergman). Offscreen is truly saddened by this tremendous loss of human, artistic expression. When the dust settles we will plan a proper tribute to these important filmmakers.

+ Click here to see the website for more information.

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Tomoya Sato on DVD
July 27, 2007 to August 28, 2007


This extremely independent DVD label has put out three interesting medium length films by Japanese director Tomoya Sato, L’Ilya (16mm, 2000, 39 min.), Shita/A Deadly Silence (HD, 2004, 38 min.), and Marehito (16mm, 2005, 30 min.). Each film comes attractively packaged in a slim jewel case with tasteful cover art and sold individually. Although the films are less than feature length each DVD is accompanied by a nice selection of special features including other short films, interviews, trailers, and poster art. L’Ilya was reviewed as part of the Fantasia Small Gauge Trauma DVD. Crippled Brothers also has a fourth film in its catalogue, the unique stop motion animation fantasy/science-fiction film Mecanix, which is a cross between silent cinema fantasy (Georges Méliès and Lang’s Metropolis come to mind) and modern Kafkaesque surrealism (the claustrophobic worlds of Eraserhead, the Quay Brothers, and Jan Svankmajer are invoked).

+ Click here to see the website for more information.

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Fantasia International Film Festival
July 05, 2007 to July 23, 2007


The irrepressible Fantasia International Film Festival returns for nearly three weeks (July 5-23, 2007) of varied genre programming, from action, horror, science fiction to fantasy, from Asia to Europe to North American. Highlights include a retrospective of classic Russian Science Fiction which includes a 35mm screening of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker.

+ Click here to see the website for more information.

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Rudolf Arnheim
June 14, 2007 to July 31, 2007


Psychologist and art critic Rudolf Arnheim passed away on June 14 at the age of 102. Arnheim wrote eloquently about the aesthetics of visual arts from the standpoint of perception and cognition. His contribution to film theory and aesthetics included the seminal Film as Art, first written in German in 1932 and translated to English in 1933. Arnheim’s book was the first important contribution to film theory since Hugo Munsterberg’s The Photoplay: A Psychological Study in 1912 and stands as a pillar of the formalist approach to film theory (along with the writings of Munsterberg, Béla Balázs, and the Russian theorists Kuleshov, Eisenstein, Pudovkin, and Vertov). For an interesting account go to David Bordwell’s blog and read his tribute to Arnheim.

+ Click here to see the website for more information.

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Cannibal
June 13, 2007 to July 13, 2007


Cannibal is a 15 minute short film by the Nova Scotian filmmaker Rod Marquart which was made on April 25, 2007 and is presently being submitted to festivals. Marquart, who filled many of the other creative and technical roles in the film, does not hide the fact that it was shot in one day, with zero budget using a MiniDV camera. The film does not try to escape from these limitations, but attempts to explore other creative dimensions not necessarily affected, such as mood and style; and in this regard the film is an interesting little exercise in sustained visual dementia. There are only two story actions that occur in the 15 minute running time, both of them extremely violent: a derelict man living in the woods kills, dismembers, cooks, then eats an infant; later he repeatedly hacks away with a machete at the body of a man hog-tied to a tree. However, it is not these two acts –the first graphic, the second kept off-screen– that demands our attention, but the mood of the remaining 10 or so minutes of screen time. There is no dialogue and most of the action happens at a non-real speed, either too slow or too fast for normal human locomotion. The color scheme is either garishly saturated colors that give the natural scenery a strange painterly quality, or monochrome/black and white. There is even a few seconds of pure abstraction which gives the image the look of an abstract expressionist painting.

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At times, the texture reminded me of Super 8mm films from the seventies with the color stock starting to go bad. There are moments when the digital color manipulation goes too far, especially with the solarization effects, but for the most part the abstract colors, unreal shooting speeds, and intensely brooding experimental music (by “Drums & Machines”) combine to form a hyper-stylized aesthetization that offsets the realist impact of the atrocities (especially the first killing). The film opens with selected freeze frame images which foreshadow the second killing (we see a brief black & white image of the second victim tied to a tree). The opening intertitle informs us that a man and his infant daughter have gone missing in the woods of Goodwill Nova Scotia, and that locals believe they were abducted by a rarely seen mountain man. A few shots later tension is created when we hear the off-screen sound of a crying baby, as the hand-held camera pans across the picturesque scenery and then cuts to ominous shots of a man’s boots. A cut to an infant wrapped up in a bundle confirms our worse fear. The baby is shot, dismembered with a hacksaw, cooked over an open fire, and eaten. For the next 5 or so minutes we are treated to a symphony of wailing sounds, shots of the man moving through the woods, a helicopter flying above (will he be found?), point of view shots peering through the woods, until the killer arrives at his second, tree bound victim. What makes this sequence of trivial action effective is that each shot has a different texture (shifting in light, color, focus, speed, sound, etc.). Unfortunately, this sequence is far more powerful than the murder of the man, which suffers from poor choreography (neither the killer’s machete thrusts nor the editing are convincing). However, it improves when it moves away into abstraction. At times the film recalls Night of the Living Dead (with the black & white freeze frames), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the cannibalism, backwoods horror, slow zoom-ins to flesh) and the short works of Jim Van Bebber (Roadkill and My Sweet Satan), which is not bad for a film made on such minimal means. It will be interesting to see what Rod Marquart can achieve with some time and money.

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+ Click here to see the website for more information.

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First Peoples' Festival
June 10, 2007 to June 21, 2007


An impressive collection of films and videos by people of first nations, including films from Canada, the United States, Brazil, the Philippines, Chile, Mexico, Bolivia, and Ecuador.

+ Click here to see the website for more information.

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Eurofest Film Festival
May 25, 2007 to June 02, 2007


The Eurofest Film Festival, in partnership with Cinema du Parc, presents from May 25th to June 2nd 2007 recently awarded films from Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Ukraine as well as Canadian documentaries and shorts by young directors of Eastern and Central European origin.

The program includes fiction films, short films, animation, documentaries and experimental films, with English or French subtitles, featuring, among others, four experimental documentaries by Peter Forgacs (Hungary), three by Jan Sikl (Czech Republic), and films by
Eldora Traykova, Yuli Stoyanov and Andrey Paounov (Bulgaria).

Dr. Christina Stojanova, Department of Media Production and Studies, University of Regina, is the Guest Curator of the Bulgarian, Hungarian and the Czech Film Programs.

The screenings will take place at Cinema du Parc, 3575 av. du Parc, from Friday, May 25th to Saturday, June 2nd; ticket price: $7 . Tickets will be on sale starting May 11th 2007 at Cinema du Parc. Free parking for 3 hours. Please ask for your parking stub at the box-office.

+ Click here to see the website for more information.

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Curtis Harrington: 1930-2007
May 08, 2007 to May 31, 2007


Film critic, filmmaker, actor, and writer Curtis Harrington passed away in his Hollywood home on May 6, 2007 at the age of 80. Harrington had a varied career which saw him leave his mark in many areas of film history. Harrington began as a film critic, writing several essays on the horror film, most notably “Ghoulies and Ghosties” in Focus on the Horror Film. Harrington then befriended filmmakers Kenneth Anger and Gregory Markopoulos to form the central impetus to the second wave of American experimental cinema in the 1940s (initiated by friends and colleagues Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid). Like Anger, Harrington loved Hollywood lore and they incorporated cinema history into their own personal, ‘mytho-poetic’ (term coined by P.A. Sitney) dreamscapes. Harrington worked on several Anger films (Puce Moment, 1949, Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, 1954) and made several of his own experimental shorts, including Fragment of Seeking, 1946 and On the Edge, 1949. Harrington then left the underground for the mainstream, beginning with a debut film which carried over some of the surreal and poetic quality of his experimental work, Night Tide, 1962, starring a young Dennis Hopper as a sailor who falls in love with a woman who thinks she is a mermaid. Harrington is probably best remembered for his contribution to the minor sub-genre of gothic horror popular in the 1970s, which included How Awful About Allan, 1970, Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?, 1971, and What’s the Matter With Helen, 1971. Harrington then moved into television, directing episodes of Baretta, Wonder Woman, Dynasty, and Charlie’s Angels. He made a return to feature films in 2002 with his Edgar Allen Poe adaptation, Usher, which he wrote, directed and starred in as the titular character, Roderick Usher.

+ Click here to see the website for more information.

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Befilm: The Underground Film festival
May 01, 2007 to May 05, 2007


“Now in its fourth year and on its way to becoming one of the largest short film festivals on the East Coast, BEFILM has quickly garnered the reputation of showcasing the world’s finest live action (narrative, documentary, experimental) and animated shorts. Focusing on the belief that “shorter is better”, BEFILM provides a cultural and entertaining forum that recognizes and honors independent, emerging, and established filmmakers. Selected from over 500 submissions from around the world, the competition films are distinguished by genre, not country, and a panel of judges from the entertainment industry reviews the films and selects the winners. First-time and well-established filmmakers screen side by side in an environment designed to support creativity.”

+ Click here to see the website for more information.

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Carte gris a Michael Snow: Carl Brown: Visual Alchemy / Ocular Alkahest
April 19, 2007 to June 02, 2007


An exhibition of photographs and films selected by Michael Snow on the work of Carl Brown, an artist he has collaborated with on many occasions. Photographs and installation films are on exhibit at the Dazibao Gallery and a series of film screenings at the Goethe Institute:

Wednesday April 25 at 7:30 pm

Triage
Carl Brown and Michael Snow, 2004, 30 min

To Lavoisier, Who Died in the Reign of Terror
Michael Snow, 1991, 53 min

Urban Fire
Carl Brown, 1982, 15 min

Wednesday May 2 at 7:30 pm

Blue Monet
Carl Brown, 2006, 60 min [in the presence of Carl Brown]

See You Later / Au revoir
Michael Snow, 1990, 18 min

Wednesday May 9 at 7:30 pm

Brownsnow
Carl Brown, 1994, 134 min

The Living Room
Michael Snow, 2000, 21 min

+ Click here to see the website for more information.

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Bob Clark
April 05, 2007 to April 30, 2007


A sad day for the film industry with news of the tragic (because utterly avoidable) death of American-born director Bob Clark, best known (at least in Canada) for his valuable contributions to genre cinema at a time when such cinema was rare in Canada. Clark, along with his 22 year old son, were killed in a head-on car collision with a drunken driver. We’ve all done dumb things in our life, but driving a vehicle while inebriated is a needless crime which must be treated much more seriously than it is so tragedies such as this will become rare (they are not). Clark made a key contribution to the horror genre, with his loveable comic horror debut Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things, and then three successive minor masterpieces, Deranged, Deathdream and Black Christmas. Click here to read my discussion of Clark’s pioneering contribution to the stalker film in the essay “Documenting the Horror Genre.” Clark also made one of the best films on the Jack the Ripper myth/conspiracy, Murder by Decree, and one of the best holiday films, A Christmas Story.

+ Click here to see the website for more information.

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Cinéma Abattoir
March 22, 2007 to March 24, 2007


March 23rd at Midnight
1571 Sanguinet St.

Program

Liar Anne Hanavan, US, 2006, 3 minutes

La Femme Phallique Frédérique Marleau et Serge de Cotret, Québec, 2007, 7 minutes

God’s Little Girl Mitch Davis, Québec, 2006, 16 minutes

Merzbow Beyond Snuff Aryan Kaganof, Japon / Afrique, 1997-2005, 22 minutes

Pandrogeny manifesto Dionysos Andronis et Aldo Lee, Grèce / France, 2005, 11 minute

Theocordis Serge de Cotret, Québec, 2007, 10 minutes

Western Sunburn Karl Lemieux, Québec, 2007, 10 minutes

“Nails in the eyes. And also an opposition to the film festivals circuit as an alternative space of diffusion: Cinéma Abattoir is a film society that deals with experimentation and documentation of iconoclastic film work. The subject here is the exploration and transgression of cinema by the subversion of its aesthetics and ethics” (Programmer, Pierre-Luc Vaillancourt)

+ Click here to see the website for more information.

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Nanni Moretti Retrospective
March 21, 2007 to March 31, 2007


A retrospective of Italian documentarist and fiction filmmaker Nanni Moretti, which includes his latest film The Caiman, a not-too-loosely based satire on the life of Italy’s former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.

+ Click here to see the website for more information.

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Re-politicization of Art From (the East of) Europe: Creativity and Resistance
March 09, 2007 to March 11, 2007


Thursday March 8th at 7:30pm
The Liane and Danny Taran Gallery, Saidye Bronfman Centre

“Re-politicization of Art From (the East of) Europe: Creativity and Resistance”

“For the second event of the Crash Course lecture series, in which we present a major issue, theme or movement in contemporary art, Slovenian artist, philosopher and theoretician Marina Grzinic will outline key ideas and themes being taken up by some of the leading contemporary artists from Eastern Europe. Specifically, Grzinic will investigate the role of practitioners who maintain a form of critically engaged activist art.”

Sunday March 10th at 7:00pm
De Sève Cinema, Concordia University (McConnell Bldg ground floor, 1400 De Maisonneuve Blvd W)

The Liane and Danny Taran Gallery in collaboration with Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, Concordia University presents a selection of video works by Marina Grzinic and Aina Smid.

Dr. Marina Grzinic is a research fellow at the Institute of Philosophy at the ZRC SAZU (Scientific and Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Science and Art) in Ljubljana. As well she teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Grzinic also works as freelance media theorist, art critic and curator, and has been involved with video art since 1982. In collaboration with Aina Smid, Grzinic has produced more than 40 videotapes, and has exhibited media art installations and screenings internationally – such as the Art Center in Seoul, The Kyoto Biennale, The Freud Museum in Vienna, The Moderna Museet in Stockholm, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

+ Click here to see the website for more information.

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Enthusiasm. Artists: Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska
February 08, 2007 to April 01, 2007


“For ten years, British artists Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska have been exploring forms of collaborative cultural production. The projects they have been engaged in research new ways of artistic practice, particularly in relation to cultural institutions that define, promote and distribute art. On this occasion, these collaborators have created an exhibition and archive of films produced by the Polish amateur film movement between the l950s and l980s. In Poland, in the Socialist era, leisure was organized through factory clubs sponsored by the state. In this project developed over three years, the artists explore the unexpectedly creative response of ordinary people to the oppressions of official culture. The exhibition comprises a reconstruction of a film club interior and three cinemas, screening found films divided into three subjects (Love, Labour, Longing), as well as an archive room of found films. This will be the first North American presentation following its appearance at Warsaw’s Centre for Contemporary Art, the Whitechapel Gallery in London and Tapies Foundation in Barcelona.”

+ Click here to see the website for more information.

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Carlo Ponti: 1912-2007
January 17, 2007 to February 20, 2007


Venerable Italian producer of approximately 150 films died at the ripe age of 95 on January 10, 2007. Perhaps being married to Sophia Loren had something to do with his longevity, but Ponti started his career in 1941, producing Piccolo mondo antico and never looked back, producing his final film in 1998 (Liv). Along the way Ponti produced a range of important art films and popular genre (filone in Italian) films. Highlights include Senza pietà (1948, Alberto Lattuada), Il Mulino del Po (1949, Lattuada), several films with Totò, La Strada (1954, Federico Fellini), Il Ferroviere (1956, Pietro Germi), Matrimonio all’italiana (1964, Vittorio De Sica), and such non-Italian films as Heller in Pink Tights (US, 1960, George Cukor, starring his wife Loren), Cléo de 5 à 7 (France, 1961, Agnès Varda), Le Mépris (France, 1963, Jean-Luc Godard), and Michelangelo Antonioni’s American films, Blow-Up (1966), Zabriske Point (1970) and Professione: Reporter (1975).

+ Click here to see the website for more information.

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Hou Hsiao-hsien Retrospective
December 06, 2006 to December 21, 2006


At the end of 1999, the Village Voice conducted its first poll of North American film critics, whom they asked to pick their “bests” of 1999, and also of the decade. Of the 50 plus respondents, 9 chose Taiwan’s Hou Hsiao-hsien as the “Best Director of the Decade.” (Abbas Kiarostami and Krzysztof Kieslowski finished second with 6 votes each.) Remarkably, at that time, none of his films had ever been released in the U.S. or Canada, and, even more remarkably, Hou finished as 2nd Best Director of 1999 for Flowers of Shanghai/ Hai shang hua (1998), the film which placed as the 3rd best film of the decade, even though it had never received a North American theatrical release! In a similar manner, the prestigious French film journal, Cahiers du Cinéma voted Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Goodbye South, Goodbye/ Nanguo zaijan, nanguo (1996) the best film of the 1990s, having previously named Flowers of Shanghai the best film of 1998. At least Hou’s films were being released in France, and, it wasn’t until 2003, that his next feature, Millenium Mambo/ Quanxi manbo (2001) received a limited release in the U.S., after it was voted the #2 “Best Unreleased” film in the 3rd Voice poll at the end of 2001. The pattern continued. Hou’s next film, a tribute to Ozu on his centennial, Café Lumière (Japan, 2003) was voted the “Best Undistributed Film” in the 2004 Voice poll, receiving 26 mentions, and was released the following year. Then, Three Times/ Zui hao de shi guang (2005) a great overview of three stages in his career was voted “Best Undistributed Film” of 2005 (by 34 respondents no less) and was then released in 2006. (Both films were released on time in France and were placed in the Cahiers top ten in 2004 and 2005, respectively).

Unbelievably, Three Times is the very first of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s films to be theatrically released in Quebec, and so, it is with enormous pleasure that we are able to announce that the Cinémathèque Québécoise is mounting a complete retrospective of Hou’s work as a feature-film maker in December. His first two films, Cute Girl/ Jiushi liuliu de ta (1980), and Cheerful Wind/ Feng er ti cai (1981), both filmed in cinemascope and made within the “healthy realism” dictates of the repressive Guomindang government at the time, have never been screened publicly in Quebec, we are sure. Almost as rare is the groundbreaking portmanteau feature, The Sandwich Man (1983) co-directed by Hou, Ren Wang and Zeng Zhuang Xiang, which ushered in the Taiwanese New Wave, the strange Daughter of the Nile/ Niluohe nuer (1987), and the first film in his Taiwan history trilogy, City of Sadness/ Beiqing chengshi (1989). This is essential viewing, as is the 2nd film in the series, The Puppetmaster/Hsimeng jensheng (1993), which, with its puppet shows and on-screen appearances of the octogenarian narrator, brilliantly re-invents narrative film structure. Although many of Hou’s films are available on DVD, including his autobiographical, realist work of the 1980s, from The Boys of Fengkuei/ Fengkuei-lai-te-jen (1983) to Dust in the Wind/ Lianlian fengchen (1986), the “history trilogy” and most films that have followed need to be seen on the big screen to properly appreciate the detail of their intricate compositions. This is certainly the case for Flowers of Shanghai wherein the director tried to recreate the ironic beauty of unbalanced male/female relations of 100 years ago.

Filmography of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s films as a director with screening times in the Salle Claude-Jutra at the:
Cinémathèque Québécoise

1980: Cute Girl (Jiushi liuliu de ta) [Dec 6; 20:45]
1981: Cheerful Wind (Feng er ti ta cai) [Dec 7; 20:30]
1982: The Green, Green Grass of Home (Zai na hepan qingcao qing) [Dec 8; 20:30]
1983: The Sandwich Man (“The Son’s Big Doll,” Erzi de Dawan’ou) [Dec 9; 19:00]
1983: The Boys of Fengkuei (Fengkuei-lai-te jen) [Fr. s.t.’s , Dec 9; 17:00, 14; 16:00]
1984: A Summer at Grandpa’s (Dongdong de jiaqi) [Dec 9; 21:00]
1985: A Time to Live and A Time To Die (Tong nien wang shi) [Fr. s.t.’s, 10; 19:00]
1986: Dust in the Wind (Lianlian fengchen) [Fr. s.t.’s, Dec 10; 17:00, Dec 21; 16:00]
1987: Daughter of the Nile (Niluohe nuer) [Dec 13; 18:30]
1989: City of Sadness (Beiqing chengshi) [Dec 14; 20:30]
1993: The Puppetmaster (Hsimeng jensheng) [Dec 15; 20:30]
1995: Good Men, Good Women (Haonan haonu) [French s.t.’s, Dec 13; 20:30]
1996: Goodbye South, Goodbye (Nanguo zaijan, nanguo) [Fr. s.t.’s, Dec 16; 17:00]
1998: Flowers of Shanghai (Hai shang hua) [Dec 16; 21:00]
2001: Millennium Mambo (ianxi manbo) [Fr. s.t.’s, Dec 6; 18:30, Dec 7; 16:00]
2003: Café Lumière (Japan, Kohi jiku) [Fr. s.t.’s, Dec 16; 19:15]
2005: Three Times (Zui hao de shi guang) [Dec 17; 17:00]

There will also be a screening of Olivier Assaya’s documentary, HHH, portrait de Hou Hsiao-hsien (1996), on December 17 @ 19:30

Peter Rist

+ Click here to see the website for more information.

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A View on the Exotic: Travel in Early Cinema
November 24, 2006 to November 26, 2006


Two sets of early film programmes organized around the theme of travel, tourism and colonialism. The event gets kick started with an academic panel on the subject featuring members of GRAFICS and the universities of Concordia and University of Montreal. The event is co-programmed by GRAFICS (a research group studying the history of early/silent cinema) and Hors Champ (online sister film journal to Offscreen).

+ Click here to see the website for more information.

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Robert Altman [1925-2006]
November 21, 2006 to November 30, 2006


Iconoclast maverick American filmmaker Robert Altman passed away on November 20, 2006 at the age of 81. I guess it was in the cards, when the Academy honored Altman with their honorary award this past March (it seems like the touch of death). Altman’s heyday was no doubt the 1970’s, when he directed a string of remarkably innovative and entertaining revisionist genre films: War satire, M*A*S*H*, 1970, Western, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, 1971, psychological horror, Images, film noir, The Long Goodbye, 1973 (the latter two also wonderful for their expressive use of the telephoto lens), crime film, Thieves Like Us, 1974, and epic drama, Nashville 1975. Altman had a late career comeback (not that he was ever inactive) in 1992 with the clever, reflexive The Player (with its playful opening rendition of A Touch of Evil) and once again in 2001 with his loosely veiled remake of Renoir’s Rules of the Game, Gosford Park, where he reminded everyone of how instrumental he was in refining the use of overlapping dialogue. One of the genuine foot soldiers of cinema is gone.

+ Click here to see the website for more information.

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Phone Sex
November 02, 2006 to December 10, 2006


The documentary genre continues to be one of the hottest around, and its definition and meaning continually stretched and manipulated. A recent example is Phone Sex, directed by Steve Balderson, whose previous three films were two quirky and compelling indie narratives, Pep Squad and Firecracker and the documentary on the making of the latter film, Wamengo: Making Movies Anywhere. Phone Sex is a unique pop art styled collage of image and sound, structured around the question, “What is Sexy?” Phone recorded messages of people responding to Balderson’s open ended question are accompanied by images which range from literal to figurative. Can we say this film is sexy? One thing is certain, the documentary is. Phone Sex is slated for release on Dec. 5, 2006.

+ Click here to see the website for more information.

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6th Annual Accented Cinema Film Festival
October 18, 2006 to October 22, 2006


A film festival focusing on diasporic films and filmmakers, with its festival title lifted from Hamid Naficy’s important critical study of diasporic and exilic cinema, An Accented Cinema.

+ Click here to see the website for more information.

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Danièle Huillet [1936-2006]
October 12, 2006 to December 31, 1969


Sad to report the passing away of French born Danièle Huillet at age 70 on October 9, 2006. Known for her seamless collaboration on over 20 films with her partner Jean-Marie Straub, many of them classics of New German cinema (like The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach, 1968, History Lessons 1972). The film that struck me the most was their 1999 film Sicilia!, which I wrote about when it showed in Montreal at the 1999 Festival of New Film and Media. Some who know Straub well are speculating that Huillet’s death will signal the end of his filmmaking. If so, the world of cinema is a poorer place.

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On Screen! A Celebration of Canadian Cinema
October 09, 2006 to November 13, 2006


A Canadian (out of Vancouver) documentary series of one hour programs celebrating classic and important Canadian films. The series is in its second season. Some of the films that already aired in season were Tales From the Gimli Hospital, Black Christmas, Goin’ Down the Road, and The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. Each episode features film clips and interviews with crew and cast members, critics, academics, and fans. Season two highlights include Nobody Waved Goodbye, Mon Onlce Antoine, and Roadkill.

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Film Pop
October 05, 2006 to October 09, 2006


Unique cultural jam festival which combines the worlds of music and film and re-imagines the conventional theatre film space. Highlights include Live Music by guitar wizard Gary Lucas accompanying the German expressionist classic The Golem, Deco Dawson’s live re-interpretation (“re-filming and re-imagining”) of his film Dumb Angel, and much more. As much a social event as a cultural event.

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Touching Politics Film Series and Workshop
October 02, 2006 to October 06, 2006


The Centre interuniversitaire des arts médiatiques (CIAM),
The Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema and the Goethe-Institute present:

Touching Politics Film Series and Workshop

October 2 – 6, 2006, 7:30 pm.
Goethe-Institut Montreal
418, rue Sherbrooke Est
$ 7, $ 6 for students, free for Amis de Goethe
(514) 499-0159

A film series curated and presented by Florian Wüst thematically linked around groundbreaking, social and political documentary, experimental, and avant-garde short films. Series is broken up into five thematic programs:

Oct. 2 at 7:30 pm.: Program 1: Circumstances of Depiction
Oct. 3 at 7:30 pm.: Program 2: Radical Bodies
Oct. 4. at 7:30 pm.: Program 3: Education and Resistance
Oct. 5 at 7:30 pm.: Program 4: Beyond Words
Oct. 6 at 7:30 pm.: Program 5: Economy of the Modern

Rare opportunity to view such important films (projected on film) as Mass for the Dakota Sioux (Bruce Baillie), Report (Bruce Conner), Now! (Santiago Alvarez), Perfect Film (Ken Jacobs), T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G, (Paul Sharits), Lehrer Im Wandel (Alexander Kluge), and Critial Mass (Hollis Frampton).

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Sven Nykvist (1922-2006)
September 21, 2006 to October 01, 2006


Sad day for lovers of light, with the passing of one of the world’s greatest ever cinematographers, Sven Nykvist. Best known for his groundbreaking work in both black and white and color with Ingmar Bergman, Nykvist also worked with Woody Allen and Andrei Tarkovsky. Click below for an Offscreen review of his son’s documentary, Light Keeps Me Company.

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Quand le cinéma d’animation rencontre le vivant
September 14, 2006 to September 16, 2006


Launch of the book, Quand le cinéma d’animation rencontre le vivant [When Animation Cinema Meets the Living], edited by Marcel Jean, on September 14 at 5:00pm at the Cinematheque Quebecois in Montreal, followed by a screening of selected animated films at 6:30pm. The program will be introduced by Marcel Jean. Film schedule as follows:

Le Mobilier fidèle dir. Émile Cohl, Fr., 1910, 7 min à 18
Opening Speech McLaren dir. Norman McLaren, Qué., 1960, 7 min
À travers champs (Przez Pole) dir. Jerzy Kucia, Pol., 1992, 17 min
Une artiste dir. Michèle Cournoyer, Qué., 1994, 5 min
At One View dir. Menno et Paul de Nooijer, P.-B., 1989, 7 min
Les Colocs : La Rue principale dir. André Fortin, Qué., 1993, 3 min
Aphex Twin: Come to Daddy dir. Chris Cunningham, R.-U., 1997, 5 min
Jona Tomberryir. Rosto, P.-B., 2005, 12 min
Home Road Movies dir. Robert Bradbrook, R.-U., 2001, 12 min

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Mike Hoolboom: The Invisible Man
August 25, 2006 to October 07, 2006


Exhibition of a four-part video installation and selected short films by Canadian experimental filmmaker and critic Mike Hoolboom. The exhibition takes place in the Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery located in the Concordia University Library building (J.A. De Seve Building). Vernissage is on the evening of Wednesday, August 30th 5:30pm-7:30pm and then the exhibit runs from August 31 to October 7, 2006.

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New NFB Documentaries
August 24, 2006 to September 04, 2006


NFB Documentary Films Premiering at the 30th World Film Festival are: Waban-Aki by Alanis Obomsawin, which sees the reknowned First Nations (Abenaki) filmmaker return to the village where she was raised; Shameless: The Art of Disability from the director of Not a Love Story, Bonnie Sherr Klein, which attempts to dispell the myths of and prejudices against people with disabilities (Klein being one of her own subjects); Unspeakable by John Paskievich, which takes a humorous look at his own speech impediment: stuttering; Breaking Ranks by Michelle Mason, a film about US soldiers seeking refuge in Canada as part of their resistance to the war in Iraq; Mike Birch, le cow-boy des mers, by James Gray, which chronicles the life of 72-year-old Canadian Mike Birch, one of the world’s greatest sailboat racing skippers: and Wal-Town by Sergeo Kirby, which “follows a group of six students as they travel across Canada to raise public awareness about Wal-Mart’s business practices and the effects of the company’s policies on cities and towns in Canada.”

Schedule of the above films at the WFF:

Breaking Ranks August 30, 9:30 pm, Quartier Latin, theatre 13; September 1, 10:00 am, Quartier Latin, theatre 13

Mike Birch, le cow-boy des mers (original French version with subtitles – 50 min) August 26, 7:10 pm, NFB Cinema; August 29, 12:30 pm, NFB Cinema

Shameless: The Art of Disability (original English version – 72 min) September 1, 7:20 pm, Cinémathèque québécoise; September 2, 12:40 pm, Cinémathèque québécoise September 3, 3:20 pm, Cinémathèque québécoise; September 3, 9:40 pm, Cinémathèque québécoise

Unspeakable (original English version – 89 min) August 30, 7:20 pm, NFB Cinema; August 31, 1:00 pm, NFB Cinema

Waban-Aki: peuple du soleil levant (French version – 104 min)
August 31, 7:20 pm, Quartier Latin, theatre 12

Waban-Aki: People From Where the Sun Rises (English version – 104 min) August 31, 7:20 pm, Quartier Latin, theatre 11

Wal Town (original English version – 66 min 30) September 1, 3:20 pm, NFB Cinema; September 2, 7:30 pm, NFB Cinema

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Italia Odia: Il cinema poliziesco italiano
August 19, 2006 to October 01, 2006


Hot off the presses is long-time Offscreen contributor Roberto Curti’s latest book, Italia Odia, an-in depth (over 400 pages) critical analysis of the Italian policier, one of the most prolific genres during the heyday of Italian genre filmmaking, the 1970s. Although written in Italian, English-only readers can get a glimpse of Curti’s book in an upcoming essay written by Curti exclusively for Offscreen, “Naples by Calibre 9.”

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Valerie and Her Week of Wonders
August 19, 2006 to September 10, 2006


If you happen to be in Philadelphia on the 8th of September, don’t miss the special screening of Jaromil Jires’ enchanting coming-of-sexual age film, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (Czech, 1970). The screening will be accompanied by a live musical performance by members of Espers, Fern Knight, Fursaxa and Grass (also featuring Mary Lattimore, Charles Cohen and Jesse Sparhawk). Presenting this event is Joseph A. Gervasi, co-owner of Diabolik DVD, who says of the event: “This will be a one-time performance in Philadelphia and will be a part of the Fringe Festival. Scrumptious vegan food will be provided by Zinnia Piotrowski and drinks and snacks by Bull and the Mariposa Food Co-op of West Philadelphia. A wide variety of DVDs will be sold in the lobby by Philly’s own Diabolik DVD. Right now a documentary is being shot about the production and there will be a multi-camera shoot of the live performance. All of this should appear on a DVD to be released by Drag City Records, home of Espers and many other bands. The hope is that the DVD release will feature the film from a 35mm source (unlike the current Facets DVD) with multiple sound options, the live performance, documentary, amazing cover art by Tracy Nakayama, etc.”

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Young Cuts
August 17, 2006 to August 20, 2006


A festival featuring the long-standing, yet underappreciated film format, the short. A very ambitous festival, with 50 films from over 40 countries, with many filmmakers present, awards, and gala events. The festival tours to Toronto for a one-day jaunt on August 26. The festival program can be downloaded from the website.

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Auckland Film Festival
July 11, 2006 to July 30, 2006


Founded in 1970 as a component of the Auckland Festival, the Auckland International Film Festival in time became a fund-raising event subsidising live arts. Rescued from this role by the intervention of the Federation of Film Societies in 1984, the 34th Festival in 2005 achieved an audience in excess of 100,000.
Ken Loach’s The Wind That Shakes the Barley, winner of cinema’s most prestigious award, the Cannes Palme d’Or, will open this year’s Telecom New Zealand International Film Festivals and screen in the country’s four main centres. It is just one of many Cannes winners to play at the Festivals. “We are delighted to have scooped this controversial film for the opening of the 2006 Telecom New Zealand International Film Festival. This year’s programme is clamorous with films of activism and protest, so it’s the perfect year to be celebrating this richly deserved accolade to one of cinema’s most persistent agitators,” says Bill Gosden, Festival Director.
Other films include, Korea’s A Bittersweet Life, Canada’s C.R.A.Z.Y., Hard Candy and many more major films of the past year.

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