Pop Montreal: Sept. 25-29, 2013
Pop Montreal festival is the little guy who is slowly growing and nudging a vital space for itself in the over-crowded Montreal festival landscape (Montreal has an average of more than one major festival per month). Although only five days long (Sept. 25-29, 2013) the schedule is jam packed with a smorgasbord of diverse events. This eclecticism is what sets Pop Montreal apart from the dozens of other festivals in Montreal: it blurs the singular category line that distinguishes most festivals. Pop Montreal knows no boundaries when it comes to the type of art or event it hosts. It is many festivals rolled up into one: art, music, film, performance art, live theatre, comedy, fashion, thrift shop, design, puppet theatre, literature, the world of publishing, academic discourse, French, English, stuff for adults, stuff for kids, and more. And holding it all together, they have a very useful web platform which gives you easy access to schedule and performance information. As you look over the five day schedule when you scroll over an artist’s name a description of the artist and event handily pops up. In charge of the film programming is Kier-La Janisse, who brings to Pop Montreal the right blend of programming experience, cultural savvy and know-how and a great understanding of both film and music. With Kier-La at the helm you know the film program will feature a strong blend of interesting retro rediscoveries (one of her programming strengths lies in this area, constantly unearthing hidden gems from the cultural detritus of the past). The opening and closing films are new titles both with music as their subject. Opening on Sept. 25 is Bayou Maharajah: The Tragic Genius of James Booker (Lily Keber), a doc on the New Orleans piano legend James Booker. The closing film is Good Ol’ Freda (Ryan White), which recounts the story of an adolescent Liverpudian named Freda Kelly who went on to become the secretary of the most popular rock band of all time, The Beatles (trailer). The Beatles are indirectly featured again in one of the film programming highlights, a restored 35mm print screening of the 1968 British film _Wonderwall (Joe Massot), a psychedelic tale about a compulsive voyeur (played by great character actor Jack McGowan, who played the drunk film-within-a-film director in The Exorcist). The film’s score was written by George Harrison. Another double-edged discovery is the documentary on unheralded Winnipeg prog-rock band Mahogany Frog, Alors, t’as soif de quoi. Lovers of prog-rock will be pleasantly surprised to discover this musically talented group which reveals once again the important contributions of Canadian musicians to the rock genre. Canadian music/rock opera talent of another sort is featured in the 1976 retro screening of Metal Messiah (Tibor Takacs). Allison Anders is a featured guest of Pop Montreal, with her latest film Strutter (2012) being screened as well as her participation in a Masterclass in the Symposium section of the festival. Viewers have a chance to catch a retrospective of the rarely seen work of Croatian experimental filmmaker Dalibor Baric. Another retro title of note is the HD restored screening of French arthouse auteur Alain Robbe-Grillet’s L’eden et après (1970). Please check the Pop Montreal website for scheduling detail and more info on this year’s adventurous program.
Donato Totaro has been the editor of the online film journal Offscreen since its inception in 1997. Totaro received his PhD in Film & Television from the University of Warwick (UK), is a part-time professor in Film Studies at Concordia University (Montreal, Canada) and a longstanding member of AQCC (Association québécoise des critiques de cinéma).
