Volume 13, Issue 5 / May 2009

Festival du Nouveau Cinéma: 2008

In this issue Offscreen puts the spotlight on one of the most exciting film and new media events of the year, the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma (FNC). While not as large as some of the other local film festivals, Festival du Nouveau Cinéma carves its identity out of providing Montrealers with the opportunity to watch the new films by established international auteurs, while seeking out a variety of short and experimental works that are given a larger profile than at other local festivals. The coverage begins with Randolph Jordan’s festival report, “Town and Country –City Films and the Wilderness at FNC 2008,” which, as the title suggests, concentrates on films that showcase (in one way or another) a major city: Tokyo Sonata (Tokyo, obviously), Man on Wire (New York), and Of Time and the City (Liverpool). Terence Davies’ Of Time and the City is also a found footage film, which leads to a discussion of other found footage films, culminating in a brief analysis of the festival’s important Bruce Connor retrospective. Jordan concludes with a discussion of his favorite film of the festival, Philippe Grandrieux’s Un Lac. The FNC coverage continues with a summary of the John Boorman master class, hosted by Professor Mario Falsetto. Up next is an essay on Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Tokyo Sonata, which Jordan also features in his report. Totaro picks up on the fascinating generic indeterminacy of Tokyo Sonata, a contemporary drama which draws on the mood and style of Kurosawa’s prior horror films. The FNC coverage concludes with an essay on, by far, the most violent and arguably controversial film of the festival, Pascal Laugier’s Martyrs. The stand-alone fifth piece of this issue switches gears to present a two-fold interview about the documentary Forbidden Sun Dance, which played during the 2008 Human Rights Film Festival in Montreal. Author Gilda Boffa introduces the film and then interviews its Iranian-born director Lila Ghobady, and the Iranian-born Persian folk dance teacher and choreographer featured in the film, Aram Bayat. (Donato Totaro, ed.)