Volume 19, Issue 2 / February 2015

(Mostly) Screened in Canada

This issue looks at a few Canadian based film festivals, namely The FNC and the Vancouver International Film Festival. Cutting across all film festival in Montreal is Rist’s piece on the best films to have screened in Montreal during 2014. At 43 years strong and counting The Festival of Nouveau Cinema (FNC) edges The Montreal World Film Festival by five years as the longest running film festival in Montreal, and can be counted on as one of the mainstays of the increasingly important Festival circuit in Montreal. My report of the 2014 edition focuses on the relatively new Temps Zero section (under ten years old), headed by former Fantasia programmer Julien Fonfrede. Mandated to be the Festival’s cutting edge and eye on the more esoteric side of things, Temps Zero never disappoints by always offering a few nuggets of the wild and the weird. Fonfrede is old enough to keep an eye on older directors who continue to innovate and young enough to keep on the vanguard of what and who is new and interesting. Mike Archibald has become Offscreen’s regular monitor on the pulse of the important (especially for Asian cinema) Canadia festival from the west, the Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF). Not by any design, Archibald’s coverage demonstrates that at 85 (Frederick Wiseman), 84 (Jean-Luc Godard) and 79 (Im Kwon-taek) respectively, the rear guard can still bring it when it comes to cinema creation. The issue ends with two interviews conducted by Amir Ganjavie at the Cannes Film Festival: with Yared Zeleke, whose film Lamb marks the first ever Ethiopian film to be screened at Cannes; and with Portuguese filmmaker Miguel Gomes, who presented his three-part Arabian Tales. (Donato Totaro, ed.)