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In many ways, 2004 was a very good year for cinema, globally, but Montreal was not one of the very best vantage points for viewing these films. Part of the problem is the chaos we are experiencing in the film festival sector, with the World Film Festival (WFF) being investigated and then dumped by both federal (Telefilm) and regional (SODEC) funding bodies. Ironically, it wasn’t such a bad year for the WFF with a good representation of films from Latin America and Asia, but the trend of the Toronto International Film Festival drawing most of the prize-winning “art” films continues. (Every filmmaker wants his/her work to premiere there, it seems.) Hence we have to wait until October for the Festival of New Cinema (FNC) and hope they will pick up the most prominent titles showing in the Toronto event. Thankfully, the FNC upgraded itself this year by inviting some “hip” younger programmers, including Julien Fonfrède of Fantasia to present new series of edgier fare, including some Asian selections. But, as usual, although the FNC was strong on North American and European work, it didn’t show enough outstanding new work from the rest of the world. Part of the problem is that the FNC works closely with local, independent film distributors, in showing their upcoming releases, and, whereas Les Films Séville used to pick up challenging Asian films for local release—e.g., Jia Zhangke’s Platform and Unknown Pleasures and Abbas Kiarostami’s Ten—they seem to have abandoned Asia, altogether. We will keep our fingers crossed for 2005, although, I think SODEC and Telefilm Canada have made a big mistake in supporting the Spectra Group’s proposal for a new festival. Unless Spectra does what the WFF and FNC haven’t done, which is to hire some sophisticated, knowledgeable film programmers to travel the world and aggressively solicit the best new work, nothing will really change.
This year, the Ex-centris and the Cinémathèque Québécoise (CQ) continued to be the best places to see films, and, unfortunately, the latter continues to struggle financially. The AMC Forum is by far the best of the multiplexes as they consistently showcase more than 17 different titles in their 22 theatres, many of them in languages other than English. Indeed, the fact that they do this...