Montreal: Lars Von Trier’s Palme d’Or-winning musical melodrama Dancer in the Dark (Film Tonic), starring Bjork and Catherine Deneuve, will open the 29th edition of the Montreal International Festival of New Cinema and New Media (fcmm), Oct. 12-22.

The closing night movie for the expanded indie showcase is Robert Lepage’s first English-language film, Possible Worlds (Alliance Atlantis Motion Picture Distribution), which had its world premiere at the Mostra of Venice and is a coproduction between In Extremis Images of Montreal and East Side Film Company of Toronto. Lepage’s film stars Tom McCamus and Tilda Swinton in an adaptation of the award-winning John Mighton stageplay.

fcmm programming this year includes new sections in documentaries and digital cinema, with 72 features, 93 short films and more than 50 new media presentations from 27 countries on the program.

At a Sept. 26 press conference at Ex-Centris, the festival’s headquarters, fcmm codirector Claude Chamberlan said the current slate of feature-length films is the best in many seasons, with a record 32 of 72 programmed features already acquired by Canadian distributors.

The festival’s guest list includes Denys Arcand, subject of the new Georges Dufaux portrait De l’art et de la maniere chez Denys Arcand, and Atom Egoyan, who’ll present the Samuel Beckett portrait Krapp’s Last Tape.

Other guests include Renny Barlett, director/writer of the Canada/Germany feature Eisenstein (Film Tonic), along with the film’s star, British actor Simon McBurney, and Robert Favreau, director of Les Muses Orphelines (Film Tonic), and two of the film’s leading players, Marina Orsini and Fanny Mallette.

Also attending are director/writer Robert Lepage and Belgian director Pierre-Paul Renders, who’ll present Thomas est amoureux (Films Seville).

Eipides returns

This year’s edition marks the return of programmer Dimitri Eipides as head of the festival’s new documentary section. Doc program highlights include two Peter Forgacs films, Angelo’s Film and The Danube Express; Heddy Honigmann’s Crazy; Marc Singer’s Dark Days, a major prize winner at the Sundance Film Festival; Amir Bar-Lev’s Fighter; Todd S. Lending’s Legacy; and Frank Cole’s Without Death.

The tribute section honors three artists: Michele Cournoyer, director of the animated National Film Board short The Hat /Le Chapeau, winner of the short film prize at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival; British film and video maker David Larcher; and the late Japanese performance artist Tatsumi Hijikata.

fcmm includes a new Digital Cinema section, with a dozen digitally produced films on the program, matched with a three-day forum, which will look at issues such as high-definition, mini-dv (small screen), the Internet as a broadcast and production tool, and new digital creative solutions.

Some 25 speakers have been invited to The Digital Age: From Cinema to New Media Forum, running Oct. 16-18. They include Jacques Fansten, producer on the arte collection Petites Cameras; fcmm president Daniel Langlois, founder of Softimage and producer of the new digital feature The Baroness and The Pig, Holly Willid; Philippe Falardeau, director of La Moitie gauche du frigo (Film Tonic); multimedia artist Michel Lemieux; and veteran filmmaker Agnes Varda, director of Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse (Cine Tamaris).

International features

The festival’s international feature programming includes Jafar Panahip’s Le Cercle, a Golden Lion winner at Venice 2000; Wong Kar-wai’s In The Mood For Love (Seville Pictures); Edward Yang’s Yi Yi, Cannes 2000 Director’s Award winner; Clara Law’s The Goddess of 1967 (Seville Pictures); Celine Baril’s Du Pic au Coeur; David Mamet’s Catastrophe; the world premiere of Spike Lee’s Bamboozled; Bakhitiar Khudojnazarov’s Luna Papa (Alliance Atlantis Vivafilm); and Ken Loach’s latest, Bread and Roses.

Newer names on the program include Guylaine Dionne’s Les fantomes des trois Madeleines (France Film), Zang Yang’s Shower, Mark Herman’s Purely Belter, Baltasar Kormakur’s 101 Reykjavik and Marzieh Meshkini’s The Day I Became A Woman.

The feature film jury (Prix Banque Laurentienne – Louve d’Or) is composed of Canadian actress Arsinee Khanjian, Jose Maria Riba, director of the International Critics Week – Cannes Film Festival, and legendary Parisian cinema programmer Roger Diamantis. *

-www.fcmm.com