Montreal: This year’s 20th edition of the International Festival of Films on Art fully reveals the diversity of international documentary art film production, with more than 200 films from 30 countries on the program. The event’s honorary patron is Canada’s Governor General, the Right Honorable Adrienne Clarkson.

Festival International du Film sur l’Art (FIFA) is attracting a significant contingent of international directors, producers, programmers and buyers.

The festival opens March 12 with German director Thomas Riedelsheimer’s British land art portrait Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working with Time and closes March 17 with French director Jean-Claude Bringuier’s La Guerre du Louvre, a history of Parisians’ efforts to save art treasures on the eve of Nazi occupation.

All artistic forms are represented in the 2002 program, with films on architect I.M. Pei, cinema giants Bergman and Kurosawa, writers Jack Kerouac and James Ellroy, fashion icons Gianni Versace and Yves Saint Laurent, musicians Alfred Brendel and Placido Domingo, painters Picasso and Vermeer, sculptors Jorge Jiminez Deredia and Alberto Giacometti, and photographer Alfred Stieglitz.

Forty films are eligible for FIFA’s competitive section, Creative Crossroad, including four from Canada: Deco Dawson’s Dzama, Anne-Marie Tougas’ de la philosophie a la vie, Andrew Gregg’s Studio: The Life and Times of Alex Colville and Serge Giguere’s Suzzor-Cote. The program also includes a large selection of recent Canadian video art.

Some of the foreign organizations attending this year’s FIFA include the National Art Gallery in the U.S.; Oxford Film and Television of the U.K.; TV2 and Nordisk Film and Television of Denmark; SVT, Sweden; RAI, Italy; Musee national d’art moderne of France; RM Associates and Mediopolis of Germany; and Thirteen/WNET New York.

Rene Rozon is FIFA’s founder and director. The festival’s top competitive prize is the Pratt & Whitney Canada Grand Prize.

-www.artfifa.com