Montreal: Montreal World Film Festival founder and director Serge Losique stood defiant this past week, heating up the war of words between his fest and its government backers by several degrees.

In a fiery open letter to the Montreal daily La Presse, published on Sept. 18, Losique suggested that Telefilm Canada and SODEC’s apparent intentions to pull funding from WFF and to back a new festival in the city are part of a vendetta against him. Losique suggests he is being targeted because of his repeated criticism of Telefilm policies.

‘What we are witnessing is an unprecedented and gratuitous bureaucratic attempt to destroy and expropriate our 28-year-old institution,’ writes Losique, going on to compare his funders to Communist-era leaders. ‘This conduct reflects on the abuses of power by our cultural apparatchiks.’

Telefilm and SODEC infuriated Losique when they issued a report a few weeks prior to his World Film Fest, suggesting that his management style paled in comparison to those of the country’s three other major film fests, including WFF’s main rival, the Toronto International Film Festival. Losique refused to respond to the report, despite its threatening tone, and both funding groups made it clear that the Montreal festival was at risk of losing their support.

Telefilm and SODEC wasted little time, issuing a terse statement of their own within 24 hours of the festival’s final screening on Sept. 6. That statement invited applicants to put forth proposals for a new major film event in Montreal that Telefilm and SODEC could support.

Losique has now fired back, along with his lawyer, prominent Montreal attorney Claude-Armand Sheppard, who is claiming that Telefilm and SODEC’s intentions to halt funding to WFF could be illegal. Sheppard told the Montreal Gazette that Losique is considering legal action against the film-funding bodies, but did not specify what legal avenues they would be pursuing.

In his La Presse letter, which was cosigned by festival VP Daniele Cauchard and fest chair Pierre Goyette, Losique referred directly to the WFF-vs.-TIFF rivalry, asking, ‘Is Montreal being squelched in order to leave more room for Toronto?’ He also questioned the ability of Telefilm and SODEC to end his festival, seeing as they only provide approximately 15% of WFF’s annual operating budget.

The festival bickering has entered the realm of the surreal just in time for the Festival of New Cinema, which runs Oct. 14-24. The festival, run by Ex-Centris and Cinema du Parc owner Daniel Langlois, is most often cited as the likeliest possible replacement for Telefilm and SODEC sponsorship. WFF spokespeople have already dismissed the idea of the Festival of New Cinema being eligible for the funding, pointing out that Langlois’ ownership of two cinema complexes makes him a distributor and thus in a position of conflict as the director of a competitive film festival.

Telefilm had no comment on the ongoing festival rivalries and standoffs. Losique stated that he would be issuing another letter on the situation within days of press time.

-www.ffm-montreal.org