Montreal: Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

And the decision to launch a third major film festival event in Montreal was not made overnight, either. For at least a decade, the Quebec film community and press corps complained about the World Film Festival, the city’s biggest film event, which screens more than 300 international films annually. That festival, founded and run by Serge Losique, was thought by most to be stumbling in terms of programming, attendance and industry relevance. It has looked all the worse given the burgeoning reputation of the Toronto International Film Festival.

The last straw for government funders Telefilm Canada and SODEC came when they commissioned a report on the nation’s major film festivals by private organization Secor. Losique and his crew refused to cooperate with Secor, thumbing their noses at the entire process. When Secor’s report was released last year, the WFF received poor reviews, charged with being too distant and not open enough to constructive criticism.

Telefilm and SODEC yanked their funding, amounting to about $1 million per year. And the two agencies opened up bidding from organizations that had plans for a new world-class film festival in the city.

Losique cried foul, and called his lawyers. He sued the government for taking away his funding, stating that he was fulfilling his mandate.

After a round of bidding by several Montreal cultural groups, it was announced that L’Équipe Spectra, organizer of the Montreal International Jazz Festival and FrancoFolies, would get the funding from Telefilm and SODEC. Losique again cried foul, and again called his lawyers, unsuccessfully seeking an injunction to prevent the funders from proceeding with the plan.

When it was announced that the new festival would be called the Festival International de film de Montréal, Losique pointed out that he held the legal domain to that name. FIFM was forced to come up with an alternate translation in English, calling itself the New Montreal FilmFest. This only led to more confusion, given that Montreal Anglos had long referred to the city’s other fall film event, the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, as the ‘New Film Fest.’

While many had forecast the WFF to lie down and die, Losique pulled his corporate sponsors together and got his embattled festival off the ground for another run, Aug. 26 to Sept. 5. The fest got more unenthusiastic press, but observers were impressed that it happened at all.

And then it was time for NMFF to show what it could do.

But if the road there seemed long and bumpy, the weeklong event, which kicked off on Sept. 18, must have felt like an eternity to organizers.

Lesson one might be: don’t kick off a festival on Sunday, a day of rest. Lesson two: don’t crowd the national festival schedule. The NMFF launched less than two weeks after WFF closed, the same weekend that TIFF ended, and it overlapped with nearly all of the 25th Atlantic Film Festival, thereby diluting media attention.

The NMFF event was shaky from the get-go. Attendance figures were devastating, with organizers admitting they’d booked huge venues for films that only attracted 40 people. And those were some of the mid-sized crowds. Local papers were full of reports of as few as nine people at some screenings.

But some of the most damaging testimony came from within. After the rocky start, Moritz de Hadeln, the Swiss-born veteran of both the Berlin and Venice festivals who had been hired to direct programming for the NMFF, began openly acknowledging that the festival should have been postponed for a year.

The red carpets rolled out for the event led to somewhat surreal scenes. It might be considered a bad omen when the only personality of note who shows up for a film festival premiere is former prime minister Brian Mulroney. Filmmaker Atom Egoyan was so miffed by the lack of press and audiences for his feature Where the Truth Lies that he lambasted the NMFF in a public letter, instead praising the FNC, declaring that he wished he had premiered his film there instead.

The NMFF organizers cancelled their closing press conference, the acrimony running high after the final curtain fell. The festival’s board of directors released a statement after the FNC closed its successful 34th edition, offering to merge with it. The FNC has still not officially responded. The letter stated that if a deal could not be reached, L’Équipe Spectra would remove itself from the business of putting on the NMFF. Without Spectra, it is doubtful the show will go on.

That letter was followed by yet more negativity, with high-level resignations from the NMFF’s board of governors, including those of Denise Robert and Roger Frappier, two of Quebec’s most important producers.

And so, after all the drama that unfolded in its creation, the NMFF might end up as a mere footnote in Montreal’s troubled film festival history.

www.montrealfilmfest.com

www.fifm.ca

www.nouveaucinema.ca