MONTREAL — Quebec’s annual mid-winter celebration of local filmmaking, Les Rendez-vous du cinéma Québécois, released its eclectic lineup Wednesday, which includes 309 films, tributes to Gilles Carle and Pierre Falardeau and an insider’s look at the making of the film Assassin’s Creed: Lineage.

‘Our films are very important. We need them. The industry is fragile, as is our culture,’ spokesman and actor Emmanuel Bilodeau (René Lévesque) told the crowd of roughly 200 gathered at the Cinémathèque québécoise.

Now in its 28th year, the RVCQ will premiere 77 films at six sites, mostly in downtown Montreal, including the world debuts of Family Silver by Bernard Lafontaine, Les ombres electriques by Charles Barabé, and the Canadian premieres of Dominic Desjardins’ Le divan du monde and Looking for Anne by Takako Miyahira.

This year, the energetic programmers have scheduled a dizzying array of master classes, late-night and afternoon schmoozing events as well as 11 different film and video series featuring local documentaries, shorts, feature-length fiction, animated films and student works.

The documentary series Doc’n’Roll will screen docs about music including English-language works Miroir noir, a film by Vincent Morisset and Vincent Moon about the band Arcade Fire, and The Delian Mode by Kara Blake, about electronic music pioneer Delia Derbyshire, composer of the Doctor Who theme.

RVCQ is presenting a new series this year showcasing the most popular Quebec films of 2009, including the box-office hit De père en flic and Dédé à travers les brumes, a film about the life of the legendary lead singer of the Quebec rock band Les Colocs.

RVCQ is also venturing into video games and special effects with a hands-on introduction to the revolutionary new RED Camera and special conferences by the CEO of Ubisoft Montreal, Yannis Mallat, and the team behind Assassin’s Creed: Lineage — the series of short films made to accompany Ubisoft’s game Assassin’s Creed.

Léa Pool’s Dernière fugue will open the 10-day festival on Feb 17.