The 18th edition of the Montreal World Film Festival is more international than ever with what’s arguably a better balanced program than in past years and an impressive lineup of films that are assured of reaching North American audiences long after the prizes have been handed out and the lights go down.

At an Aug. 9 press conference, festival codirectors Daniele Cauchard and Serge Losique unveiled the 1994 official selections – 19 films in the Official Competition section and more than 50 films in the prestigious Hors Concours (out of competition) section. In all, some 250 features and 72 shorts from 60 countries are on this year’s program, which runs Aug. 25 to Sept. 5.

Canada is well represented at this year’s wff, which opens with the world premiere of Claude Massot’s Kabloonak (Cinepix Film Properties), a Canada-France coproduction shot in the High Arctic. For Kabloonak’s Quebec coproducer, Pierre Gendron, as for cfp, it’s the second consecutive year one of their films has been selected to open the festival. Last year’s opener, Paule Baillargeon’s Le Sexe des etoiles, did surprisingly well in theaters, due in large measure to an avalanche of wff-generated publicity.

Highlights at this year’s festival include tributes to U.S. actor/writer Steve Martin and Canadian producer/distributor Rene Malo, a two-day symposium program featuring industry leaders, the 25th edition of the Canadian Student Film Festival, four late-night screenings under the stars, and more stars and directors than this city has seen in many a year.

Located in the Hotel Meridien, the Montreal International Film, TV and Video Market has been totally revamped. The market, under the direction of Mario Fortin, features a new co-ordination office and is in operation throughout the 12-day festival.

Official competition

Four Canadian films, three of them coproductions, are vying for the 1994 Grand Prix des Ameriques, awarded by an international jury to the best film in the Official Competition section. They are (with the distributor in parenthesis): Kabloonak (cfp), coproduced with France; Andre Forcier’s Le Vent du Wyoming (Malofilm Distribution), a Canada/ France coproduction; Micheline Lanctot’s La Vie d’un heros (Malofilm Distribution); and Mesmer (Cineplex Odeon), a u.k./Canada/ Germany coproduction directed by Roger Spottiswoode.

Foreign film entries in this year’s Official Competition include: from France, Claude Miller’s Le Sourire (cfp) and Poussieres de Vie (Dust of Life) from Algerian-born Rachid Bouchareb; from Great Britain, Tom & Viv (Malofilm), directed by Brian Gilbert; from Sweden, The Last Dance by British-born Colin Nutley; from the U.S., Floyd Mutrux’s There Goes My Baby (Alliance Vivafilm); from Australia, Kevin Dowling’s The Sum of Us (Malofilm) and from New Zealand, Once Were Warriors (Malofilm), from director Lee Tamahori.

Other entries in the Official Competition are: Jose Miguel Ganga’s Impassioned and Jose Garci’s Cradle Song, both from Spain; from Chile, Gonzalo Justiniano’s Amnesia; from Germany, Simply Love (Einfach Nur Liebe) directed by Peter Timm; from Romania, Dan Pita’s Pepe and Fifi (Pepe si Fifi); from Russia, Konstantin Lopouchansky’s The Russian Symphony; from South Korea, Aum Jong Sun’s The Two Flags; and from China, Zhang Nuanxin’s The Story of Yunnan.

The jury

The copresidents of this year’s jury are seven distinguished actors, writers and filmmakers:

– Carole Bouquet: since actress Carole Bouquet’s acclaimed performance in Luis Bunuel’s 1977 classic The Obscure Object of Desire, the actress has appeared in more than 20 features. Her most recent film, Michel Blanc’s Grosse Fatigue (Action Film/Didier Farre), is being presented in this year’s Hors Concours section.

– Armin Mueller-Stahl: German actor Armin Mueller-Stahl has appeared in over 100 films, including Bille August’s The House of Spirits and Agnieszka Holland’s Angry Harvest, for which he won the 1985 wff Best Actor Award.

– Claude Baigneres: film critic for Le Figaro since 1978 and author of several books on dance and music, Claude Baigneres has also adapted numerous plays for the screen in collaboration with Anna Tognetti. Next year, his adaptation of Le don de la Gorgone is slated for production in Montreal.

– Lose Luis Borau: screenwriter/director Lose Luis Borau won international recognition in 1975 with Furtivos, winner of the Luis Bunuel prize for best Spanish film of the decade. His Camara Negra (1977) won the Berlin Film Festival’s Silver Bear Award.

– Fernand Dansereau: award-winning director/producer/writer Fernand Dansereau’s distinguished career began in 1955 with the National Film Board. His credits include some 40 shorts and features, documentaries and drama productions. Since 1983 he has worked in television, creating some of Quebec’s top drama – Les Filles de Caleb, Shehaweh and the new Canada/France coproduction, Mourir d’amour.

– Shekhar Kapur: after an inspired decision to leave a promising career as a chartered accountant in London, Eng. at the age of 25, Shekhar Kapur returned to India where he acted in several films before turning to directing. Bandit Queen (Alliance Vivafilm), his most recent feature, is included in this year’s wff Hors Concours section.

– Desmond Ryan: Desmond Ryan has been film critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer since 1976. His reviews are syndicated nationwide through the Knight-Ridder News Service. He has taught film at several universities and is the author of three novels and an encyclopedia of film reviews.

Tributes

This year the festival pays tribute to the chairman of Montreal-based Malofilm Communications, Rene Malo, and the multitalented actor/writer/producer Steve Martin.

The Malo tribute takes place Aug. 30 and will be attended by federal, provincial and city government officials as well as industry luminaries. As a distributor, Malo has been a key player in introducing North American audiences to the works of some of the world’s best directors, including Luc Besson, J.J. Beineix, Diane Kurys, Leos Carax, Vincent Ward, Micheline Lanctot, Paul Shapiro and Christian Duguay.

His business dealings, through various output agreements, extend to Paramount Pictures, Turner Entertainment, the Samuel Goldwyn Company and others. Malo was recently elected chairman of the Canadian Association of Film Distributors and Exporters.

Martin’s tribute on Aug. 27 follows the gala world premiere of A Simple Twist of Fate (Buena Vista), directed by Gillies MacKinnon and produced and scripted by Martin. The film stars Martin, Catherine O’Hara, Gabriel Byrne and Stephen Baldwin and tells a heartwarming story of the trials and tribulations of parenthood and the bonds between a father and his adopted daughter.

Martin has starred in, written and/or produced some 20 features, including All Of Me, in which he appeared opposite Lily Tomlin, Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, Little Shop Of Horrors, Roxanne, Planes, Trains and Automobiles and Grand Canyon.

Highlights

World premieres, critically acclaimed international feature films and films destined for commercial release by Quebec distributors this fall and winter are among the program highlights at the ’94 wff. More than 50 films are slated in the Hors Concours section.

World premieres include Michael Austin’s Princess Caraboo, an early 19th century village story about a beautiful and mysterious woman, and Jacques Godbout’s L’Affaire Norman William (nfb), a documentary study of a strange and intriguing Quebec-born man who became a world-class master of disguise.

Many of this year’s most likely wff titles have been acquired by Quebec distributors at the Cannes Film Festival and other markets around the world, and are being showcased in Montreal as a prelude to their commercial launches.

Alan Rudolph’s Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (Alliance Vivafilm) was shot in Montreal last summer and depicts the tumultuous life of acerbic poet, critic and screenwriter Dorothy Parker and her entourage of high-profile friends and enemies. The film stars Jennifer Jason Leigh and was produced by Robert Altman.

Look to sro performances for Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Trois Couleurs – Rouge (Alliance Vivafilm), the final film in his Liberty, Equality, Fraternity trilogy; Xhang Yimou’s To Live (Alliance Vivafilm); South African filmmaker Gary Hofmeyer’s Yankee Zulu (cfp); Bernard Tavernier’s La Fille d’Artagnan (Malofilm); Manoel de Oliviera’s Blind Man’s Bluff; Paul Cox’s Exile; Jacques Rivette’s two-part epic, Jeanne la pucelle (Alliance Vivafilm) – made up of The Battles and The Prisons – based on the life of Joan of Arc and starring Sandrine Bonnaire; and Charlie Van Damme’s Le Joueur de Violon (cfp).

Other films that promise to be crowd-pleasers are Jean Labib’s Montand (Canal +), a documentary on the life of the beloved French singer-actor Yves Montand and narrated by Montand himself; Idilko Szabo’s Hungary/ Canada coproduction The Magic Hunter (Alliance Vivafilm), a fantasy suspense about a cop who cuts a deal with the devil; and u.k. director Leslie Megahey’s The Advocate (Alliance Vivafilm), an 18th century historical drama about the misadventures of a young country lawyer.

Also look for Miguel Littin’s Les Naufrages (Cine 39), a Chili/ Canada coproduction; Brian Gilbert’s Tom & Viv (Malofilm), the story of poet T.S. Eliot and his troubled wife; and Jan Kidawa-Blonski’s Le Journal d’un bossu or Diary in a Marble (Cine 39), one of the first feature films financed under the two-year-old Quebec/ Poland coproduction agreement.

One of the late entries on the festival program is Natural Born Killers (Warner Bros.), director Oliver Stone’s unconventional portrayal of two cold-blooded murderers.

For filmgoers whose dearest wish is to be transported to distant times and places, this year’s wff offers a striking selection of historical and epic tales, starting with the festival’s closing night film, Nikita Michalkov’s Burnt by the Sun (France Film), the gripping 1930s story of the encounter between a Soviet colonel and a music student who becomes an agent of the secret police.

Also on tap is Romanian director Lucian Pintilie’s An Unforgettable Summer (Alliance Vivafilm); Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen (Alliance Vivafilm), the story of one of India’s most feared outlaws; director Alexandar Petrovic’s Migrations, described as ‘a Serbian War and Peace’; Diamara Nizhnikovskaya’s Romance of the Emperor; Vitaly Solomin’s Hunting; and Zhou Xiaowen’s The Black Mountain.

Biographical fare includes Erik Clausen’s Carl – My Childhood Symphony and Arturo Ripstein’s Queen of the Night.

Love, sex and the meaning of life drive the drama of such offerings as Tonie Marshall’s Pas tres Catholique (Malofilm), starring French actress Anemone; Nanni Moretti’s Caro Diario or Dear Diary (Alliance Vivafilm); Alessandro D’Alatri’s Sans la peau (K2/Amerique); Bigas Luna’s Macho (Malofilm), in English called Golden Balls; and a good bet to become one of the 1994 festival favorites, Stephan Elliot’s The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (Cineplex Odeon), a transsexual road movie set in the Australian desert and starring a fearless Terence Stamp.

And more thrills, chills and laughs with two multinational coproductions with a common, but never exhausted theme: Erotique, by American directors Lizzie Borden, Monika Treut and Clara Law, and Erotic Tales (Alliance Vivafilm), codirected by Seidelman, Rafelson, Kaul, Russell, Van Peebles and Cox.

And for festival goers hungering for tales of village life and intrigue there’s Under the Olive Trees from Iran’s Abbas Kiarostami (Alliance Vivafilm), Buddhadeb Dasgupta’s Shelter of the Wings, and The Third Bank of the River by Brazil’s Nelson Pereira dos Santos.

Focus on Turkish cinema of today

In its national cinema category, this year’s festival pays tribute to the cinema of Turkey. The 19 films showcased in ‘Turkish Cinema of Today’ represent a carefully considered selection of recent productions (1990 to 1994), and include several North American premieres. An important delegation of representatives from the Turkish film industry is attending the event.

From first-time feature director Kutlug Ataman comes The Serpent’s Tale, the story of the last remaining member of a noble family who has a child out of wedlock in an attempt to stave off the extinction of her clan. In Goodbye Hope, directed by Canan Evcimen Icoz, a young student searches for justice in a country torn by political conflict.

The theme of war, its prelude and its aftermath, are reinvented in Basar Sabuncu’s A Boat Anchored in the Desert, Yusuf Kurcenli’s The Disintegration and Yavuz Oskan’s An Autumn Story, while Tunca Yonder’s On the Way to Mount Ararat and Sinan Cetin’s Berlin in Berlin are stories of love – lost and unrequited.

The showcase also includes Erden Kiral’s 1993 award-winning film The Blue Exile, and other such evocative titles as Shadow Play, from Yavuz Turgul, Whistle If You Come Back, from Orhan Ohuz, Daydreams of Miss Cazibe, from Irfan Tozum, and Don’t Let Them Shoot the Kite, from Tunc Basaran.

Panorama Canada

The 18th wff offers its biggest-ever showcase of Canadian films (including four Canadian coproductions) in Official Competition:

– Andre Forcier’s Le Vent du Wyoming (Malofilm), is a Canada/ France coproduction produced by Nardo Castillo, Claude Leger and Jacques Dorfmann. Forcier’s seventh feature film is both a tragedy and comedy and is described as the story of a family battered by love. Stars are Francois Cluzet, Sarah-Jeanne Salvy, Michel Cote, Marc Messier and France Castel.

– Micheline Lanctot’s highly anticipated feature La Vie d’un Heros (Malofilm) is producer Rock Demers’ first film outside the Tales for All series and was produced in association with the nfb. In this film, a German pow becomes a legend in the hearts of his adopted Quebec family only to make a myth-shattering return 50 years later. Leading players are Gilbert Sicotte, Veronique Le Flaguais, Marie Cantin, Christopher B. MacCabe and Erwin Potitt.

– Claude Massot’s Kabloonak (cfp) is an account of the filming in the early 1920s of Nanook of the North and the amazing arctic adventure of filmmaker Robert Flaherty. Leading players include Charles Dance and Adamie Inukpuk. Coproducers are Pierre Gendron (Canada) and Georges Benayoun (France).

– Roger Spottiswoode’s Mesmer (Cineplex) is a u.k./Canada/ Germany coproduction and a dark and erotic story of a visionary late 18th century doctor who is the toast of revolutionary Paris but is vilified as a charlatan by medical authorities. The film stars Alan Rickman (Robin Hood), Amanda Ooms, Jan Rubes, Gillian Barge and David Hemblen.

The Panorama Canada gala opening night film is Charles Biname’s feature film debut, C’etait le 12 du 12 et Chili avait les blues (Alliance Vivafilm). Penned by Jose Frechette and produced by Louise Gendron, the film is set in the early 1960s following the Kennedy assassination and tells of the chance encounter in a snowed-in train station between a door-to-door salesman, played by Roy Dupuis, and a seriously depressed college student, played by Lucie Laurier.

This year’s Panorama Canada section offers a plethora of new directorial talent. Dinner’s on the Table is the feature debut for codirectors John Ellis and Darcy Hoover. Other first-time directorial offerings include Pierre Lang’s Gaia (Malofilm), a tale of arcane intrigue; Gregory Wild’s Highway of Heartache; Brett Dowler’s Cyberteens in Love (Shadowface Productions); and Mitchell G. Kezin’s Haro. Kezin is a past winner at the Canadian Student Film Festival.

In Cynthia Robert’s The Last Supper and b.c. director Charles Wilkinson’s Max (Astral Films), starring R.H. Thomson, friends and families struggle to cope with the illness of loved ones.

In Ruth (Cinema Libre), directed by Francois Delisle and featured in the Cinema of Tomorrow lineup, a bored small-town girl moves to the city and wreaks havoc in her brother’s life. In Rafal Zielinski’s Fun (cfp), a U.S.-Canada coproduction presented in the Cinema of Today section, two teenage girls wreak havoc of a decidedly more sinister kind on a joyride that culminates in murder.

Another world premiere is writer/director John Hopkins’ tongue-in-cheek social commentary JohnstonJohnston, a dramatic short starring Henry Czerny and actor/coproducer Lenore Zann.

Two other Canadian films in the program, with distribution deals in hand, are Michel Jette’s Le lac de la lune (Cinema Libre) and Alan Zweig’s The Darling Family (Cineplex).

This year’s festival showcases an eclectic and compelling selection of documentaries, including six new titles from the nfb:

– Pepita Ferrari and Erna Buffie’s By Woman’s Hand evocatively depicts the life and work of painter Prudence Heward and her Beaver Hall Hill group of colleagues and their spirited struggle against 1920s social taboos;

– Directed by Garry Beitel, Aller-Retour (distributed by Cinema Libre) chronicles six months in the lives of a Mexican work crew employed at a Quebec Farm;

– Laurent Gagliardi’s Quand L’amour est gai explores a love relationship between two men and is an attempt to dispel society’s negative image of male homosexuality;

– Ronit Bezalel’s When Shirley Met Florence offers an intimate portrait of the friendship between two 60-year-old women;

– Gerry Rogers’ The Vienna Tribunal documents the moving personal testimonies of women at the Global Tribunal on Violations of Human Rights; and,

– Mireille Dansereau’s Les Seins dans la Tete is an impressionistic survey of women’s feelings about their breasts.

Other Canadian documentary selections at WFF ’94 include Marcel Poulin’s Memories of a Previous Life, the story of a young Canadian acknowledged by the Dalai Lama as a reincarnation of a great spiritual master, and Andre Gladu’s Gaston Miron: Les Outils du Poete (nfb), a film about one of Quebec’s best-loved poets.

Also on the Canadian doc front is A Brush With Life (Cinema Libre) from codirectors Martin Duckworth and Glen Salzman, which looks at a female artist with a multiple-personality disorder.

And not to be missed is Bernar Hebert’s Le Petit musee de Velasquez, a stunning adaptation of eight choreographies performed by LALALA Human Steps and Quebec dancer Louise Lecavalier. The film won this year’s Alberta/ Quebec Prize at the Banff Television Festival.

Canadian productions in the festival’s Films for Television lineup include documentary filmmaker Harry Rasky’s Prophecy, an exploration of apocalypse and iconography, and producer/director Robert Menard’s La Beaute des Femmes (Cine 39), set in the world of haute couture with a contemporary twist on the eternal triangle.

Equally contemporary is Carole Poliquin’s documentary L’Age de la Performance: Messe pour le Temps des Gagnants (Cinema Libre). This disturbing film is a timely examination of life as an unending quest for efficiency and productivity.

Love is far from clear sailing and gives rise to existential crises in two new Quebec tv movies, Jean-Guy Noel’s Embrasse-moi, c’est pour la vie and Jean-Philippe Duval’s Soho.

Animation shorts on tap include four nfb films: Chris Hinton’s Watching tv, a three-minute meditative gem on the subject of tv violence which is entered in the Official Competition section; Alison Snowden and David Fine’s Bob’s Birthday; Roslyn Schwartz’s cautionary tale Arkelope; and Robert Awad’s self-explanatory Automania.

Other tv films in the wff lineup are: from the U.S., Gregory Orr’s Jack L. Warner, the Last Mogul and Living Under the Cloud: Chernobyl Today from first-time director Teresa Metcalf; and from the u.k., coproductions such as Stephen Trombley’s The Lynchburg Story, Pawel Pawlikovski’s The Grave Case of Charlie Chaplin and Brian Tilley’s In a Time of Violence.

Two tv films from France’s writing/directing team of Paule Muxel and Bertrand de Solliers are featured – AIDS, Words From One To Another and Une histoire qui n’a pas fin.

From Poland there’s Samowolka by Feliks Falk, and from Israel, Nitza Gonene’s Daddy, Come to the Fair and Aran Patinkin’s A Ring in my Thing.

Cinema of Today, Cinema of Tomorrow

Films in the Cinema of Today and Cinema of Tomorrow sections are programmed to help audiences discover new directors and trends from around the world.

Among the Cinema of Today documentaries are: from the U.S., Frederick Wiseman’s High School II, and Cuba Va: The Challenge of the Next Generation, codirected by Gail Dolgin and Vicente Franco; from France, Bosna! by Bernard-Henry Levy and Alain Ferrari; from Bulgarian filmmaker Zlatina Rousseva, Hunting for Wolves; and finally, Wiktor Grodecki’s Not Angels but Angels, a Czech Republic/France coproduction.

The dramatic offerings include Michael Corrente’s Federal Hill (Malofilm), Boza Yakin’s Fresh (Alliance Vivafilm), Phedon Papamichael’s Dark Side of Genius (Astral), Marion Vernoux’s Personne ne m’aime (Prima Film), Tom Noonan’s What Happened Was (Malofilm), Patrick Malakian’s Pourquoi maman est dans mon lit? (Malofilm) and two recent U.S. productions – Whit Stillman’s Barcelona (Alliance Vivafilm) and Kevin Smith’s Clerks (Alliance Vivafilm).

Also on the dramatic front are: from Germany, Angelika Weber’s Au Pair; from Denmark, Anders Refn’s Black Harvest; from Iceland, Fridrik Thor Fridriksson’s Movie Days; from Syria, Nabil Maleh’s The Extras; from France, Jacques Audiard’s Regarde les hommes tomber starring Jean-Louis Trintignant (Alliance Vivafilm); and from Germany, director Tom Tykwer’s Deadly Mary.

Dreamplay, a Norway/Sweden coproduction from director Unni Straume starring Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson is freely adapted from the Strindberg play. Also featured is a Cameroon-France coproduction, Daniel Kamwa’s Totor, and from Japan, Taku Oshima’s Kana-Kana.

Latin American Cinema

The wff’s Latin American Cinema section was launched 18 years ago and has evolved as a major North American showcase for Latin American film, an apt expression of the host city’s marked penchant for Latino film, literature, gastronomy and travel.

This year’s offerings include a Chile/Canada/France coproduction from director Miquel Littin called Les Naufrages (Cine 39), the story of a man who returns to a country ravaged by dictatorship after a 20-year exile; Strawberry and Chocolate (Alliance Vivafilm), codirected by Tomas Gutierrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabio; and Maria Novaro’s Mexico/Canada coproduction, Garden of Eden (Alliance Vivafilm).

Another project coproduced with Canada is Alejandro, a portrait of filmmaker Alejandro Cotta by Salvadorian director Guillermo Escalon. Last, but not least, is Without Compassion, Francisco J. Lombardi’s retelling of a Dostoyevsky classic.

Canadian Student

Film Festival

This year, 71 film and video productions will vie for the prestigious Norman McLaren Award, presented by the nfb, at the 25th edition of the Canadian Student Film Festival. The festival runs parallel to the wff, from Aug. 27-31. In all, 168 student productions were submitted from schools in b.c., Ontario and Quebec.

WFF Symposium

This year’s symposium program includes two sessions: the first, on Aug. 30, is entitled ‘Canada, the U.S. & Europe: Cooperation Not Confrontation.’ Participants include Erwin, Cohen & Jessup entertainment lawyer and session moderator Tom Garvin, Samuel Goldywn president Meyer Gotlieb, Malofilm’s Rene Malo, Alliance Releasing president Victor Loewy and October Films copresident Bingham Ray.

The second session, on Aug. 31, is called ‘Europe and the North American Market.’ Participants include lawyer Francis Fox who will moderate, Astral Europe executive and veteran coproducer Denis Heroux, Productions La Fete president Rock Demers and past Motion Picture Export Association of America president Myron Karlin.

Sponsors

An impressive list of sponsors has been lined up for this year’s festival. Rothmans Ltd. International Film has accepted an important multiyear agreement with the festival, and Royal Bank is the sponsor of this year’s closing night film gala.

Air Canada, the festival’s official transporter and its exclusive partner, is offering a trip for two to Osaka, Japan and will present the 11th annual Air Canada Award, honoring the most popular film in the wff as voted on by the public.

With files from leo rice-barker.