MONTREAL — In an effort to fill the gap that will be left when the Ex-Centris complex stops showing movies this spring, the outspoken founder of one of Canada’s oldest art-house theaters, Claude Chamberlan, ruffled some film industry feathers this week.

In a recent article in the French daily La Presse, the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma co-president said he was talking with various levels of government to create a new auteur theater complex at an undisclosed location.

‘I wanted to give people hope,’ Chamberlan told Playback Daily from his home in Montreal, noting that people were ‘shocked and depressed’ when Ex-Centris owner Daniel Langlois said he would stop showing films there in March. The theater hosts the FNC and is Montreal’s premiere venue for independent films.

The article implied that Langlois would support the project and that it would replace Cinéma Parallèle, a non-profit theater founded by Chamberlan and currently housed within Ex-Centris, which shows mainly Quebec and English-Canadian films. Its future is now up in the air .

Both Ex-Centris and Cinéma Parallèle then put out statements distancing themselves from Chamberlan. The ‘hypothetical scenarios’ in the article ‘represent the activities and opinions of Claude Chamberlan alone,’ said Parallèle’s managers.

‘The article in La Presse implied that Langlois would finance the project, which is not the case,’ Chamberlan told Playback Daily two days after the controversial piece appeared. Chamberlan says he went to the media with his idea — which had been percolating for many years — because he wanted to move things along. ‘Normally I wouldn’t make this kind of announcement, but we have to get things rolling,’ he says.

Chamberlan says he promised Parallèle he would make no more public declarations. ‘I just want us to get together and solve this problem. Independent distributors need some place to show their films.’

Independent distributor Metropole Films hopes Chamberlan’s plans see the light of day. ‘The loss of Ex-Centris will drastically affect our acquisitions. It was already hard for us to place our films,’ Metropole’s Charles Tremblay told Playback Daily. His company distributes Mongrel Media titles in Quebec.