Montreal: Programmers at the World Film Festival have long prided themselves on the international flavor of their lineup – but at this year’s awards ceremony it was a Canadian film by a Montreal filmmaker that walked away the biggest winner.
Claude Gagnon’s Kamataki, a Canadian/Japanese coproduction about an uncle’s effort to rehabilitate his depressed nephew after a suicide attempt, won best direction, the Air Canada Prix Publique for most popular Canadian film, the FIPRESCI International Critics’ Prize and the Ecumenical Jury Prize when the fest handed out its honors on Sept. 5.

Montreal: If the World Film Festival appeared a bit battered and beleaguered this month, its cross-town rival, the upstart New Montreal FilmFest, is itself looking rather confused.

Stating that he needed to ‘flex other creative muscle,’ Slawko Klymkiw announced his resignation as CBC executive director of network programming, as well as his move to executive director of the Canadian Film Centre, on Aug. 18.
And while Klymkiw, 52, concedes he was disappointed a year ago when it was announced that he would not be promoted to executive VP of CBC Television, he indicated that he was not bitter about the position going to Richard Stursberg, former head of Telefilm Canada.

Montreal: Due to the sheer volume of screenplay assistance applications it has received, SODEC, Quebec’s provincial film-funding body, says it was obliged, as of Aug. 26, to stop accepting new pitches until the 2006/07 cycle.

Those thinking that Quebec’s cinematic winning streak will have to abate at some point will have to wait for at least another year. The region has provided TIFF with solid commercial and critical hits in recent years, from La Grande seduction (Seducing Doctor Lewis) to Oscar winner Les Invasions barbares (The Barbarian Invasions), and this year’s contingent arrives bolstered by awards from international film festivals and box-office success back home.

Montreal: Filmmaker Stephane Lapointe began shooting his first feature-length film, Une simple catastrophe, on July 16, to wrap by late August. Best known for his well-received short film Hommes en quarantaine, Lapointe has the backing of prominent Quebec producer Roger Frappier and Luc Vandal, both of Max Films, who culled the project’s $3.8-million budget.

It was one year ago that private Montreal firm SECOR released its report on the state of film festivals across Canada. Due to the report’s scolding of the management of Montreal’s World Film Festival for being distant, difficult and ineffectual, Telefilm Canada and SODEC announced that they would withdraw their annual funding for the event starting in 2005. They declared that the money, which adds up to nearly $1 million, would go instead to a new and improved international film festival.

Montreal’s World Film Fest founder and president Serge Losique has long contended that his event is an exercise in class. If the Toronto International Film Festival were the Hollywood equivalent of a Big Mac, he considers his fest a glass of fine European wine. TIFF is a video game, WFF has subtitles – or so the WFF-made mythology goes. It’s a contrast Losique and his crew have gone out of their way to highlight in interviews over the years.

It always seemed a strange fit. The World Film Festival likes to position itself as an event with old-world European snob appeal. And then, all of a sudden, it was championing Karla, the controversial yet unseen movie about serial sex-killers Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka.

It must be the strangest and most conspicuous comeback in years. Larry Kent, the Canadian filmmaking pioneer behind such highly regarded works as The Bitter Ash (1963) and High (1967), has returned to features after a 13-year hiatus with The Hamster Cage, a stylish melodrama that will have its premiere at the World Film Festival.

Canadian drama is still in a serious crisis while private conventional broadcasters are raking in the cash, according to The Need for a Regulatory Safety Net, a new study released by the Coalition of Canadian Audio-Visual Unions.

Montreal: Aside from the Gomery Inquiry, this city’s greatest soap opera and blood sport is undoubtedly the ongoing film festival war. But if watching the three events duke it out may seem alternately odd and funny, it is no laughing matter for filmmakers who, as the deadlines for submission approach, are left wondering where they should submit their projects.
The three fests – the World Film Festival, the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma and the newly formed Montreal International Film Festival – have been fighting over schedules, naming rights, alleged insults and government funding since last year. The confusion is taking a toll on filmmakers.