Serge Losique won’t pull plug on Festival des films du monde

Director unfazed by money issues: ‘The films will be here, one way or another’

Lights out apparently doesn’t mean the end, for Serge Losique.

The combative founder and president of the beleaguered 41st Festival des films du monde (FFM) refuses to let his event die. And so year after year, it withers on, on life support, in an increasingly chaotic if not quite catatonic state.

The latest is that Hydro-Québec has cut electricity to the cinema that occupies the ground floor of the FFM’s heavily mortgaged prize jewel, the Imperial Theatre, due to unpaid bills, as reported Tuesday in La Presse.

Losique countered that there’s still power in the festival offices, above the cinema, and that of course this will all be worked out — but if not, he said, they can always use generators.

Can you watch movies by candlelight?

To add to Losique’s growing money troubles, creditors are circling to collect an alleged $4.4 million in outstanding debt.

Private lenders Michel Constantin and partner Denis Hébert say they have yet to see a cent of the $3.65 million they lent Losique in December 2015, at interest rates of 18 per cent and 15 per cent, leading to the current total, according to La Presse.

The catch is that the Imperial and a property of Losique’s in the Eastern Townships were offered as collateral. Constantin and Hébert have requested to be declared owners of the Imperial, according to documents filed at the Montreal courthouse.

Built in 1913, the Imperial was given to the FFM by Famous Players in 1995, then transferred to a non-profit organization of which Losique is a board member. It is disconcerting to think the fate of the storied building is now tied to the fast-sinking ship of the FFM’s finances. Reached Tuesday afternoon, Losique insisted that no court date has been set, and that the FFM and the Imperial are two separate entities.

“If I’m replaced tomorrow,” he said, “and they’re not able to pay (the debt), the festival will go somewhere else. We’re tenants (in the Imperial). We’re not responsible for what the owners do.”

In other words, less than a month from the FFM’s scheduled start date of Aug. 24, alarm bells are ringing.

Last year, things remained relatively quiet until a day before the festival, when word spread that the FFM’s agreement with the Cineplex Forum had fallen through due to a lack of funds to secure the venue.

What followed was one of the strangest scenarios in the festival’s increasingly troubled history, as staff walked out en masse, screenings were cancelled and schedules rejigged. At first, there were films showing only at the Imperial, then other venues, including Théâtre Outremont and Cinéma du Parc, began lending assistance, out of sympathy for the FFM’s predicament and/or for the visiting filmmakers stuck with nowhere to show their work.

Stories abounded of film teams arriving only to learn they had nowhere to stay, their screenings were in limbo, or had been rescheduled only to be shown to scattered audiences at random times posted on sheets of paper taped to the Imperial windows the day before.

You can’t make this stuff up. And last year was but a followup to 2015, when complaints of outstanding paycheques led to revolt by some staff, and eventually to a lawsuit filed against the festival, with some employees not receiving their money until February 2016, if at all.

The FFM has been fighting for survival since 2005, when government agencies SODEC and Telefilm cut their funding in favour of the short-lived New Montreal FilmFest.

As of 2014, SODEC, Telefilm and the city of Montreal have withheld financing to the FFM due to alleged financial irregularities. In 2015, SODEC filed a lawsuit against the FFM for repayment of a $886,311 loan extended to the festival in 2010.

And yet, just when you think it can’t possibly continue, Losique goes to increasingly extreme measures to make it through one more tumultuous edition.

On the phone, Tuesday, Losique said the show will go on. Asked if the festival will use other theatres aside from the Imperial this year, he responded in the affirmative without offering specifics. “Of course,” he said. “I can’t say (which ones) right now, it depends on the price. There are many possibilities.”

Contacted by email, a Cineplex representative said it is “still being determined” whether the company will renew ties with the FFM.