LOSIQUE PREVAILS
But what to make of 41st FFM?
Just when you thought it was over…
When all appeared lost, as the clock ticked down to midnight, Serge Losique pulled his beleaguered Festival des films du monde (FFM) from the ashes and found a way to bring it back to life for at least one more go-round.
The 41st FFM begins Thursday, but you could be forgiven for not knowing that. If you did know, you’re forgiven for not having a clue as to what films might be shown there. And if you’re adventurous and dedicated enough to have searched the FFM website or, crazier still, gone down to the Imperial Theatre to buy tickets or flip through the three stapled pages of titles (no descriptions) serving as a makeshift program for this year’s festival, you’re forgiven for coming up almost empty.
The one thing we do know is that the FFM will screen a few dozen films at the Imperial Theatre over the next 12 days. Even that was in doubt following news last month that Hydro-Québec had cut power to the venue due to outstanding bills.
Enter Pierre Karl Péladeau, who on Tuesday joined Losique and his son, François BeaudryLosique, to announce that Péladeau’s company Québecor had swooped in to buy the venue’s mortgage debt of nearly $5 million, which threatened the very future of the building.
So the Imperial is in relatively safe hands. The FFM? Let’s be generous and say that the jury is still out.
No, really. As of Wednesday, the jury for this year’s festival had not been announced. Losique has promised an actress of some international renown will lead the jury, alongside someone from the Quebec film community, but at Tuesday’s press conference he preferred not to reveal their names until the actress had arrived in Montreal.
The rest of the jury, he has said, will not watch the films together but via Vimeo links on their computers. So much for the magic of the big screen.
The FFM, as we all know, has been going through financial difficulties over the past decade or so, exacerbated since 2014 by a complete lack of government funding (SODEC, Telefilm Canada and the city of Montreal have all abandoned the event due to alleged financial irregularities).
All of which has left the feisty, fiery, intermittently charismatic and ever-combative Losique in a bit of a pickle. His beloved and once (back in the FFM heyday of the ’80s and early ’90s) star-studded event has been scraping by with barely a penny to its name.
Over the past three years, attendees and Losique’s beloved press have been treated to an increasingly chaotic, not to mention quixotic state of affairs. We
don’t need to harp on the case of the missing paycheques (and accompanying staff revolt) from 2015; nor on last year’s last-minute loss of the Cineplex Forum as a festival venue, along with the ensuing improvised scheduling adjustments which left many visiting filmmakers with nowhere to show their films and/or nowhere to stay.
So we won’t.
But we will, we have to, wonder what to make of this 41st FFM. The opening film, a Russian adaptation of Anna Karenina by Karen Shakhnazarov, screens Thursday at 7 p.m. at the Imperial.
Beginning Friday, open-minded festival-goers can choose from the other movies screening daily at the Imperial as of 9 a.m. Since there’s no festival program this year — even the usual free pamphlet with brief plot descriptions has been scrapped — people must click around the FFM website until they come across the words “film schedule” at the bottom of the home page, which leads to the above-noted descriptions.
True to its name, the 41st FFM features films from China, Australia, the Czech Republic, Romania, Italy, South Korea, Iran, Slovenia, Kyrgyzstan, France, Iraq, Mexico, Chile, Albania, Poland, Japan, Taiwan, Hungary, the Dominican Republic, the United States and at least one from Quebec — not bad, out of just 37 films.
So far, there are 18 titles in the FFM’s world competition and 19 in its first films competition. Questioned on the topic on Tuesday, Losique couldn’t say how many more would be announced, but promised there would be more.
Cinéma du Parc confirmed Wednesday that, beginning Thursday, two of its theatres have been reserved for the festival; though as of Wednesday afternoon the cinema had still not received the lineup of films to be screened.
The Dollar Cinema is also listed on the FFM site as a venue, but under the names of both theatres, in lieu of programming information, are the hopeful words, “À venir.”
In a way, it’s ludicrous; in another, it’s miraculous.
By allying himself with Péladeau and his empire, Losique has bought himself time. Not a lot of time, but a little.
One thing is certain: as evidenced by the events of the last few years, Losique can’t go it alone. If the FFM is to survive, he must do as he has done with the Imperial — swallow his pride and find someone to step in and lend his event some security.
Otherwise, in a few years, Québecor will own the Imperial and Losique’s precious FFM will be but a distant memory.