SCENES FROM THE FESTIVAL DES FILMS DU MONDE
The Festival des films du monde (a.k.a. Montreal World Film Festival) and Serge Losique are often in the news for the wrong reasons, but the event was once a leading light on Montreal’s cultural calendar. Here are excerpts from previous reports on the fest, its founder and the stars he brought to town.
AGNES OF GOD DIRECTOR A BELIEVER IN MONTREAL Thursday, Aug. 22, 1985
Quick, purposeful strides take the slender woman to the waiting table of journalists.
“Hi,” she says politely. “Jane Fonda,” she adds, unnecessarily. And the highest-profile star in an extremely high-profile event, this year’s Montreal World Film Festival, briskly seats herself.
Fonda’s reason for being in Montreal is simple: this is the world première of Agnes of God. But the reason the movie is making its première in Montreal is director Norman Jewison.
He says his reasons for opening the film at the Montreal festival instead of at other events such as the Venice Film Festival that some might suggest are more prestigious are a combination of the logical and the personal.
“Because it takes place in Montreal and Quebec, it’s a natural choice. Also by the fact that je suis un Canadien.”
It isn’t pure patriotism that has brought Jewison to the World Film Festival.
“The Montreal film festival is so important internationally that the Venice Film Festival that desperately wanted this film and were willing to give us a whole evening at Venice cancelled our participation in the festival the moment that they heard we had agreed to play in Montreal.” — Lucinda Chodan
A DREAM OF THE ‘CANNES OF NORTH AMERICA’ Friday, Aug. 22, 1986
There were lights, cameras and plenty of action on Ste-Catherine St. last night as the 10th-anniversary edition of the Montreal World Film Festival got underway.
Former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, festival president Serge Losique and honorary president Norman Jewison were among those arriving by limousine for the opening gala.
The festival is the almost singlehanded creation of 54-year-old Losique, an enigmatic autocrat who vowed to make Montreal the “Cannes of North America.”
His opponents have included everyone from the Parti Québécois government, which put the squeeze on funding one year, to Quebec film distributors who threatened to withhold movies and nationalist filmmakers who once stormed the opening ceremonies and unfurled a banner on stage accusing the festival of “cultural imperialism.”
Through it all, Losique has seen his dream to create the Cannes of North America more or less materialize. — Montreal Gazette
A GLOBAL VISION
Sunday, Aug. 28, 1988
It’s a special audience at the Montreal World Film Festival — an audience that’ll kill you if you talk during the movie, even during the opening or end credits. They ’ll applaud great moments, hiss at clunkers and never, ever unwrap candies in the quiet parts.
Getting tickets gets harder every year, and there are always those interminable lineups at the box office. Doesn’t matter. It’s the potential for surprise and discovery that makes the prowl from theatre to theatre worthwhile.
The festival had hardly been launched in 1977 before critics in the media and government began pummelling it for not being sufficiently Québécois. Serge Losique stubbornly stuck to his internationalist guns, presenting as large and as multi-faceted a cinematic vision as he could. In the process, the festival made a contribution to the broadening of horizons that has marked life in Montreal and Quebec in the 1980s. Perhaps more importantly, it’s been fun. — Wayne Grigsby
SPECIAL ASSIGNMENT FOR 007 Saturday, Aug. 28, 1993
Roger Moore, who became synonymous with secret agent James Bond and the digits 007 during a stint that spanned seven films in 14 years, is in town for the film fes- tival this weekend. Serge Losique is honouring him with a special tribute at Place des Arts tonight.
But as Moore made crystal clear during an enlightening conversation yesterday, he has his own agenda for a first-ever visit to this city: he’s here in his capacity as spokesman for UNICEF. If his presence helps sell a whack of $20 tickets for the tribute and subsequent UNICEF benefit screening of the French/Italian film Jonah Who Lived in the Whale at Théâtre Jean-Duceppe, he will have done his job. — John Griffin
FESTIVAL AND FOUNDER ARE ONE AND THE SAME Saturday, Aug. 19, 2000
Think of the relationship between Serge Losique and the Montreal World Film Festival as a marriage. During their long union, there have been good times and bad. Through it all, the two have been inseparable. Losique is the festival. The festival, c’est moi.
As festival and founder enter the new millennium, however, a chorus composed largely of members of the media and players in the movie industry are raising their voices to ask whether the marriage is for better or for worse.
The refrain is a familiar one. Losique is secretive. The festival is high-handed. There are no stars. There is no support for the local industry. Where are the big movies? Where’s the party?
Losique responded immediately to a phone call this week, giving the lie to at least some of the accepted criticism that he’s incommunicado to reporters.
“Gene Hackman. Morgan Freeman. Daniel Auteuil. Gong Li. Liv Ullmann. David Mamet. What, do you want more?’’ Anticipating a question that wasn’t even in the air, the infectiously excitable Losique rattled off these names with machine-gun intensity as examples of high-profile film people who would be attending his festival this year. — John Griffin
PRAISE FROM DE NIRO Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2002
Robert De Niro brought City by the Sea to our city by the river yesterday. The versatile star introduced his new drama before an oversold Montreal World Film Festival house at Place des Arts, which greeted his late arrival with a standing ovation.
Maybe they were reacting to beaming festival president Serge Losique, who described De Niro as “the greatest actor in America.” He’s certainly the greatest mainstream star the festival has attracted in a long time.
A normally ultrarational reporter asked him if he’d repeat a few bits of dialogue from Taxi Driver. Ah, “no.”
The diehard New Yorker said he loved Montreal, was very happy to be here, and seemed suitably impressed by the turnout. “Montreal is a great city, a terrific city.” De Niro shot The Score here with Marlon Brando and Edward Norton a couple of years ago. “It’s a little cold in winter.”
De Niro emphasized the need for film festivals in a global economy, if only to remind developed countries there are other cultures.
“Festivals are a forum to introduce things that aren’t necessarily mainstream and might not get shown outside a festival context. That in itself is the most important reason to have them.” — John Griffin
LOSIQUE VERSUS TELEFILM
Tuesday, Sept. 21, 2004 Serge Losique has fired a broad- side at his critics and appears set to mount a spirited defence of his festival.
Losique has penned a hard-hitting open letter, saying he is the victim of a vendetta orchestrated by Telefilm Canada and the Société de développement des entreprises culturelles. He claims Telefilm is determined to put him out of business because he has been openly critical of its Canadian film policies. In late July, Telefilm and SO DEC released a scathingly critical report, knocking Losique’s fest for its strained relations with the film industry and lack of transparent management and financial accountability. On Sept. 7, the day after the fest wrapped, the two agencies launched a bid for proposals for groups interested in creating a new international film event in Montreal.
Losique confirmed he has no intention of making a bid and accused the agencies of deliberately trying to destroy the fest.
“The Montreal World Film Festival’s position on the anti-cultural policies of Telefilm Canada has contributed to a manifest hostility by the administration of this agency toward the festival,” the letter reads.
“Is the Montreal World Film Festival being muzzled because it dares publicly to warn that our cinema is imperilled? Is Montreal being squelched in order to leave more room for Toronto?” — Brendan Kelly
ABANDONED BUT NOT ALONE
Saturday, Aug. 27, 2005
Serge Losique opened his 29th Montreal World Film Festival last night with Maggie Cheung on his arm and a crowd at Place des Arts for the Chinese crime thriller A World Without Thieves.
Abandoned on the red carpet by many levels of government and the Canadian film industry like a leper with a bell, the resilient Losique responded with Hong Kong superstar Cheung, a stellar jury that included revered auteur Theo Angelopoulos and French New Wave icon Anna Karina, and a fresh bunch of friends to fill seats at Théâtre Maisonneuve.
It’s a sign of the crazy times that one of those supporters was Claude Chamberlan, co-founder of rival Festival du nouveau cinéma and, until the recent arrival of the New Montreal FilmFest, Losique’s mortal enemy. His appearance was, quipped local producer Kevin Tierney, of “some anthropological significance.” It was Chamberlan’s first World Film Festival opening night in 22 years. — John Griffin
ALIVE AT 30
Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2006
The 30th Montreal World Film Festival ended yesterday with the laying on of 20 prizes. But the real winners were Serge Losique, who somehow mounted a viable event despite a second year of drastically reduced funding, and an audience that supported 215 features and 194 short films from 76 countries with names like Saudi Arabia and Mauritius.
Attendance numbers have not been released. It is unlikely Losique will break with long-standing tradition and cough them up now. But after the disastrous non- support for the one-and-only New Montreal FilmFest last fall, the possibility existed people would not turn out for the World Film Festival, either.
This was simply not so, as my informal investigation (I counted heads in rooms) and the testimony of filmmakers confirms.
Horace Shansab’s Zolykha’s Secret came to town with no advance drum-beating other than the notoriety of its country of origin: Afghanistan. The director was reportedly overwhelmed by the public response to his film about a family trying to survive the Taliban regime. — John Griffin
DEPARDIEU IN PAIN AND IN REFLECTION
Tuesday, Sept. 7, 2010
Like an old lion with a thorn in his paw, Gérard Depardieu arrived at the Imperial Cinema yesterday leaning on a cane, his left leg in a brace, wincing occasionally as he hobbled along the red carpet, past the flashes of cameras that blinded him and that he angrily demanded
cease their “pornographic” attentions so he could get to the stage.
A full house of 900 fans applauded the 61-year-old actor as he limped down the aisle with Serge Losique for the start of a questionand-answer session at the World Film Festival.
When Depardieu — recovering from leg surgery after yet another in a long series of motorcycle accidents — finally took his seat, it was as if he had found his comfort zone: a friendly space to talk about himself.
Not just himself, though. Famous directors?
He’s known a few: Truffaut, Godard, Bertolucci, Pialat, Veber, Blier, Sautet, Ferreri, Duras, Resnais, Chabrol, Corneau, Berri, Wajda, Claude Miller, Ridley Scott, Peter Weir. Famous actors, too: Gabin, Brasseur, Reggiani, De Niro, Michel Simon, Fanny Ardant, Isabelle Adjani.
Depardieu mentioned all of them, spurred by 15 scripted questions that Losique, in trademark black ball cap, read to him from his seat beside him in the spotlight. — Jeff Heinrich
‘I ADMIRE HIS STUBBORNNESS’ Saturday, Aug. 29, 2015
Pierre-Henri Deleau, the cofounder of Cannes’s Directors’ Fortnight, is back at the World Film Festival this year as the head of the jury for the First Feature Prize.
He missed last year’s edition, marking just the second time he has not attended in the event’s 39year history, “because I didn’t want Serge to have to pay for my ticket,” he said, making reference to the festival’s financial difficulties.
“I admire his stubbornness. It’s incredible,” Deleau said of Losique.
“I understand that people want to push him out, but that is no solution.
“People are faithful (to the festival). You see the full theatres at 9 in the morning — people are there for Indonesian and South American films that will probably not come out on regular screens. That’s important. I have great sympathy for him.” — T’Cha Dunlevy