This post has as purpose to let you relax and enjoy this holiday’s week without worrying about what is going to be posted on 4MTL as we will not post anything daily on your favorite blog.

This week only then, let yourself pig out with the turkey and shake hairy uncles’ hands and even sing some famous christmass songs if you really want to.

We will be back on Monday december 28 with an explosive schedule and new modifications that you’ll appreciate for sure…

From all the 4MTL team, we wish you the most awesome holiday and a lots of gifts!

JulianC

Oh here’s a refreshing idea! Talk about movies presented to a specific public but which could interest an important amount of people!

“The Dimestore Video” is in this category; a purely skate 20 minutes video produced by Philippe Lavoie (himself skater) and which triggers a bunch of fantastic emotions to the  spectators.  This kind of videos are usually and too often presented with only performed calculated tricks without making place for fun, imagnation and emotions that performers  have. As opposed to “The Dimestore Video”, where we can see young katers perform a “hollie” over an sleeping hobo. Tere is even interesting content for people who likes to see others hurt themselves… naturally, as in any good skate video! As a proof, during the presentation organised last Thursday, the room was full of people reactign with cries to any critical moment

The video takes place in different nice places such as Barcelone, San Fransisco, Toronto, Calgary, Montreal and few others. Phillipe accordingly creates an instantaneous  success around him. He films right on the stop creaing amazing angles or directly on a skateboard in order to take us right into action. It is then a movie simply and principally axed on skateboard but its hedonistic aspects and its hip-hop music reminding us of the lost in the ’95s soul of the performers adds a lot to the video.

As a matter of fact, a beautiful piece of cinematographic amateur art for anybody who loves skaeboarding or anybody who simply wants to be entertained and have a good time admiring amazing skaters who performed at their best!

For more infos about the Dimestore Crew, I suggest you see their website.

JulianC

The film Se nada mais der certo will be presented during the Montreal Brazilian Film Festival

Of the 40 film festivals in Montreal that I’m aware of (I will give you the full list someday), about 10 are focused on ethno-cultural groups that have an important community in our city. It’s the case of the Montreal Brazilian Film Festival which, since 3 years now, heateans our late autumn and offers us a perfect occasion to discover all the wealth of the brazilian culture. 

We all know that the risk is quite big when you’re looking to choose a film from a country that doesn’t have a huge cinematographic tradition: here’s a little selection of films that seemed to me the most interesting. 

- Friday/Sunday 7 PM : the opening feature, Chega de Saudade, directed by the excellent director from Sao Paulo, Lais Bodanzky.

- Saturday 7PM : The documentary film Palavra (en)cantada, winner of the prize of best documentary at the gala of cinematographic industry in Brazil this year.

- Tuesday 7PM : Se nada mais der certo, the drama that won all the important prizes in Brazil this year. Trailer here

- Wednesday 7PM : Madame Sata, released in 2003, a film that got discussed about a lot in the cinema world for good… and bad reasons. 

- Thursday 7PM : Orfeu Negro, the only film of the french director Marcel Camus, with a soundtrak of the legend of bossa nova Antonio Carlos Jobim. Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Movie and of the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1959-1960.

N.B. All the films are presented in their original version with French subtitles, except Madame Sata which is presented with English subtitles.

No matter where you’re from, the meeting this week is at Cinema du Parc. If you’re a big fan of the iberic accent but like me, you’re session ending has begun a bit earlier than usual, fique tranquilo: you will be able to see with the Montreal Ibero-Latinoamerican Film Festival (Festivalissimo) in March.

Website of the festival

Website of Cinéma du Parc

Secret Link

colio

Last autumn, I fell in love with the universe of documentary films. For a whole month, I watched about one film every day and my love soon transformed itself in a desire to make one myself, which finally brought me to Central America.

I left there with my video camera and the determination to make the best film ever. My idea was to make a film about me who travels to Central America. When I came back, I watched the 6 hours of film that I had summed up, and I soon realised that you don’t make a documentary (even a bad one) with only a camera, and interesting subject and your good will. You need a huge artistic sensibility, a continuous effort of reflexion… and last but not least, lots of guts.

Starting last Wednesday and until next Saturday, the whole Montreal is in love with documentary films with the 12th edition of les Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal. More than a simple competition, the festival celebrates documentary with 4 main themes: caméra-stylo (documentaries that put light on the subjectivity of the director), caméra au poing (socially-engaged documentaries that gives the voice to people that should be heard), eco-camera (documentaries that focus on the scientific and environnemental issues of the era), Rubans Canards (documentaries without thirst of truth, that want to entertain us with very special subjects).

Many Quebec-based directors are seeing their films in the official selection. One of them is Martin Fournier with his documentary Les Murs du Son that’s screened tonight at 9:15 PM at La Grande Bibliothèque. The film explores the dream of fame that’s entertained by many groups who practice in the studio complexe Cité 2000 in Hochelaga. Being myself a future rockstar, I will certainly assist to the première, which will be followed by a rock concert by La Gachette and Huis Clos (2 bands that appear in the film).

For those who go the sleep early, there’s also the presentation of 5 shorts by the late Pierre Falardeau tomorrow at 3h30 PM at La Cinémathèque Québécoise. One of them is his shivering photo juxtaposition to accompany the famous poem Speak White by Michèle Lalonde here narrated by Marie Eckel aka Passe-Partout.

For more information and to buy your tickets, here’s the link to the website of RIDM.

Much love,

coolio

Cinema Addict? Or simply likes it?

No matter how much you like cinema, the 15th Festival CINEMANIA offers entertainement for everybody and will take place between the 5th (today) and the 15th of November. If you didn’t knwo it yet, CINEMANIA is a festival regrouping several francophone cinematographic creations in order to construct and offer us a new and very refreshing schedule. It is actually very resembling the Fantasia Festival but strictly in french and including no animation movies.

What is so special about the 15th anniversary? I was going there…

For approximatly ten dollars, COSTA GAVRAS will be there and will be giving an exclusive cinema teaching lesson in addition of presenting his most recent movie ” Eden à l’Ouest ” (November 12 and 13th). What would you ask for more? Well, you will also have Costa Gavras’ forthy years old movie ” Z ” (November 14th) in order to make you remember some good souvenirs.

The box office and all the movie showrooms are located at Cinema Imperial, 1430, Bleury street, on the beautiful island, of course.

This is a Festival you don’t want ot miss if you are a cinema lover, or better, a french lover.

Important Notice: Anglophones will be glad to know that all the movies are presented with english subtitles as well. “Bonne ecoute!”

JulianC

Thanks to Alexander Leblanc for the photo

I don’t know why the kitsch esthetics of the 80s have done a comeback for the last half of the 2000s. I don’t know neither why they’re loosing some momentum this year to a new movement that we could call multi-cultural minimalism. But I know at least one thing: the culture of technologic hedonism has not said its last word.

In Montreal, the cinematographic effort of neo-disco culture is assumed by the Indecent Xposure Team, with Nick Younes at its head. Not only do they blog the most funky new video-clips on indecentxposure.net, but Nick and his team are presently working on the creation of the first independent anglophone Web TV in Montreal. Their goal is to put in light the culture of Montreal and its local artists (props!) from many differents disciplines: Music, Fashion, Nightlife, Arts+Culture. The promotion has already started with the release of some episodes of their their new webserie called Reality Check on http://indecentxposure.net/webtv/realitycheck. You will be able to see the rest sometime in the beginning of 2010.

In a closer future (tonight actually), Indecent Xposure celebrates Halloween a day ahead everybody with its bigger party of the year at Decibel Underground. And just to stay in my theme, I’d like to make you watch a few times the superb video teaser of the party, directed by Jason Voltaire aka Skunch.

Influenced by So Me and most precisely the video teaser of Ed Rec Vol. II, Skunch, working on Abobe After/Effect, got specialized in pastiches of VHS editing 1984-style. Just to give you an idea of what this consists: it took 5 days of solid work to produce this animation, which lasts exactly… 1 minute 20 seconds! All of this for the pleasure of our eyes. Remember this name: we’ll have the chance to talk about him in more details pretty soon.

To end this post, here’s a little Halloween gift from Nick: a selection of his favorite videoclips of ALL TIME.

Acid Girls – The Numbers Song: http://vimeo.com/5968214

Kanye West ft. Kid Cudi – Welcome To Heartbreak: http://vimeo.com/4578366

Fever Ray – When I Grow Up : http://vimeo.com/3108686

Bat For Lashes – What’s a Girl to do: http://vimeo.com/1323646

Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head – Sophisticated Side Ponytail : http://vimeo.com/1507417

Kanye West – Flashing Lights : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEccxPPwXmI

Buraka Som Sistema – Sound of Kuduro: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsgO0rNiyXw

Lily Allen – Fuck You: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1P4_YCFtkQ

BONUS

Omnikrom ft. TTC – Danse La Poutine (at 2:50, Nick is the guy with the green cap eating a poutine): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW3WnE3d32s

See you tomorrow

coolio

Engaging its 6th edition of the IMAGE+NATION, this festival organizes some nice video projections and a photo exposition. All of this in 4 different places:

• Imperial Center
  1432 de Bleury (place des arts metro)

• Goethe-Institut cinema
  418 Sherbrooke E  (sherbrooke metro)

• J.A. de Sève cinema
  1400 de Maisonneuve West (guy metro)

• Café Laika
  4040 St-Laurent (Duluth corner)

This festival regroups more than one hundred films, including long cuts, shorts and documentaries. Throughout those movies, LGBT culture will obviously be a recurring theme and will be explored by hard facts or funny events.

Also,  IMAGE+NATION festival organizes a photo exposition and this year, they invited the artist JJ Levine.

JJ Levine is a young Montreal-based artist who works in intimate portraiture. Levine has recently completed a BFA in photography at Concordia University, and a Minor in Interdisciplinary Studies in Sexuality from a Fine Arts perspective. Levine works mostly in photography and video, and through these visual mediums, explores issues surrounding gender, sexuality, self-identity, and queer space. She has exhibited at artist run centres in Montreal as well as commercial galleries across Canada. These bodies of work balance a political agenda with a strong sense of formal aesthetic integrity/beauty. In addition to pursuing a career as an artist, Levine gives “lesbian haircuts” in a bike shop in Montreal’s gay village, across North America and in Europe. 

He presents us his new exhibition called  Switch 2009.

This serie of diptychs presents pairs of seemingly different “heterosexual couples” interacting intimately in a studio setting. This parody of prom-style portraits challenges gender stability as the viewer will recognize that these couples are comprised not of four models, but only two.

The festival ends on October 31th with the movie Mr. Right, of David & Jacqui Morris.

• The website: here
• You can see the movie listing here
• To buy your tickets, click here

Have fun!

DPV

Sex is pretty mysterious, isn’t ? Sometimes, it’s definitely the best thing in the world; other times, it’s just like a day at the office; but one thing is pretty sure: a big part of human activity is governed by our sexual drives [Freud: 'Everything is sex.']*

I don’t know if the idea to organize a sex documentary festival is born in a similar psychoanalytical discussion, but in any case, with his Smut Festival, Cinema Politica Concordia has found the way to overpact the JA de Sève Cinema  of young lewds who, having come to see some lesbian scenes in good conscience, will get out of there grown up. 

For now on until monday, 12 documentaries related to sex work and pornography will be displayed for free. No Michael Moore in the house – most of the films aren’t even on Internet Movie Database – but just looking to the schedule, we are drawn to certain titles: Live Nude Girls Unite !, The Fall of Communism as Seen In Gay Porn, 100 Stories About My Grandmother.

A conservative choice… Live Nude Girls Unite ! by Vicky Funari and the strip-club dancer Julia Query, presented Saturday at 2:30PM. This film generated a lot of international hype and has been very well received by critics (check Rotten Tomatoes).

And for the pure minds, tonight, at 9:30 PM, will be presented a selection of «porn» scenes from the silent era, with a DJ set by the Montreal rapper SoCalled. The cost of admission is 5$. Don’t miss that please ! Bring your grandsparents !

SoCalled – You Are Never Alone (right click to download) OR buy it on 

* Against Freud, I wouln’t say that sex is the cause of all of our behaviors. But, let’s say it, we think about it a lot, and our action reflects it pretty well. Result: babies…

During the Festival du Nouveau Cinema, Kino organizes the Kabaret Kino. Over sixty producers from all over the globe are invited to participate. Here the thing: early in the morning each producer came with an idea of film. Members of Kino (actor, technician…in fact: everyone who could help) join the producer and start to work.No time to lose, the short film must be ready in 48h! After two intensives days of work the films are presented during the Festival du Nouveau Cinema. The first event will take place this Saturday, 20h30  at the Agora du Coeur des Sciences de l’UQAM.For others dates:http://www.kino00.com/kabaret/.

Here is a good teaser made by the Kino team:

And don’t forget the Festival du Nouveau Cinema himself. Many goods films are scheduled and there is a special section for the vitality of Quebec cinema here.

Fab4