FIFA 2018: L'Homme de l'isle

L'HOMME DE L'ISLE

Documentary

Official Competition Art FIFA 2018

Director: BRUNO BOULIANNE

72 minutes | Québec, Canada | 2017

RELEASE date in Quebec City and Montreal - March 23, 2018.

With this film, Bruno Boulianne brings into focus St. Lawrence River, specifically its Isle aux Oies and Isle aux Grues, which are actually two ends of the same long and narrow island in the middle of the river. He presents a skilled hunter Gilles Gagné, a living incarnation of the place where he lives and where he practices his hunting guide profession in close connection with the elements, history and the islands' memory.

For thirty years, Gilles Gagné had guided the world renown Quebec painter Jean-Paul Riopelle (October 7, 1923 – March 12, 2002) to the most spectacular goose hunts. More than an accomplice of hunting, he became an ally to some of Riopelle's artistic creations, being a witness of the passing time. Now, in the film, he hunts on similar trails with another French Canadian visual artist Marc Séguin.

Marc Séguin and Gilles Gagné (right) 

The film elaborates how the geese hunting trips of Gilles Gagné with Jean-Paul Riopelle had contributed to the artist's imagery. The brutal act of shooting, the geese blood and death had especially found an expression in the Reopelle's monumental work Tribute to Rosa Luxemburg, a legacy piece, which he began in his studio on Île-aux-Oies in November 1992 after learning of the death in Paris of his former close companion, the American painter Joan Mitchel. The work was displayed in full at the MNBAQ (Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec - Quebec Museum of Fine Art) exhibition between January 29, 2014 - January 3, 2016.

Gilles Gagné in front of Riopelle's Tribute to Rosa Luxemburg

In addition to artistic allusions and art connections, the film presents Quebec regional nature and also an ethnographic study of the life on the island, featuring even a local Pierrot costume festival. The island's  inhabitants French also differs from the standard or Montreal French, not only in pronunciation but also in some vocabulary. For the Anglophone viewers, even those who speak French, future English subtitles would be helpful.

The photography aspect of the film is quite stunning. The orchestration of the nature camera shots, sounds, and the dance-like movement of the birds and branches form a visual and auditory symphony that is hypnotic and induces an almost meditative state.

Click on images to enlarge them.

The film might be of great interest to hunters and could be promoted in hunting clubs across the continent. On the other hand, it might create too great an interest, many wanting to coming to hunt on the island where the geese population is drastically diminishing and is no longer plentiful even for the local hunters.

CREATIVE TEAM

Les Films du 3 mars

With participation of GILLES GAGNÉ, MARC SÉGUIN, GINA VÉZINA

Editing: VINCENT GUIGNARD

Photography: ALEX MARGINEANU, FRANÇOIS VINCELETTE

Sound: STÉPHANE BARSALOU, MÉLANIE GAUTHIER

Sound Director MARTIN ALLARD, SIMON GERVAIS

Audio mixing: SERGE BOIVIN

Director, Script and Producer BRUNO BOULIANNE

FILM TRAILER on Vimeo

https://vimeo.com/252349740

For more information and FIFA film festival and scheduling, visit the Art FIFA website.

Gilles Gagné hunting

FIFA 2017: Agatha Christie Contre Hercule Poirot

AGATHA CHRISTIE CONTRE HERCULE POIROT:

QUI A TUÉ ROGER ACKROYD?

Who Killed Roger AckroyD?

FRANCE | 2016 | 57 MIN | French

Category: FIFA Grand Panorama

This film clearly illustrates how little, until now, have we understood the real genius of Agatha Christie, at least vis-a-vis her novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. It is only when Pierre Bayard undertakes to stage the novel as a play that he ends up discovering an amazing, original concept of this novel.

At first the film takes us through Agatha Christie's early biography and what motivated her to write. Then it focuses on Pierre Bayard's staging of the play, his need to minutely analyse Christie's writing, the novel's characters and scenes, and even to look into the police investigative tools that he himself then applies to understand better the novel's action and timing. This leads him to discover that the way the novel and its plot have been understood until now is not exactly what the novel insinuates. Unfortunately, if I say anything more, I would give out too many clues and spoil the film, which in itself becomes an investigative narrative, a search for the clues of Who's Done It?

The film elucidates Agatha Christie's technique and intent, and lets the viewer to discovers how much she was in the forefront of the crime novel genre, how avant-garde for her times, to the extend that it is only now this aspect of her writing is becoming finally understood. 

I had a problem with only one aspect of this film: the way the interviews with English researchers were audibly translated into French, both English and French simultaneous narrations heard at the same volume. Since neither of the languages is my mother tongue, and I acquired them both later in life, I had a hard time, actually had failed to pick up any of them clearly enough to understand what was being said. When previously presented with a similar situation in a film where one of the languages was my mother tongue, I had no problem to hear my native tongue clearly. I additionally suspect that people with some hearing problems, even slight ones like tinnitus, would also have  problems to pick up one of the languages more clearly, even a mother tongue. I therefore recommend that the film has a written translation s.- t.  to facilitate the understanding of what is being said.

Agatha Chritie as a child

Agatha Christie

OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS

“The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) is one of Agatha Christie’s most celebrated novels. Its renown stems from a plot twist that was highly original for its time: the killer is hidden behind the mask of the narrator himself. This earned Christie the wrath of some critics, who considered the artifice dishonest, a violation of the conventions of the genre. Eighty years later, Pierre Bayard, a professor of literature and psychoanalyst, revisits the book in order to deconstruct it. His textual analysis leads to an exploration of the context of the work’s publication and the private life of the mysterious novelist. Bayard finally arrives at a stunning conclusion.”

DIRECTOR

JEAN-CHRISTOPHE KLOTZ

Born in Washington, Jean-Christophe Klotz is a graduate of the Centre de formation des journalistes in Paris and of Paris II (Economics, Information and Communication). He wrote the documentary Kigali, des images contre un massacre(2006), presented at the Semaine de la Critique in Cannes in 2006. In 2009, he directed his first feature-length film, Lignes de front.

Filmography | Lignes de Front (2010) ; L'Argent, le sang et la démocratie - A propos de l'affaire Karachi (2013); Kigali, des images contre un massacre (2006).

Cinematography: Alberto Marquardt

Distribution: Arte Distribution

Editing: Pascal Ariel

Music: Jean-Christophe Klotz

Producer: Estelle Fialon

Sound: Marc Soupa

Production: Les Films Du Poisson

FILM TRAILER

For more information and FIFA film festival and scheduling, visit the Art FIFA website.

FIFA 2017: Zhu Xiao-Mei

 Zhu Xiao-Mei: How Bach Defeated Mao

Germany / 2016 . 58 min / Chinese, French, English s.-t.

Category : FIFA Competition

This is another excellent film on a classical music piano virtuoso in FIFA competition category this year. You can read about FIFA documentary on French pianist Alain Planès here. It is interesting to compare those two musicians because each creates from a very different private perspective and each has achieved great success. With Planès, it is the integration of all his aesthetic, artistic senses into a unified expressive wholeness. With Xiao-Mei, it is finding the balance within herself, the unity of music and her emotions, and anchoring her being and her music in the timeless ancient philosophies of Lao Tzu and Buddha. 

Zhu Xiao-Mei's favourt composer is Bach. She is best known for playing Bach. She loves interpreting his music and claims that Back was a Buddha disciple, though he did not know it. It is the focus and unity in Bach's music that are Buddha-like, and with which Xiao-Mei strongly identifies. Her second favourite composer is Schubert, she also plays Chopin. She appears to limit her repertoire to those scores that resonate within her, that she strongly identifies with emotionally and philosophically since they correspond to her personal integrity, her sense of centring within and finding the all embracing wholeness. 

After being in exile first in the USA for 8 years and then in France where she still lives, she was finally persuaded to go back to China and face her fears and memories of repression and persecution. What surprised her the most, despite years of cultural banishment and even the outlawing of instruments like piano, she encounters a terrific interest in her concerts mostly from China's young generation. She is stunned because her western audiences are mostly in their sixties, and the demand for classical music is nothing so intense as what she encounters in China.

When Zhu Xiao-Mei was asked how could she play and understand Bach so well although she was Chinese, she replied that Bach music transcended cultural barriers and was a heritage of the entire humanity. She also stated that Chinese people might understand Bach better than westerners because of their attunement to such Chinese philosophers as Lao Tzu.

This film makes a viewer to ask a question why in the west the interest in the great classical composers and their music is waning, why it does not find much resonance with the younger generations? Why do rock concerts get so much funding and promotion and classical music concerts are being neglected? Could the old music masters come back to the forefront in our western society soon, as they did in China after years of political rejection and neglect?

OFFICIAL FILM SYNOPSIS

Presented in partnership with ICI ARTV

“The music of Bach enabled pianist Zhu Xiao-Mei to cope with the worst challenges of her life. After experiencing all of the consequences of the Mao regime and the Cultural Revolution, she emigrated to Paris in 1980. She was deeply marked by the great cultural darkness that came over her country under Mao. She was publicly humiliated, her teachers were intimidated and her musical scores were burned. In this personal and touching documentary about the immense power of music, Paul Smaczny tells Zhu Xiao-Mei’s story as she agrees to return to China for the first time and discovers a country transformed.”

DIRECTOR

Paul Smaczny

Emmy Award-winner Paul Smaczny is a German-based documentary filmmaker and producer of music films and concert, ballet and opera recordings. His latest works include the award-winning documentaries Die Thomaner – A Year in the Life of St. Thomas Boys Choir Leipzig (2012), John Cage – Journeys in Sound (2012) and Music – A Journey for Life (2013), about conductor Riccardo Chailly. In 2010, he founded his own production company, Accentus Music, which quickly became one of the most distinguished production companies in the classical music sphere.

PRODUCTION TEAM

Cinematography: Michael Boomers, Nyika Jancsó

Distribution: Accentus Music

Sound mixing: Karl Atteln, Markus Krohn

Editing: Dirk Seliger

Producer: Anca-Monica Pandelea, Paul Smaczny

Sound: Sebastian Braun, Toine Mertens, Robert Sandow, Christoph Wonneberger

Production: Accentus Music

FILM TRAILER

Two years ago, Art FIFA festival presented another excellent film about pianist Zhu Xiao-Mei. You can read about it here.

FIFA 2015: LE RETOUR EST LE MOUVEMENT DU TAO

For more information and FIFA film festival and scheduling, visit the Art FIFA website.

FIFA 2017: Alain Planès, l'infini turbulent

Alain Planès, l'infini turbulent
Alain Planès, the Turbulent Infinity

France  / 2016  / 55 min. / French,  English s.-t.

Category : FIFA Competition

We all tend to put various art forms into their respective categories. This film brakes such barriers. A music interpreter can actually hear colours or see music in a poem's turn of a phrase. This film, more than any other film about a concert music performer, makes one to understand that all the forms of art stem from the same creative source and have no boundaries separating them. One can put into music the colours one sees, or paint the musical notes one hears. This is how a genius of an artist or musician is revealed in how sensitive he or she is to the variations of the shades, shapes, tonalities, and sounds in any visual, auditory or tactile domain, and how the ability to interconnect all these aspects so the music which is being interpreted acquires a spacial volume of a sculpture, the colour of a painting, and the expressive meaning of a poem. This is what is unique about this film - it makes us understand that music is multidimensional and not simply auditory. It also reveals that the true virtuosos have understood this intuitively and it is what separates them from other music and concert performers who have not grasped this fact.

The film plunges a spectator into music and colours through which the life and career of Alain Planès is presented. It reveals his many connections with the people at the artistic and music avant-guard at his times, and how these relationships and his personal need for art and poetry shaped not only his understanding of music scores, but helped him to find the correct keys to unlock the composers' intent and to interpret it. The film is concise and well put together to reveal to the audience a pianist many of whom might not have known, or have not known him well enough, or might not have understood the source of his artistry. 

OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS

Presented in partnership with ICI ARTV

“Alain Planès is a virtuoso performer of both classical and contemporary music, a versatile and demanding musician and ardent enthusiast of painting and poetry. From his relationship with the visual arts and words, he derives the meaning and power of his creativity. Although he has always avoided the glare of the media, he agreed here to reveal his sources of inspiration and musical choices. Looking back at his artistic path, from his very early days on the piano, his conservatory studies in Paris and the United States, and the launch of his career in the 1970s, this profile by Dominique Lemonnier immerses us in the world of the artist. In her directorial debut, the violinist offers a candid and intimate portrait of the pianist, shedding light on his influences and pivotal encounters.”

DIRECTOR

Dominique "Solrey" Lemonnier

Dominique “Solrey” Lemonnier is a violinist who has performed in concerts and theatrical works, in addition to recording numerous film soundtracks. In 2005, in an effort to combine video, visual arts, texts and music, she formed the Traffic Quintet. Following her last concert at the Philharmonie de Paris in 2015, she decided to set her violin aside and devote herself to directing musical films.

Filmography | First film.

PRODUCTION TEAM

Cinematography:  Justine Emard, Xavier Forcioli, Edward Japp, Gerard Quiles, Ange Leccia

Distribution:  Dominique "Solrey" Lemonnier

Editing:  Idit Bloch, Cyril Polinacci

Narration:  Alain Planes

Producer:  Dominique "Solrey" Lemonnier

Sound:  Romain Allender, Xavier Forcioli, Alexandre Tanguy

Production:  Galilea Music 

For more information and film scheduling, visit the Art FIFA website.

FILM TRAILER

A MAN OF DANCE - Vincent Warren - FIFA 2016

 A MAN OF DANCE / Un Homme de Danse 

by Marie Brodeur

Canada, Quebec /  2016 / 83 minutes

Selected for the Festival de cinéma de la ville de Québec (FCVQ)

Premièred at the International Festival of Films on Art - FIFA 2016

FIFA 2016 winner of the Best Canadian Film Award

A MAN OF DANCE (Un Homme de Danse) is a documentary feature about the life and times of dancer, curator and historian Vincent Warren. He was the bright shining star of Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal, the male principle dancer who contributed to this ballet's company to succeeded in acquiring, in a rather short time, the worldwide recognition and great reputation.

The film documents "la belle epoque" of Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, and its beginnings with the founder Madame Ludmilla Chiriaeff. It shows extracts from its major performances and focuses on the public's interest they steered. But most importantly, the film highlights the life and the creative, artistic career, as well as the major contribution of the company's lead dancer Vincent Warren. That period of Les Grandes Ballets' youth and blossoming is revealed through Vincent Warren's on screen recollections and reminiscences, as well as the vast documentation and a number of video clips, many of which came from Vincent Warren's personal memorabilia and his private, very unique and the largest dance related library.

The film presents a remarkable man and his achievements, and also focuses on his vast interactions with the artistic milieu of his days, as well as his great love of the dance and of his respect and consideration for his dancing partners and colleagues. It is an inspiring film that also helps to reconnect Montrealers to their recent cultural past.

Official Synopsis:

"From Igor Stravinsky to Norman McLaren to Frank O’Hara, Vincent Warren has touched hands with history. This American-born star dancer of Montreal’s Les Grands Ballets Canadiens has always been inhabited by the importance of dance, art and culture in society and has worked his whole life as the bearer of beauty. From his début at the Old Metropolitan Opera and throughout his career, he established a reputation as a formidable dancer, historian and curator. The recipient of several awards including the Order of Canada, Vincent Warren has, to a certain extent, incarnated great social and artistic trends both in Canada and in the United States. A MAN OF DANCE is the story of this living legend and his historical era." 

About the filmmaker

Marie Brodeur comes from the visual arts, dance and theater. She studied with a number of renowned visual and theatrical artists such as Irene Whittome, Gilles Maheu, Linda Rabbin, Martine Epoque, Jean Asselin, Merce Cunningham and Jean-Pierre Perrault. Following a brilliant 10-year dance career in modern ballet in Canada, the United States and Europe, Marie Brodeur took on a new career in 1986 as a documentary filmmaker, specializing mostly in art and dance. She was honored with two UNESCO prizes, recognizing her films (Danse du guerrier, La danse en Asie : la magie en mouvement) for their “exceptional contribution to the conservation of our world cultural heritage.” Many of her films are now part of the permanent collections of esteemed institutions such as the Lincoln Centre Performing Arts Library in New York, the Cinémathèque de Paris and the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art.

A MAN OF DANCE

Director: Marie Brodeur

With: Vincent Warren and the participation of Annette av Paul, Arnab Bandyopadhyay, Anik Bissonnette, Peter Boneham, Jean-Sébastien Couture, Paul-André Fortier, Linde Howe-Beck, Chris Huizinga, Véronique Landory, Marie-Josée Lecours, Brian Macdonald, Mamata Niyogi-Nakra, Gaétan Patenaude, Aileen Passloff and Jeanne Renaud.

Cinematography: Sylvestre Guidi, Marie Brodeur

Editing: Michel Giroux

Online editing: Denis Pilon (ACIC)

Original Music Score: Thomas Alain Thériault

Sound: Louis Léger, Alain Thériault, Jean Laurence Thériault

Sound Design: Catherine Van Der Donckt 

Sound Mix: Bruno Bélanger (PRIM)

Producers: Alain Thériault, Marie Brodeur

Executive Producer: TAP Film Inc.

Production: La Compagnie de la Marie

Distribution: SPIRA

Official Site: comarie.ca/fr/un-homme-de- danse

Facebook Page: www.facebook.com/ Unhommededanse

Trailer: vimeo.com/180075436

In Theatres on September 30

A MAN OF DANCE will then open in Quebec theatres on September 30, in French at Cinémathèque québécoise (Montreal) and Cinéma Le Clap (Quebec), and in English at Cinéma du Parc (Montreal). The film will also be screened in theatres throughout the province this autumn.

FIFA 2016: AWARDS

Awards of the 34rd FIFA

The 34th edition of the International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA) has ended on Sunday, March 20, 2016. Tthe film La collection qui n’existait pas, by Joachim Olender (Belgium), is the grand winner of the competition.

From March 10 to 20, FIFA offered to festival-goers 170 documentaries from 25 countries, including, for the first time, films from Morocco and the Luxembourg.

The jury of the 34th FIFA

The President of the 34th FIFA international jury:

 Paul Maréchal, art historian, awarded prizes to 13 films from ten countries.

Other members of the jury:

Nathalie Barton, producer of auteur documentaries

Pascal Gélinas, filmmaker

Joseph Hillel, producer and filmmaker

Mariella Pandolfi, professor of anthropology and music lover

The Awards of the 34th FIFA

13 films from 10 countries were awarded prizes.

Two Canadian films were among the award recipients.

Grand Prize

LA COLLECTION QUI N’EXISTAIT PAS

Joachim Olender (Belgium)

Jury Award

ONE MILLION STEPS

Eva Stotz (Germany, Turkey, Netherlands)

Award for Best Educational Film

Ex æquo

LE CERCLE DE KANTOR Adrianna Ksiazek, Iwo Ksiazek (Poland)

VIVA DADA, Régine Abadia (France)

Award for Creativity

SOUNDHUNTERS, A MUSICAL EXPEDITION

Béryl Koltz (Luxembourg, France)

Award for Best Canadian Film

Ex æquo

NOUS AUTRES, LES AUTRES, Jean-Claude Coulbois (Canada)

UN HOMME DE DANSE, Marie Brodeur (Canada)

Award for Best Portrait

HOCKNEY

Randall Wright (United Kingdom)

Award for Best Essay

JUSTE AVANT L’ORAGE

Don Kent (France)

Award for Best Portrait

GIOVANNI SEGANTINI – MAGIE DE LA LUMIÈRE

Christian Labhart (Switzerland)

Award for Best Film for Television

Sponsored by Digital Cut

COCOTTES ET COURTISANES DANS L’OEIL DES PEINTRES

Sandra Paugam (France)

Liliane Stewart Award for Design Arts

Sponsored by the Council for Canadian American Relations

GETTING FRANK GEHRY

Sally Aitken (Australia)

Special Mention

PAOLO VENTURA, VANISHING MAN

Erik Van Empel (Netherlands)

Quebec participation

Among FIFA films international program, several films with Quebec artists stood out and resulted in discussions and popular activities among festival-goers. The public was able to talk with

• Jean-Claude Coulbois, director of Nous autres, les autres (FIFA opening film), and 
• Vincent Warren, the famous dancer, former soloist of the Grands Ballets Canadiens, whose carrier was portrayed in the film by Marie Brodeur Un homme de danse. FIFA closing film)

Both films won ex æquo the Award for tBest Canadian Film.

In addition:

• Several films focused on fashion designers. That included the acclaimed Revealing Marie Saint Pierre | Marie Saint Pierre se révèle by Janice Zolf, with a public discussions with the famous designer.
• The director Étienne Desrosiers gave a master class on the challenges faced in the making of his film on the renowned Quebec architect Roger D’Astous.
• Also, there was a performance of the singer Tomás Jensen, following the screening of the film about this musician by Martin Bourgault Retour.

For more information on Art FIFA, visit the Art FIFA website.

FIFA 2016: Caravaggio

Caravage

Film by Jean-Michel Meurice

France | French | 2015 | 52 min

CANADIAN PREMIERE

The film presents the short and tortuous life of the Italian late Renaissance painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, simply known as Caravaggio (Caravage in French). He trained as a painter in Milan under Simone Peterzano who in turn had trained under Titian.

In 1600, in his twenties, Caravaggio moved to Rome, and conquered the Rome’s art scene with his first public commissions, the Martyrdom of Saint Matthew and Calling of Saint Matthew. After that he never lacked commissions or patrons but handled his success poorly. He often engaging in street brawls, and in 1606 killed a man, most likely unintentionally. After that he escaped to Naples, and later to Malta. But he did not stay long in Malta.  He once again participated in a brawl, and regardless of the great success he had with his commissioned paintings, landed in a prison, from which he managed to escape. His life was not too long after that.

The film describes all the twists and turns of this very talented young artist’s life. It shows many of his painting and gives details of who commissioned them and when. It draws a parallel between the brutal biblical scenes he immortalized in his canvas and his own life path.

Official Synopses: 

"The life of Caravaggio (1571-1610) was brief and violent. After ten years of triumphs in Rome, lucrative commissions from powerful sources, a dangerous attraction to the lowest depths of society, endless quarrels, several imprisonments, a death sentence for murder and a forced exile on the run, this quick-tempered and irascible man died at the age of 39. His oeuvre as we know it today stems from the tireless work of historians. Of the more than 500 canvases attributed to him three centuries after his death, less than fifty were actually his. This film investigates 22 major works in Rome, Malta, Paris, Rouen and Montpellier."

Jean-Michel Meurice

Jean-Michel Meurice is a painter and filmmaker. He is a co-founder of ARTE, which he directed from 1986 to 1989. He is also a producer, author and director of monthly magazines devoted to the plastic arts on French television.

Filmography | Simon Hantaï, les silences rétiniens (1978) ; Pierre Soulages (1981), 1er FIFA ; Bram van Velde (1980), 20e FIFA ; Cory Aquino (1989) ; Solidarnosc (1990) ; Apartheid (1992) ; La parade des saigneurs (1995) ; Familles macabres (1996) ; Un doux rebelle : Julien Green, journal d'un siècle (1997), 17e FIFA ; L'orchestre noir (1998) ; Alechinsky pris sur le vif (2004) ; Velickovic, les apparences de la peur (2005), 24e FIFA ; Le vrai pouvoir du Vatican (2010) ; Algérie, notre histoire (2011).

Production Team:

Cinematography Valentin Caron
Music Gérard Cohen-Tannugi
Narration Philippe Faure, Anna Flori-Lamour
Participation Sybille Ebert-Schifferer, Michel Laclotte, Michel Hilaire
Artists Le Caravage, Sybille Ebert-Schifferer, Michel Laclotte, Michel Hilaire
Producer Fabienne Servan Schreiber, Laurence Miller, Emélie De Jong
Production ARTE France, Cinétévé
Distribution Poorhouse International

For more information and film scheduling, visit the Art FIFA website.

Film Screenings:

Sunday March 13 | 12:30 PM | Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal - Auditorium Maxwell-Cummings 

  

Sunday March 20 | 10:30 AM | Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal - Auditorium Maxwell-Cummings 

FILM TRAILER