Laurence Beaudoin Morin’s Living Documentary workshops will be one of the unique FIFA offerings this year. Photo: Facebook / FIFA.
A series of world, North American, and Canadian premieres have been revealed for the 37th edition of the Festival international du film sur l’art.
The annual festival aims to, as its website puts it, “encourage the national and international film industry to increase its annual production of films on art,” and also “increase knowledge and appreciation of art among the public.”
Most of the films this year are screening as usual in Montreal—but a few are also screening at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec in Quebec City. A free experiential-art program located in Places des Arts in Montreal has also been added. And a new collaboration with Momenta Biennale de l’image will bring some video-art programming to Centre Optica in Montreal.
Among the world premieres at the festival is the documentary Creations from the Obscure, a Japanese film which focuses on artists with intellectual disabilities. Another is René Richard Cyr—a film about the well-known Quebec actor, director, and author who has collaborated with Cirque du Soleil and Michel Tremblay, among other organizations and individuals. And a third world premiere is Fukushima, a meditative time-lapse work.
North American premieres include Caravaggio: The Soul and the Blood, and Italian film tracing the path of the titular, iconic 17th-century artist. Une Joie Secrète, another North American premiere from France, looks at the work of choreographer Nadia Vadori-Gauthier. Ashcan, a Luxembourg release, looks at a contemporary performance grappling with the history of a secret prison where US intelligence held Nazi leaders after World War Two. And Les Ames Baltes, from France, looks at how art helped shape Baltic identity following the world wars.
There is also a Canadian premiere on tap in the form of Botero, a Canadian-made documentary about Colombian painter and sculptor Fernando Botero, who was born in 1932.
Among other unique offerings for FIFA this year is a workshop with artist Laurence Beaudoin Morin on “living documentary”—a mix of embodied performance and documentation. That is slated for March 23. And FIFA will also be running a series of industry workshops on March 20, 21 and 22 in Montreal.
More information about the many short and feature films in this year’s FIFA is available on the festival website.
