https://independent-magazine.org/2015/11/30/ridm-2015-film-style/
Obsessed with Independent Film Since 1976
Obsessed with Independent Film Since 1976
Patrick Pearce is a Canadian filmmaker, communications consultant and writer currently based in Montreal and editing a documentary on the life and times of Factory 798, a Mao-era Beijing military electronics complex turned contemporary arts district. After several years as a frequent contributor, he joined The Independent as a staff writer in September 2014 and can be reached at patrick@independent-magazine.org.
As the Recontres Internationales de Documentaire de Montréal continues to stake out its distinctive terrority, Patrick Pearce gathered five of its filmmakers to field a few questions on style. November seems a fittingly weighty month for the Rencontre Internationales de Documentaire de Montréal (RIDM). With a sharp program spanning every type of documentary form, the… Read more »
Gusts of bitingly cold wind eat away at the inch of precocious snow on the ground, offering a fittingly bracing backdrop to the Rencontre Internationales de Documentaire de Montréal (RIDM). Now in it’s 17th year, the festival offers a late-in-the-season “best-of” selection of international and Canadian films that favors essays, cross-genre films and other non-traditional… Read more »
Montreal’s Festival du Nouveau Cinema (FNC) is a festival that doesn’t like to be put into neat and tidy boxes. This year’s boundary-blurring program includes everything from satirical mockumentaries to poetic documentaries that include reenacted scenes. Staff writer Patrick Pearce sat down with the directors of two narrative first features with non-fiction characteristics to chat… Read more »
A mid-August Wednesday evening in a Montreal park. Four hundred people have come out for an outdoor screening of The Corporation. It’s been ten years since the release of this award-winning psychoanalytical indictment of capitalism’s most important institution, and the left-leaning neighborhood crowd seems to be sitting on the edges of their lawn chairs as… Read more »
Montréal’s Festival du Nouveau Cinéma (FNC) just wrapped up its 42nd edition. Following up on his evening-in-the-life of FNC Temps 0 section programmer Julien Fonfrède, The Independent’s Patrick Pearce decided to find out what’s going on in the festival’s Canadian-dedicated Focus section by speaking to a few of the directors featured in it. In 2012,… Read more »
“That day is not good for him—he’s really tied up,” writes my usually agreeable Festival du Nouveau Cinéma (FNC) communications point person. Now in its 42nd year, this Montréal festival is a broad sweep of contemporary cinema with a dozen sub-programs from “the year’s best films” in Présentation Spéciale to “gems from around the world”… Read more »
Montreal’s Festival du Nouveau Cinema deals in the new, from new cinematic territories to new media forms that take their cues from film. The Independent’s Patrick Pearce met with FNC Lab section and short film programmer Philippe Gajan to chat (in English and French) about what “new” means to him, and why it is so… Read more »
Montréal’s Fantasia International Film Festival may well be the largest film fest you’ve never heard of. If you haven’t been following genre film at all, you might be excused…but not for much longer. The fest has been the North American launching pad for the likes of Takashi Miike, Hideo Nakata (The Ring), Park Chan-Wook, Eli… Read more »
You may want to check out part one, which offers a festival overview with a focus on its narrative features. It’s always fun identifying the docs in a festival like the FNC, where, often, they’re not clearly billed as such. The story is the thing, and as narratives take on documentary qualities and vice-versa, the… Read more »
If you’ve never been to Montréal, Québec you’re missing out. With cheap rent, creative industries, and multiculturalism seeping out all of its pores, this port city is crawling with artsy & cinematic characters from the très hip to the downright derelict, a cross between Brooklyn, New Orleans, Marseilles and maybe Istanbul. Summer is tropical and… Read more »