Festivals: Montreal Nouveau
Montreal Nouveau 2021 Review: EXTRANEOUS MATTER, Aliens Come In Strange Places
A friend of mine once wrote an essay for a university film course, discussing how it's often difficult for a viewer to fully comprehend a film from another culture; there are often too many nuances and contexts simply not understood....
Montreal Nouveau 2021 Review: LA CONTEMPLATION DU MYSTÈRE, The Hunter Becomes the Hunted
Our parents often have friends that we only vaguely know; rituals they kept that seems weird to us; and often, if we are estranged from them or separated by distance, a life that we cannot comprehend. Add into that a...
Montreal Nouveau 2021 Review: Folklore Dreams Get Peculiar in TZAREVNA SCALING
Many little girls (and boys, I'm sure) have dreamed of becoming a princess; or at least, dreamed themselves the child of royalty, thus giving them a life of leisure, parties, worship from the adoring public, and a pretty awesome wardrobe....
Montreal Nouveau 2021 Review: AFTER BLUE, Succumb to the Desiring Nightmare
Paradis Sale, the original french title of Bertrand Mandico's sophomore feature, translates as 'Dirty Paradise'. And this place isn't exactly a paradise, nor is it dirty. But it is most definitely strange and surreal, filled with intoxication and eroticism, and...
Montreal Nouveau 2021 Review: ZERIA, A Fractured Story of a Dying World
What are the stories that will be left for humanity, if (or really, when) there is a shift in how we live? Or where we are? What are the ideas, histories, feelings, we need to impart to the next generations,...
Montreal Nouveau 2021 Review: THE POWER OF THE DOG, Hidden Objects Betray Love & Weakness
In a landscape of rolling hills, few trees, and a beauty that comes harsh and stark, it can be a constant burden to hide: hide secrets, hide identity, hide desire, in a world that refuses to allow for sensitivity and...
The Great Festival Rebound of 2020: Let The Anarchists Speak
We are not at Sundance right now. However, we do have Anarchists who are covering the festival lineup. IFF Rotterdam started today and we won't be there either. But, we do have an Anarchist all raring to go and cover...
Montreal Nouveau 2020 Review: SAINT NARCISSE, Walk Through the Witchy Mirror
There are always at least two things you can count on with a Bruce LaBruce film: one, that you won't be able to predict where it will go, and two, that there will be a lot of sex. Both of...
Montreal Nouveau 2020 Review: THE BOOK OF VISION, Visual Beauty Hides A Flimsy Narrative
The study and treatment of ailments of the human body is certainly one of the most fascinating of histories; the way look back in shock on how illnesses were once treated (leeches, blood-letting), people of the future might one day...
Montreal Nouveau 2020 Review: RED MOON TIDE, We Are Left to the Witches and Monsters
In Galicia, where forests meat a rugged and dangerous coastline, Rubio has gone missing. The local village's resident diver, he would search for the bodies of those lost to the rough seas, or possible eaten by the monster that lurks...
Montreal Nouveau 2020 Review: KILL IT AND LEAVE THIS TOWN, An Animated and Discordant Purgatory
In one scene in Mariusz Wilczyński’s Kill It and Leave This Town, characters are taking a long train ride, telling stories in fits and starts, as the vehicle crosses what seems like an endless parallel universe populated by bird people...
Montreal Nouveau 2020 Review: THERE ARE NO FALSE UNDERTAKINGS, Vignettes of the Odd and Surreal
Having moved into television, Denzel Washington is hoping to land the role of Angel in a reboot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer; he's interested in the role because of Angel's struggle with testicular cancer. But alas, being too old, he...
Montreal Nouveau 2020: NIGHT HAS COME, Collective Memory and the End of Days
Imagine waking up in an sanitorium, and finding your memory slowly being eaten away by a virus in your brain. Scientists are trying to harvest your memories, which are replaced, inside you, by darkness. While this film started the festival...
SIBERIA, MY SALINGER YEAR, SAINT-NARCISSE, and More at Montreal Nouveau 2020
As parts of Québec have been put back in the pandemic red zone, thereby closing cinemas for at least 28 days (that's not ominous), the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma has moved (most of) its programming online, running October 7th -...
Montreal Nouveau 2019 Review: L.A. TEA TIME, The Journey is the Destination
All artists have their heroes: the ones whose work we admire, whose work likely inspired their own, and whom they would give a lot just to spend an hour with to better understand their hero and inspiration. Much of this...
Montreal Nouveau 2019 Review: ADORATION, Cupid is Dangerously Blind
British author Evelyn Waugh once wrote that there is a kind of love that children have before they know its meaning, something sweet and innocent, full of kindness and joy without facade or self-awareness. As children grow into teenagers, what...
Montreal Nouveau 2019: MONOS, Teenaged Soldiers Descent into Madness
For a long time, likely one of the few things most people knew about Colombia is that is was a country with a huge number of kidnappings. So many, in fact, that there was a radio show that ran for...
Montreal Nouveau 2019 Review: MAKE ME UP, Intense & Biting Feminist Satire
Combining archival audio footage, science fiction, cultural criticism, and reality television parody into a film, and Scottish multimedia artist Rachel Maclean's feature Make Me Up weaves a complex and at times overwhelming tapestry as a biting feminist satire. Juxtaposing bright...
Montreal Nouveau 2019 Review: DEERSKIN, Killer Style in a Killer Jacket
Georges (Jean Dujardin) is a man on a mission. After driving across what must be the length of France (and dumping his courdoroy jacket in a gas station toilet along the way - literally the toilet), he comes to the...
Montreal Nouveau 2019 Review: BAIT, Lo-Fi Vision of Class Warfare by the Sea
One of the main things I miss about print film is the texture; there is something about how an physical object, going through a projector, conveys the layers of physicalness necessary to create it. It conveys as much for the...
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