Brownstein: In its 29th year, Fantasia festival boldly stays the course to outer limits of moviedom

Montreal Gazette

18 hours ago

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The 29 th Fantasia International Film Festival, kicking off Wednesday night and running until Aug. 3, once again reaches for the outer limits of moviedom with offerings from all over the map. If there isn't something among the 125 features and 200 shorts to titillate more adventurous moviegoers, it will probably come as a shock to the fest's long-standing artistic director, Mitch Davis.
Billed as the continent's largest genre film fest, Fantasia's focus is as always indie-oriented, esoteric and auteur-driven, touching on live action and animated fare from all corners of our celluloid planet. But the fest also pays much homage to local fare and pioneers from our filmmaking past.
Davis is fond of saying that Fantasia is 'a celebration of the eccentric and unclassifiable, playing all films with equal importance.'
Eclectic would also apply. Be they the fest's opening films like the edgy Eddington, marking its Canadian première Wednesday at 6 p.m. or, yes, Smurfs, in advance of its Friday opening at theatres everywhere, Wednesday at 6:15 in French and 8:25 in English. The latter with its iconic blue critters takes animation to another level, while the former, starring Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal and Emma Stone, centres on a New Mexico town thrust into chaos.
But Davis is equally high on Chicoutimi native Félix Dufour-Laperrière's Death Does Not Exist, an animated potboiler — first presented at Cannes and screening Thursday — pursuing a group of young revolutionaries. Or Saguenay native JP Bergeron's quirky yet poignant live-action love story Old Guys in Bed, showing Aug. 3.
This is Bergeron's first feature. Better known for his 90-plus acting credits, Bergeron, 73, is an inspiration to senior filmmakers and is now planning to make Old Guys in Bed the first instalment of a gay trilogy.
'I plan to keep directing films for a while now,' says Bergeron, who previously directed a short that won a prize at the 2012 Fantasia fest. 'The way I see it is that 90 could be the new 60.'
Davis is also excited about The MusiquePlus Years: Artists Who Started with the Music Video, a nostalgic look back at the station's glory days in the '90s through clips, stories and memories. It is being presented Saturday.
Screenings as well as panel discussions take place at Concordia University's SGWU Alumni Auditorium (Hall Theatre), J.A. de Sève Cinema, the Cinéma du Musée and the BBAM! Gallery.
Adds the ever-effusive Davis at fest headquarters in Concordia's Hall Building: 'And can't forget that we're showcasing the current exciting renaissance of Kazakhstan genre cinema with the world première of the noir-tinged folk horror chiller Kazakh Scary Tales, hosted by award-winning director Adilkhan Yerzhanov and star Anna Starchenko, and the North American première of the touching sci-fi comedy Stinker, hosted by director Yerden Telemissov.'
No surprise that Davis's enthusiasm for film has struck a chord with the likes of Quentin Tarantino — whose Inglourious Basterds made its North American première at the fest and who called Fantasia 'the most important and prestigious genre film festival on this continent' — as well as with such past guests as Guillermo del Toro, Mark Hamill, John Carpenter, Ken Russell, Robert Pattinson and John Landis.
This year's Fantasia will also be paying special tribute to acclaimed Hollywood film composer Danny Elfman, Canadian acting great Sheila McCarthy, veteran Montreal director George Mihalka, maverick American indie filmmaker Lloyd Kaufman and legendary American animator Genndy Tartakovsky — whose latest film, Fixed, closes the festival.
Nicolas Archambault, Fantasia's director of Asian live-action programming the last 18 years, is particularly pumped about his acquisitions.
'We have a lot from Japan and South Korea, where production has been fast changing because they've been selling many of their TV series to Netflix,' notes Archambault, who had spent two months scouting films in Japan and South Korea. 'Now Korean producers really feel the need to make films to play in their theatres as well as those in Indonesia and Thailand. Indonesia is also getting there on the production front. Our challenge is to keep up because the scene is quickly evolving.'
Davis points out that in the first year of Fantasia there was much attention paid to the Hong Kong New Wave movement, from directors like John Woo.
'These films were really blowing up, yet the Montreal film festivals at the time had a collective blind spot and just weren't showing them. So we did. And we've kept at it since.'
That element underscores the Fantasia programming formula.
'We've always been very broad in what we play, but not so much for people with only vanilla tastes but for those who want to see something with a point of view, even like the eccentric Smurfs,' Davis says. 'We have a real consistent thread. The films can be subversive melodramas or South Korean comedies, horror, sci-fi or fantasy films or documentaries. But one thread going through them all is they are made, regardless of budget, with a purity of vision. And they take risks.'
Yet even Davis is surprised that Fantasia has lasted 29 years with such fare.
'Certainly, we never expected to be around this long. Every year felt like it was going to be our last. We weren't getting any institutional support at the beginning. Every year felt like a miracle. But now we really feel supported and recognized.
'And loved.'