Crazy Horse

The 14th edition of the Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM) opens on Wednesday, Nov. 9 with a screening of Crazy Horse by American filmmaker Frederick Wiseman. The documentary takes us behind the scenes at the famous Crazy Horse cabaret in Paris during rehearsals for a new show, Désirs, choreographed by Philippe Decouflé. RIDM will also pay tribute to this major filmmaker with a retrospective of ten of his most significant films, in their original format internet pharmacy propecia (in most cases, 16mm). Mr. Wiseman will give a master class via Skype on Sunday, Nov. 13 at the Cinémathèque québécoise.

The festival’s first weekend will be loaded with screenings and special activities. Friday, Nov. 11, features the Canadian premiere of José e Pilar by Miguel Gonçalves Mendes. This funny, poignant documentary – Portugal’s entry for the Oscars – is a portrait of the celebrated Portuguese novelist José Saramago. On Saturday, Nov. 12, L’empire du milieu du sud (The Empire of Mid-South) is a must-see exploration of Vietnam’s colonial history, based on extraordinary, never-before-seen archival footage. This superb film was made by Eric Deroo and Jacques Perrin, a legendary actor and an important figure in French documentary cinema (Microcosmos, Le peuple migrateur, Océans).

On Sunday, be sure to witness a true cinematic event: Karamay. This six-hour Chinese documentary, banned in its own country, examines a shocking tragedy that destroyed a low cost levitra small community. This significant new film will be shown in two three-hour screenings. At 5 p.m., The MSSO: 10 Years Later cocktail is a chance to catch up with the group that launched the Spontaneous Movement for the Survival of the NFB (Mouvement spontané pour la survie de l’ONF) in 2001.  The event, taking place in the RIDM Lounge, will be followed by a screening of The Last Heritage Minutes. Another Sunday highlight: the evening screening of Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, the highly anticipated third instalment in the Paradise Lost trilogy. For 15 years, filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky have followed the riveting legal saga of the West Memphis 3. This conclusion to the trilogy, completed barely a week before the three canada cialis no prescription men were freed, has been updated since it was screened at the TIFF.

In connection with another retrospective, Danish filmmaker Jørgen Leth will be at the festival to give a master class on Saturday, Nov. 12. He will also participate in a roundtable discussion, Filming Haiti, on Sunday, Nov. 13, along with fellow panellists Aïda Maigre-Touchet (Élégie de Port-au-Prince) and Charles Najman (Une étrange cathédrale dans la graisse des ténèbres). The three filmmakers will talk about why they are so passionate about this unique country, and the essential role of documentary filmmaking as witness to its tensions and tragedies. Both activities are free.

Finally, here are a few of the festival’s international guests for the first weekend: Swiss filmmaker Fernand Melgar (Vol spécial), German director Diana Näcke (My Freedom, Your Freedom), French directors Regis Sauder (Nous, Princesses de Clèves) and Manuela Fresil (Entrée du personnel), American filmmaker Jeff Silva (Ivan & Ivana) and Spain’s Hermes Paralluelo (Yatasto).

Quebec’s only film festival dedicated to documentaries, the Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM) presents the best reality-based films, including the works of established directors and new talents alike. The 14th edition of RIDM will take place from Nov. 9 to 20 at the Cinémathèque québécoise, Cinema ONF, Cinema Excentris, Grande Bibliothèque, Goethe-Institut and Concordia University.

Information: www.ridm.qc.ca / info@ridm.qc.ca
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About the author:

Kier-La Janisse

Kier-La Janisse is a film writer and programmer, founder of Spectacular Optical Publications and The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies. She has been a programmer for the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema and Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas, co-founded Montreal microcinema Blue Sunshine, founded the CineMuerte Horror Film Festival (1999-2005) in Vancouver, was the Festival Director of Monster Fest in Melbourne, Australia and was the subject of the documentary Celluloid Horror (2005). She is the author of A Violent Professional: The Films of Luciano Rossi (FAB Press, 2007) and House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films (FAB Press, 2012) and contributed to Destroy All Movies!! The Complete Guide to Punks on Film (Fantagraphics, 2011), Recovering 1940s Horror: Traces of a Lost Decade (Lexington, 2014) The Canadian Horror Film: Terror of the Soul (University of Toronto Press, 2015) and We Are the Martians: The Legacy of Nigel Kneale (PS Press, 2017). She co-edited (with Paul Corupe) and published the anthology books KID POWER! (2014), Satanic Panic: Pop-Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s (2015), Lost Girls: The Phantasmagorical Cinema of Jean Rollin (2017) and Yuletide Terror: Christmas Horror on Film and Television (2017). She edited the book Warped & Faded: Weird Wednesday and the Birth of the American Genre Film Archive (forthcoming), and is currently co-authoring (with Amy Searles) the book ‘Unhealthy and Aberrant’: Depictions of Horror Fandom in Film and Television and co-curating (with Clint Enns) an anthology book on the films of Robert Downey, Sr., as well as writing a monograph about Monte Hellman’s Cockfighter. She was a producer on Mike Malloy’s Eurocrime: the Italian Cop and Gangster Films That Ruled the ’70s and Sean Hogan’s We Always Find Ourselves in the Sea and her first film as director/producer, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror is due out from Severin Films in 2020.