by SARAH ROWLAND

Even if you don’t follow soccer, you know the basics. Any match, exhibition or otherwise, is an excuse for gnarly-toothed Neds to piss it up and riot. Colombian players who accidentally score on themselves get shot. And when it comes to personal assistants, Beckham can’t keep his dick in his pants.

But the Rencontres Internationales cinéma et sport de Montréal, which will screen 18-soccer related films from 11 countries, proves that there’s so much more to this sport than alcohol-fuelled violence, multi-million-dollar contracts and tabloid scandals.

Take The Forbidden Team, for example. This short and sweet documentary follows Tibet’s first national team as they prepare for their inaugural game against Greenland in Copenhagen. Their buffed hunk of a Danish coach has his work cut out for him. It turns out trying to convince a group of peace-loving Buddhists that they needn’t be so polite on the field is no easy sell. He doesn’t give up on them though. After all, their passports may still have “stateless” stamped on them, but watching the refugee players practise kicking the ball around on behalf of their people, it’s clear that soccer provides some much-needed national pride. Whether they ever score or not is another story, as it’s against their religion to pray for personal goals; instead they must pray for the greater good of all that is.

Meanwhile, in Onze footballeurs en or, French director Jean-Christophe Rosé explores the links between politics and soccer by focusing on the 1950–1956 Hungarian national team. For six years, the virtually unbeaten players were both national heroes and regime pawns.

From Polish filmmaker Miroslaw Dembinski, we have Losers and Winners, a film that chronicles the 2003 World Cup of Football for the homeless. By organizing 18 teams of down-and-outers from around the world, the nine-day event was a bit of a fuck-you to all those who say soccer has lost its heart. For more info on the RICS, which runs June 5–11 at Goethe-Institut and the Cinémathèque québécoise, visit www.lalucarne.ca

Tribe quest

If you’re not in the mood for a cinematic precursor to the World Cup, the First Peoples’ Festival is still going strong till Thursday, June 8. Among the docs worth checking out is California’s “Lost” Tribes. It’s a deceiving title because they’re not so much lost as they are stinkin’ rich thanks to legalized gaming on the reserves. But as director Jed Riffe shows and history has proven, if there’s one thing whitey is good at, it’s stealing anything of value away from Aboriginals. So even though some of these tribes are able to afford the luxuries they could only dream of 20 years ago (i.e. health care and food), they are in constant litigation fighting people who want to shut down their casinos. It’s a complicated issue and one that Riffe does a good job of exploring.

Another highlight is the Cinémathèque’s ongoing retrospective of Emilio “el Indio” Fernández. He’s the mucho macho director whose films usually draw attention to the plight of Mexican Indians in one way or another. Enamorada (1946), which screens Friday, June 2, is fairly representative of his distinct style. Set during the Mexican revolution, this is the forbidden love story of a guerrilla general and the daughter of a rich conservative with political connections. For more info, visit www.cinematheque.qc.ca.

And it’s that time of the year again when fearless filmmakers sign up for Montreal’s premiere 48-hour filmmaking competition. This year’s 2880 Film Blitz kicks off Friday, June 2, and ends Sunday, June 4, with a public screening of all the entries. So if you want to check out some fast and dirty movies and have a say in the Audience Choice Award, be at la Tulipe at 7 p.m. For more info, visit www.2880.ca.

>> Movie Listings