by RAF KATIGBAK

At this time of year, you may notice a peculiar scent hanging in the air. It’s an acrid smell, stronger than a Burger King garbage bin, wider spread than the poodle bombs on the city sidewalks, and more potent than the gallons of noxious cologne that the greasy guy next to you at the gym thinks is masking his cool-ranch-dressing-flavoured funk.

Yes, it’s the inimitable smell of desperation. As summer slips into fall, Montrealers, desperate to squeeze the waning daylight frolic time, are suddenly Amazing Race-ing it through their incomplete summer activities—madly stuffing wicker baskets for the Mount Royal picnics they never had, pumping up tires for the Lachine Canal bike ride they never took and running with their suntan lotion to the pool (and then slowly backing away when they hear that current Montreal pool conditions are being called Fecal-Fest 2006).

In Montreal, there are a few other telltale events that subtly announce the steady creep of autumn. There’s the St-Laurent Main Madness festival, perhaps the only place in town where one can consume multiple varieties of food on a stick while haggling over a pair of peek-a-boo cotton briefs and watching an octogenarian Vietnamese woman lift her bifocals to nonchalantly inspect the back of a pawnshop porno VHS (Hooter Polluters VI, I believe).

Then of course there’s Frosh week, where young American students get all excited about the lower drinking age and use their newfound freedom to drink till they’re left stumbling, screaming and cock-eyed, through the student ghetto, while Canadian students casually down a 40 in one chug in mid-conversation, and then carry on their sentences like it’s no big whup.

And then of course there’s the World Film Festival where... well... I’m not exactly sure what happens there really. Apparently there are some films there. And the films are from the world.

I’m not sure if it’s my JMS (Jaded Montrealer Syndrome) acting up but I am so not excited about the World Film Festival that if it weren’t for the fact that there is a 40-foot stage parked in front of my Ste-Catherine’s apartment I probably wouldn’t even know there was one.

No doubt last year’s financial debacle—when the annual $1-million funding from Telefilm and Sodec was rerouted to Spectra’s failed New Montreal Film Festival—has taken its toll on the WFF. But while WFF festival head Serge Losique might have returned for the last laugh on the NMFF, the joke may end up being on Montreal film lovers.

A cursory navigation of the WFF Web site uncovers heaps of self-congratulatory proclamations and rather sad attempts to justify their existence, including a page where such luminaries as Robert Altman show their support for the festival (granted, the quote was from a 1982 festival interview, but hey, he said it, so it totally counts) and a manifesto that seems to hammer into your head how relevant the festival is.

Whether this is just good promotion or signs of an organisation in the final throes of its existence is, I suppose, irrelevant. Regardless of politics, the backbone of any film festival is the programming, and unfortunately for the WFF, this is a department that is sorely lacking. This is due in no small part to the fact that it happens at the same time as the more established Venice Film Festival.

If festivals were rock stars and films were groupies, than Venice would be the lead singer who gets his pick of all the hot chicks, and Montreal is the keyboardist or drummer, relegated to the sloppy seconds, the desperate groupies that want so much to get close to fame that they’ll settle for a cheap five-minute dry hump in the tour bus lavatory.

Okay, maybe I’m overstating it. Of course there are some good films at the WFF, but no one will get to see them, mostly because no one knows about them. Promotion for the festival is scarce (don’t get me started on the poster) and Serge Losique has failed to create any sort of significant buzz in the city.

With scarce promotion, poor programming and an administration that is frustratingly far from transparent, perhaps the strongest smell of desperation in the city might be coming from the World Film Festival.

Riff-Raff@sympatico.ca

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