Art with heart

Culture and celluloid intersect at FIFA 2009

PEANUTS PORTRAIT: Good Ol’ Charles Schultz

by MATTHEW HAYS

Montreal’s culture vultures and art fanatic set wait all year for their version of Christmas. Montreal’s Festival International du film sur l’art (FIFA), now in its 27th year, always offers an unusual range of movies from around the world, usually documentary, exploring the world of art through celluloid. It’s a winning combination, one that has led to kudos from international critics for FIFA’s kickass programming.

This year’s line-up of films will again induce salivation. There are the usual examinations of the lives of fascinating artists. My first pick would be The World’s a Stage With John Neville, Montreal director Ari Cohen’s look at the life of one of Canada’s most famous thespians. This vibrant profile of the actor features interviews with Neville himself as well as Dame Judi Dench and Ralph Fiennes.

Another performer gets the doc treatment in Liza Minnelli, in which we see the famous chanteuse and actor preparing for a British tour. While often known primarily for her struggles with addiction and bizarroid choices in men, in director Susan Shaw’s sensitive treatment, interviewer Melvyn Bragg talks to her about her choices in music, her considerable range of talents and her sometimes-tortured relationship with her famous mom. (Friends of Dorothy, take note: I strongly advise panic purchasing of advance tickets for this one.) Peanuts enthusiasts will want to screen David Van Taylor’s Good Ol’ Charles Schulz, in which the famous late cartoonist discusses the inspirations for his beloved gaggle of characters.

Scribes also come under scrutiny at FIFA. In Joan Didion, we get an intimate, in-depth look into the life and work of the celebrated author and journalist, with particular focus on her bestselling book The Year of Magical Thinking, the landmark, painfully detailed description of the 12-month period following her husband’s sudden death from a heart attack. Didion is as forthright and brutally honest in interviews as she is in her prose. The popular lesbian novelist behind Tipping the Velvet and The Night Watch is the subject of Sarah Waters, discussing her fetish for antique pornography; the film includes conversations with writer Andrew Davies, who translated a number of her works into screenplays. And a fellow queer writer is able to sound off in Gore Vidal, in which the author of the breakthrough book The City and the Pillar discusses history and U.S. politics—not surprisingly trashing George W. Bush in the process.

Film on film

Cinema itself comes under the camera lens. In Eye to Eye: All About German Film, a who’s-who of the national film culture (including Wim Wenders, Doris Dörrie, Tom Tykwer and Caroline Link) reflect on what precisely constitutes the main attributes of German cinema. Filmmaker Steve Cole looks at one specific figure of this national cinema in a separate doc, Werner Herzog. This most enigmatic filmmaker and actor talks of his main influences, his passions, desires and the controversies surrounding his stunning body of work. In Tim Burton, the filmmaker behind Edward Scissorhands and Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure speaks from the set of his hit stage-to-screen adaptation, Sweeney Todd.

There will be several tributes this year, including to the magnificent, Toronto-based queer art group General Idea. Several of their videos will be screened, including Test Tube, PressConference, Cornucopia and Shut the Fuck Up, as well as a documentary about General Idea itself.

And lest the festival seems to be swooning too much towards the famous, a lovely feature doc about two largely unknown collectors sets a good balance. In Megumi Sasaki’s Herb and Dorothy, a sweet couple who are not filthy rich began collecting art in the early ’60s. They bought art they liked, and works that were affordable. Little did they know, many of the artists whose works they bought would go on to become huge stars—including Lucio Pozzi, Richard Tuttle, Christo and Jean-Claude. And unlike so many mainstream media stories about such collectors, which usually focus on the I-just-won-the-lottery aspect of finding out that you have a high-priced artwork in your closet, Herb and Dorothy were clearly not in the collecting biz to cash in. They are seen in the film donating most of their 4,000-piece collection to various galleries in New York.

This year’s obligatory Frank Lloyd Wright documentary is The Last Wright, an entry from Lucille Carra that shows us the Park Inn in Mason City, Iowa, one of the demigod architect’s final building designs.

THE 27TH ANNUAL EDITION OF FIFA
UNREELS FROM MARCH 19–29.
INFO: ARTFIFA.COM