Voulez-vous Rendez-vous by MATTHEW HAYS The 16th annual Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois begins this Thursday, Feb. 19 (running until the 28th). The festival has proven an all-important showcase for the province's indigenous film biz, surely the healthiest in the country. Included this year will be films in English, allowed in for the first time without French subtitles. My picks for some of the faves at the fest include The Street, Daniel Cross's moving, elegiac film about several of Montreal's homeless population, Confessions of a Rabid Dog, John L'Ecuyer's profile of recovering heroin addicts, Nana, George and Me, Joe Balass's wacky take on his relationship with his grandmother and a gay eccentric, and Clandestins, Denis Chouinard's and Nicolas Wadimoff's heartwrenching examination of desperate refugee stowaways. Films screen at the Cinémathèque québécoise and the NFB. Apparently always eager to hand repressive regimes around the world plenty of free PR, World Film Fest ringmaster Serge Losique has organized a Celebration of Chinese Cinema (running Feb. 16-March 1). Some of the nation's best films will be screened, including the considerable talents of Zhang Yimou, to which a special section of the screenings will be dedicated. (Zhang's films include The Story of Qiu Ju, Ju Dou and Raise the Red Lantern.) Chinese government officials will be attending a press conference to launch the whole affair, and it all wouldn't seem quite so sleazy if more of the films in the roster were actually accessible to the Chinese populace. The Chinese government has consistently banned films deemed too subversive at home while exporting them to arthouses worldwide, creating the impression of a modern, open and relatively free state with overseas audiences. And your tax dollars are hard at work helping to create this smoke screen: co-sponsors of the event include Telefilm, Conseil des Arts de la MUC, as well as the private sector Alliance and Cineplex Odeon. Speaking of repressive regimes, the survivor of one will be speaking this Tuesday, Feb. 17 at the Place des Arts as part of the Unique Lives & Experiences lecture series. Betty Mahmoody, the woman whose story inspired the 1991 Sally Field film Not Without My Daughter, will speak about her desperate effort to escape Iran with her child after learning that, as the wife of an Iranian-born man, she had few if any rights. Geena Davis, who was originally booked for that date, has been switched to May 26. Gregg Bordowitz, the brilliant videographer and AIDS activist, is in town this Thursday, Feb. 19. The director behind the sublime feature-length video Fast Trip, Long Drop--about a man's struggle to deal with his HIV status--will speak at Concordia on the topic "Victim, Angel, Citizen: Representations of People with AIDS." 6 p.m., Hall Building, free admission. Also on Thursday (Feb. 19), the local collective Sense art will be taking over Le Lounge (1333 Ste-Catherine E.) for a fundraising evening of choice celluloid. Doors open 8 p.m., $7. Finally, Titanic tops the list of Oscar nominations, with 14 in total (some kind of record). Why do people like this movie so much? Aside from the boffo special effects, the story is ludicrously shallow and the dialogue only occasionally rises to the mediocre. When the fuck will people realize that I am right and virtually everyone else in the world is wrong? Comments: matt_hays@babylon.montreal.qc.ca