by JOANNE LATIMER

It's like fast-tracking a liberal arts education, via 10 days of documentary films. Montreal's 22nd annual Festival of Films on Art (FIFA), which runs from March 11 to 21, offers a heady mix of topics, covering everything from cine-painting and ballet to dance-video and architecture. This year, the program includes 240 films - selected from over 600 submissions arriving from 30 countries. FIFA is dedicated to the memory of actor Suzanne Cloutier and features a tribute to multidisciplinary artist Robert Wilson, who will be a guest at the festival.

Of the 50 films in competition, seven Canadian hopefuls include Bertrand Carrière's 913, chronicling the installation of a photo exhibit that paid tribute to the 913 Canadian soldiers who died at Dieppe during World War II. Bernar Hébert's competition entry is Esquisses du Nouveau Monde, about Montreal-born painter Stanley Cosgrove, who studied in France in the late '20s with Charles Maillard.

Gimmicks and gas

Hopes are high for Joseph Hillel and Patrick Demers' Regular or Super - Views on Mies van der Rohe, accompanied by original music from our own DJ Ram. Hillel and Demers' film focuses on the architect's famous gas station on Nun's Island from 1967, with commentary from heavy-hitters like Rem Koolhaus and Phyllis Lambert. The gimmick factor is undeniable - and charming - in Anne Troake's Pretty Big Dig, which has nothing to do with Boston's subway expansion. Instead, it's a filmed performance of three hydraulic excavators moving in graceful unison.

Philippe Baylaucq's Sables émouvants is a lyrical exploration of Sable Island mysteries and myths. Using old photographs taken by the daughter of a rescue team over a century ago, Byalaucq reconstructs the island's lore. Meanwhile, Esther Pelletier's Sur les pas de René Richard is about a true-life trapper turned painter who went to Paris before re-settling in Baie St-Paul in 1938. Brenda Longfellow's competition film Tina in Mexico is on photographer Tina Modotti. Modotti, a famous beauty of Italian birth, was the colleague and muse of photographer Edward Weston, who took her to Mexico to mix with the avant-garde. What a life.

Canucks and cinephiles

For more Canadiana, this time outside competition, don't miss the Reflections sidebar of 1970s videos by the late avant garde video artist Colin Campbell, or Michael Ostroff's doc on Canadian film pioneer "Budge" Crawley.

Of special note to cinephiles is the festival's Artificial Paradise section, including an Irish film on Abbas Kiarostami, plus films with insight into the lives and work of Mike Leigh, Michel Moreau, Peter Sellers, Anthony Hopkins, Jean Cocteau, Lars Von Trier and a documentary narrated by Oliver Platt and directed by Michael Epstein, called None Without Sin, on the famous Hollywood blacklist scandal that enveloped Arthur Miller and Elia Kazan (among many others). Architecture buffs will line up for films on Alvar Aalto, Radeo Ando, Étienne Gaboury and Rafael Moneo.

Leveraging Canada's affinity with Northern Europe, FIFA presents a Northern Lights sidebar of 29 Nordic films on art and culture, including seven films on architecture and design, four films on music, nine films on visual arts and photography, two films on film and theatre and seven films on dance. Minimalism isn't as predominant as you'd expect, with some rebellious short dance films and out-there expressionistic music docs.

Other must-see entries are new works on Titian, Gauguin, Matisse and Chagall, plus films on sculptors Jean Arp, Richard Serra and Montreal artist Jan Stohl, plus docs on literary figures like George Orwell, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Pierre Morency, children's writer Dominique Demers, and Nobel-Prize-winner Gao Xingjian.

Musical offerings include opera subjects like Richard Wagner and John Adams, Spanish soprano Montserrat Caballé and Acadian soprano Suzie Leblanc, plus a film on Jane Birkin, Bobby McFerrin and Chick Corea.

FIFA's opening film is Adam Low's eagerly anticipated The Life and Times of Count Luchino Visconti, while the closing film, Jean-Pierre Fargier's Cocteau et compagnie, includes tidbits on Stravinsky, Picasso and Coco Chanel.

FIFA screens from March 11-21. Tickets are available at the Place-des-Arts box office and online at www.artfifa.com. $8.50 each or 10 for $70, including a catalogue. Info: 874-1637

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