November! Bah, humbug! I dislike November because of its shorter days and colder temperatures. But RIDM, Montreal’s documentary film festival, is a rare bright spot in the otherwise dreary 11th month.
RIDM’s 20th edition got under way Thursday night with an invitation-only screening of 24 Davids. RIDM continues until Sunday, Nov. 19, 2017.
The festival will show 142 films from 47 countries on screens at Cinéma du Parc, Cinémathèque Québécoise, Cinéplex Odeon Quartier Latin, Pavillon Judith-Jasmin Annexe (the former NFB cinema) and Concordia University.
In no particular order, subjects include family connections (parents, children, siblings, with three films looking at grandmothers), Brexit, agribusiness, immigrants and refugees, animals (dinosaurs, turtles, lions, sheep, donkeys and the rats of Baltimore) live birds and a famous sculpted one by Brancusi, crime victims and perpetrators, musicians, the sea, the universe as seen from Chile’s Atacama Desert, and – smaller than the universe but still quite large – the New York Public Library, through the lens of Frederick Wiseman.
Based on the excerpts shown at the festival’s press conference, the most amusing film is Nothingwood, about Afghanistan’s prolific film director Salim Shaheen. Brimstone and Glory, about a fireworks festival in Mexico, might be the most visually astonishing.
For weirdness, and humour, too, there is Tongue Cutters, about two Norwegian children participating in the world cod-tongue-cutting competition. Dragonfly Eyes, from China, uses surveillance video to construct a narrative about a woman who leaves a monastery to work at a dairy farm.
RIDM is presenting retrospectives of the films by U.S. director James N. Kienitz Wilkins and Tan Pin Pin of Singapore. They will attend the festival as will many other directors. Audience members can ask them questions after film screenings.
You might have seen Leviathan, a film from 2012, set aboard a fishing boat. Directors Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Veréna Paravel have brought something quite different to this year’s RIDM – Caniba, a film about notorious Japanese cannibal Issei Sagawa. It’s the only film in the festival that has a “viewer discretion advised” tag attached. I did not see it. Friends who did said “That’s a REAL horror film!”
I saw a handful of RIDM films at press screening, and my favourite so far is Bagages, which was made right here in Montreal. Immigrant teens talk about their lives here and in their old country, and the challenges they face.
Visit the RIDM web site at RIDM.ca for more information.
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