RobotsThe gloves are coming off in the battle of the Montreal film festivals, and it's starting to get ugly. The director of the Montreal World Film Festival (aka Montreal International Film Festival) has issued a press release calling for an official public inquiry into the "resounding and humiliating failure" of the city's most recent film festival, New Montreal FilmFest, organized by Montreal cultural event organizer Spectra.

Montreal FilmFest, which had been hampered by dismal attendance following the opening gala, ran in between two other film festivals, The World Film Festival, which ran August 25 through September 3, and the 34th Annual Festival du Nouveau Cinema, which is set to run October 13 through 23. The final blow to the fest came when, as Karina reported, festival closer Domino, starring Keira Knightley, was pulled from the lineup at the last minute after the stars of the film proved unavailable to attend. Are three festivals simply too much for this city of 3 million?


Festival du Nouveau Cinema programming director Claude Chamberlain alleges he had to fight to hold onto the October dates for his festival in the face of "immense pressure" to relinquish the dates to Spectra's FilmFest.

FilmFest was well-financed to the tune of C$6.4 million, and backed by large corporate sponsors and two Canadian arts funding agencies, Ottawa's Telefilm Canada and Quebec's Societe de developpement des entreprises culturelles (SODEC), which pulled funds from the Montreal World Film Festival, run by Serge Losique. Now Losique is suing both Spectra, who organized FilmFest, and Telefilm.

In his press release, Losique accuses both Spectra and Telefilm of, among other things, "squandering public funds" and attempting to destroy the "cultural asset" of the World Film Festival, which started in 1977, by organizing and funding FilmFest to compete with it. The press release demands an inquiry independent of Telefilm and SODEC into the organizing and funding of FilmFest.