{"id":395,"date":"2007-12-19T19:19:58","date_gmt":"2007-12-19T23:19:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingmontreal.ca\/?p=395"},"modified":"2013-01-21T11:11:18","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T16:11:18","slug":"montreal-on-the-movie-screen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2007\/12\/19\/montreal-on-the-movie-screen\/","title":{"rendered":"Montreal on the movie screen"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[youtube]Pd7m35CTHQ4[\/youtube]<\/p>\n<p>Unlike other Canadian cities, Montreal has the pleasure of seeing itself on the big screen quite often, the agreeable consequence of having a robust local film industry. Most of these movies are produced by Quebec&#8217;s mainstream film industry and, even if many have no ambitions outside of being crowd-pleasing blockbusters (<em>Nitro<\/em>, anyone?), there are still some standouts.<\/p>\n<p><em><a href=\"http:\/\/fr.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Monica_la_mitraille\">Monica la mitraille<\/a><\/em>, a biopic of bank robber Monica Proietti, sticks out in my mind for its depiction of working-class Montreal in the 1950s and 60s. <em><a href=\"http:\/\/fr.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/C.R.A.Z.Y.\">C.R.A.Z.Y.<\/a><\/em> is memorable for many reasons, not the least of which are its scenes of north end francophone life at a transformative time in Quebec&#8217;s history. <em><a href=\"http:\/\/fr.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/20h17_rue_Darling\">20h17 rue Darling<\/a><\/em> meditates on class divisions and alienation in modern-day Montreal. I love <em><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mambo_Italiano_%28film%29\">Mambo Italiano<\/a><\/em>&#8216;s flaky but amusing treatment of Montreal&#8217;s Italian community. <em><a href=\"http:\/\/fr.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Premier_juillet%2C_le_film\">Premier juillet<\/a><\/em> is worthwhile because it stars Lucie Laurier and puts to film one of Montreal&#8217;s odder traditions: the July 1st moving day.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s so much more, in both English and French, made by a diverse array of filmmakers and produced by a number of different groups. Some of the best Montreal movies, however, come from one small company headquartered in the Cooper Building on the Main: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.atopia.com\/accueil.e\/index.php\">Atopia Films<\/a>. More than any other production house or distributor, Atopia is committed to films that really delve into some overlooked aspects of Montreal&#8217;s character. Here are a few of my favourites.<\/p>\n<p>The video clip you see above is the trailer for <em>Sur les traces d&#8217;Igor Rizzi<\/em>, a movie that premiered last year at the Festival du nouveau cin\u00e9ma. It&#8217;s the first feature effort by No\u00ebl Mitrani, a Toronto-born, Paris-raised filmmaker who moved to Montreal two years ago and found himself fascinated with its wintry landscape. His film&#8217;s Montreal is bleak and snowy, an endless, alienating procession of anonymous triplexes and dreary laneways.<\/p>\n<p>[youtube]rsqZw9F-Iug[\/youtube]<\/p>\n<p><em>Jimmywork<\/em> is Simon Sauv\u00e9&#8217;s fabulous pseudo-documentary about a Mile Ender named Jimmy Weber, a Mile Ender, indebted and alcoholic, whose far-fetched scheme to produce advertising for the Sainte Tite rodeo morphs into a ludicrous crime that goes terribly wrong. This isn&#8217;t a mockumentary, but a film that blends fiction and documentary in an unsettling but strangely engaging way. Jimmy and the film&#8217;s supporting characters are real &#8212; if you live in Mile End, you might be weirded out to see them on the street.<\/p>\n<p>[youtube]xqEDH0R9Pxw[\/youtube]<\/p>\n<p><em>S.P.I.T.: Squeegee Punks in Traffic<\/em> is Daniel Cross&#8217; classic 2001 film on Roach, a squeegee kid from rural Quebec who lives on the streets of Montreal. It&#8217;s a captivating look at a subculture that is at once obvious (just head down to Berri Square) and obscure (when was the last time you ever actually met a squeegee kid?). What makes this documentary so memorable is that it is shot in large part through the eyes of Roach himself, who takes on the role of filmmaker as much as Cross himself.<\/p>\n<p><em>S.P.I.T.<\/em>, of course, launched Roach&#8217;s career as a filmmaker and activist. Last year, he ran as a candidate in Outremont during the 2006 federal election and made a film about it: <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.eyesteelfilm.com\/projects.html\">Punk the Vote<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>[youtube]r9bw6uKQivE[\/youtube]<\/p>\n<p>I haven&#8217;t seen <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.atopia.com\/film.e\/imi.php\">Imitation<\/a><\/em> because it appears to have been shown at film festivals everywhere but Montreal. Directed by Federico Hidalgo, who was responsible for 2004&#8217;s <em>A Silent Love<\/em>, <em>Imitation<\/em> follows the story of a young woman who has set out from Mexico to Montreal to find her wayward husband. As far as I know, it&#8217;s the only feature film that revolves around Montreal&#8217;s Latino community. The trailer reveals familiar scenes of the Jean Talon Market and Plaza Saint-Hubert, among other places.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[youtube]Pd7m35CTHQ4[\/youtube] Unlike other Canadian cities, Montreal has the pleasure of seeing itself on the big screen quite often, the agreeable consequence of having a robust local film industry. Most of these movies are produced by Quebec&#8217;s mainstream film industry and, even if many have no ambitions outside of being crowd-pleasing blockbusters (Nitro, anyone?), there are<a href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2007\/12\/19\/montreal-on-the-movie-screen\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"sr-only\">&#8220;Montreal on the movie screen&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5008,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7838],"tags":[1485,1486,1488,1321,1484,1473,1475,1480,34,1476,1477,1482,1487,1478,125,1483,1479,704,1334,292,1481,1474,801,152],"class_list":["post-395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","tag-a-silent-love","tag-atopia-films","tag-bank-robber","tag-berri-square","tag-c-r-a-z-y","tag-cooper-building","tag-daniel-cross","tag-federico-hidalgo","tag-video","tag-igor-rizzi","tag-jimmy-weber","tag-lucie-laurier","tag-mexico","tag-monica-proietti","tag-montreal","tag-nitro","tag-noel-mitrani","tag-paris","tag-plaza-saint-hubert","tag-quebec","tag-roach","tag-simon-sauve","tag-the-festival-du-nouveau-cinema","tag-toronto"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Montreal on the movie screen - Spacing Montreal<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2007\/12\/19\/montreal-on-the-movie-screen\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Montreal on the movie screen - Spacing Montreal\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[youtube]Pd7m35CTHQ4[\/youtube] Unlike other Canadian cities, Montreal has the pleasure of seeing itself on the big screen quite often, the agreeable consequence of having a robust local film industry. 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Most of these movies are produced by Quebec&#8217;s mainstream film industry and, even if many have no ambitions outside of being crowd-pleasing blockbusters (Nitro, anyone?), there areContinue reading \"Montreal on the movie screen\"","og_url":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2007\/12\/19\/montreal-on-the-movie-screen\/","og_site_name":"Spacing Montreal","article_published_time":"2007-12-19T23:19:58+00:00","article_modified_time":"2013-01-21T16:11:18+00:00","author":"Christopher DeWolf","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@Spacing","twitter_site":"@Spacing","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Christopher DeWolf","Est. reading time":"3 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2007\/12\/19\/montreal-on-the-movie-screen\/","url":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2007\/12\/19\/montreal-on-the-movie-screen\/","name":"Montreal on the movie screen - Spacing Montreal","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-12-19T23:19:58+00:00","dateModified":"2013-01-21T16:11:18+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/#\/schema\/person\/8d797e2a77c30d58d1f6fe3d915ad3fd"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2007\/12\/19\/montreal-on-the-movie-screen\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2007\/12\/19\/montreal-on-the-movie-screen\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2007\/12\/19\/montreal-on-the-movie-screen\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Montreal on the movie screen"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/#website","url":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/","name":"Spacing Montreal","description":"Canadian Urbanism Uncovered  |  Montreal Architecture, Urban Design, Public Transit, City Hall, Parks, Walking, Bikes, Streetscape, History, Waterfront, Maps, Public Spaces","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/#\/schema\/person\/8d797e2a77c30d58d1f6fe3d915ad3fd","name":"Christopher DeWolf","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/93c8aca91d7cfbd895846128d058930b?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/93c8aca91d7cfbd895846128d058930b?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Christopher DeWolf"},"description":"Check out Urbanphoto!","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.urbanphoto.net"],"url":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/author\/christopher\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5008"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17454,"href":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395\/revisions\/17454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}