RIDM is back! Montreal’s international documentary film festival returns to Concordia

From Omar Khadr and the Arab Spring to social justice in Jackson Heights — you’ll see it all at The Montreal International Documentary Film Festival (RIDM).

The Rencontre will begin its 18th edition with a screening of Les Vaillants, by Quebec director Pascal Sanchez. The film follows the inhabitants of a public housing development in Montreal’s Saint-Michel district for an entire year, revealing their interactions with local associations fighting to make their lives better.

The opening film will take place tonight in Concordia’s Alumni Auditorium (H-110), located on the ground floor of the Henry F. Hall Building, at 7 p.m.

RIDM is one of several major film festivals benefiting from Concordia’s newly refurbished 700-place theatre for screenings. 

“It’s really one of the best theatres in town,” said Charlotte Selb, RIDM’s artistic director, before last year’s edition.

RIDM screenings at Concordia

The following is a round-up of the RIDM screenings taking place at Concordia — either at the J. A. DeSève Cinema, located on the ground floor of Concordia’s J. W. McConnell Building, or the Alumni Auditorium (H-110). Three of RIDM’s most important screenings will occur at Concordia on Saturday.

Saturday, November 14, 2 p.m. (DeSève): In Jackson Heights (190 minutes) is the new film by documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman, about the working-class neighbourhood of New York City.

Known for its cultural diversity, and as a first American home for numerous immigrants, this working-class area of Queens comprises 100 different communities and remains a hotbed of LGBT activism. Observing neighbourhood life and the work of its organizations, the filmmaker wonders about the future of this kind of integrative space in the era of runaway gentrification and growing racial tension.

Saturday, November 14, 6 p.m. (DeSève):  Guantanamo's Child: Omar Khadr (80 minutes), from journalist Michelle Shephard and filmmaker Patrick Reed, tells the harrowing story of the 15-year-old Canadian who was arrested for the murder of an American soldier in Afghanistan, and spent a decade at the Guantanamo Bay prison. The film is the first time we hear Omar Khadr speak at length, after so many years of being forced to remain silent while others discussed him.

Saturday, November 14, 8 p.m. (DeSève):  88:88 (66 minutes) is an experimental film by Concordia alum Isiah Medina (BFA, 13). Medina wants nothing less than to reinvent the Lumière brothers’ old cinema. He does this with dense, precise editing that, inspired by the thinking of Alain Badiou, relies on mathematical logic. 88:88 proposes a new language for our world. Medina will be in attendance at this Quebec premiere.

Monday, November 16, 7 p.m. (H-110): Concordia’s Cinema Politica co-presents Tell Spring Not to Come This Year (83 minutes). By spending a year on the front lines with a division of the Afghan National Army (ANA), filmmaker Saeed Taji Farouky and Michael McEvoy tackle a largely ignored facet of the war in Afghanistan. Despite the epic scale of their cinemascope images, the filmmakers give an unvarnished account of the bloody battles and the demoralized people fighting them.

Friday, November 20, 3 p.m. (DeSève):  The Photographic Impulse roundtable discussion will be held in conjunction with A Photographer's Eye: Photography and the Poetic Documentary, a film retrospective co-guest curated by Concordia alum Melanie Shatzky.

The discussion will include local and international filmmakers whose films are featured as part of this special program, most notably Concordia alum Donigan Cumming. By revealing their own creative approaches, these cine-photographers will provide insight into the similarities and differences between the two art forms, as well as the possibilities of a more subjective, poetic approach to documentary filmmaking. The event is accompanied by two film screenings:

5:30 p.m.: Bring Me the Head of Tim Horton (32 minutes), the latest from legendary Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin, just had its world premiere at TIFF. Maddin, Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson are hired to film the making of Hyena Road, the latest war film by Paul Gross. Lost deep in the Jordanian desert, Maddin soon realizes he is not the right man to make a promotional documentary. So he decides to create his own cinematic essay on war movies. 

5:30 p.m. The 1000 Eyes of Dr. Maddin (66 minutes) During the making of Maddin’s latest feature, The Forbidden Room, filmmaker Yves Montmayeur focused his camera on Maddin’s process in this film that won an award at the Venice Festival this year.

Friday, November 20, 8:30 p.m. (DeSève): The Event (74 minutes), A year after documenting the beginnings of the Ukrainian Revolution (Maïdan, RIDM 2014), Sergei Loznitsa revisits a watershed moment in modern Russian history. Made entirely from black and white archival footage, with no commentary at all, The Event looks back on the failed coup in August 1991 that led to the collapse of the USSR.

Friday, November 20, 7 p.m. (H-110): Concordia’s Cinema Politica co-presents with the Goethe-Institut Montréal Yallah! Underground (85 minutes) by filmmaker Fardi Eslam. He meets with musicians from Lebanon, Egypt, Palestine, Jordan and Israel. They play rap, rock, electronica and folk, and they all share a heightened awareness of the politics of making music.

Saturday, November 21 2:15 p.m. (H-110): The Jóhann Jóhannsson conference includes the participation of Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve. Jóhannsson and Villeneuve are close collaborators; Jóhannsson scored two of Villeneuve's latest films, Prisoners and Sicario.

The two will discuss their unique working relationship, as well as the broader issues involved in scoring films. The event is free and open to all, but donations will be accepted at the door for RIDM’s Youth Program.

Saturday, November 21: 2:30 p.m. (DeSève): Homeland (Iraq Year Zero) (334 minutes) is one of the year's most important titles. This six-hour documentary was selected as part of RIDM’s International Feature Competition. Director Abbas Fahdel will be in attendance.

Saturday, November 21, 7p.m. (H-110): Olmo and the Seagull (87 minutes) is RIDM’s closing film this year. For more than a decade, OIivia has led an actress’s bohemian life at the Théâtre du Soleil in Paris, where she met her boyfriend, Serge.

Their relationship is transformed by Olivia’s pregnancy, which prevents her from performing in Chekhov’s The Seagull and forces her to confront her deepest fears. The filmmakers, Brazilian director Petra Costa and Danish director Lea Glob, create an inspired hybrid work, in which life and imagination are one and the same, fragile and luminous in equal measure.

Consult the full RIDM schedule and purchase tickets for screenings.