Don’t Forget the POPcorn
FilmPOP Fest Puts Punk On-Screen
In its 10th year as POP Montreal’s film-festival little brother, FilmPOP functions as a visual introduction to the music. Priding itself on presenting innovative ways for films to be shown and interacted with, FilmPOP is not your typical film festival fare.
“FilmPOP is like a mini boutique film festival within the larger framework of POP Montreal. It’s a film series that runs concurrently with the music festival, with shows every night as well as weekend matinees, and presents a mix of premiere screenings and rare retrospective screenings,” said Kier-La Janisse, the curator of the event.
Janisse is a writer and film programmer as well as veteran of the film festival industry. FilmPOP presents a diversity of music documentaries, narrative films with a musical arch or even intricate video projects created, most of the time, by independent artists.
“I am a programmer year-round for other things, so I’m always looking at festival listings, requesting screeners, exchanging information with other programmers and checking back with artists whose work I’ve shown before in some context,” said Janisse.
There are over 20 screenings at FilmPOP, which received over 200 submissions this year. The festival opens with Upside Down: The Creation Records Story, which looks at the records that launched many popular rock bands such as The Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, Primal Scream and Oasis.
The second screening is a 35mm slideshow presentation called Magic Lantern Revisited, where nine different artists show several short films created out of slides and projected in a slide carousel.
In most of the cases, live music or a live narration is also introduced in the show as a way of complementing the film.
“We have the premiere of Bloodied but Unbowed, about the Vancouver punk scene in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, the Dr. Feelgood documentary Oil City Confidential by Julien Temple—that one I’m personally really excited about, because not only were Dr. Feelgood an explosive live act, but they were very important precursors to both punk and indie rock before it was even known as indie rock,” said Janisse.
In addition to the diverse menu of film-artist presentations, there will also be a special showing of the documentary called Color Me Obsessed, a series of interviews that portrays a fan perspective of punk legends The Replacements. It’s an interesting take on how music touches its followers, making the audience take a step back and look at music as a method of communication between the artists and their fans.
“The festival closes out Sunday with an old school heavy metal double bill of the premiere of Jeff Krulik’s Heavy Metal Picnic (playing with his earlier short classic Heavy Metal Parking Lot) and Dream Deceivers, a rare 16mm film depicting a court case where the band Judas Priest was sued by the parents of two suicidal teens who, they claimed, were influenced by Judas Priest’s music,” said Janisse.
Music and film lovers alike can check out FilmPOP, which runs alongside POP Montreal from Sept. 21 to 25, at Blue Sunshine (3660 St. Laurent) and POP Quarters (3450 Saint Urbain), with one special screening at Cinématheque Quebecoise (335 de Maisonneuve Blvd. E.).
This article originally appeared in Volume 32, Issue 04, published September 20, 2011.
