Dec 15, 2019

Six Insights on Montreal's Vibrant Indie Animation Scene

Montreal's Les Sommets du cinéma d'animation is a film festival with a playful and artistic concept that goes beyond animation films. This year's edition (December 3-8) closed with a maypole dance, a master class by veteran filmmaker Theodore Ushev. One competition screening was hosted by a local drag queen. A rapper served as a juror. Even though it was a film festival, there was a buzz in the audience.

All of this reflected the tastes of artistic director Marco de Blois. However, "Les Sommets" also gained liveliness from its setting in Montreal, one of the world's centers of artistic animation. After all, it is home to the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), a powerful, publicly funded production house for short films

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Inevitably, the NFB's presence was felt throughout Les Sommets; NFB filmmakers were everywhere, and NFB films won the Best Canadian Film Award and an honorable mention in the same category. But the NFB's influence makes it difficult to work with all of Montreal's independent animators. (Cartoon Brew will publish a multi-part interview with an NFB producer next week.)

While some animators lament that the NFB dominates and even oppresses Montreal's independent animation scene, Les Sommet pointed to many ways around it. What follows is an overview of other institutions and agencies in Montreal that promote the creation of artistic shorts. This is not an exhaustive list, but merely an impression of a week spent at the festival.

Cinémathèque québécoise, which organizes Les Sommets, holds a residency each year before and after the festival. Half a dozen filmmakers come together to create animated short films for five and a half weeks. Each is assigned a mentor and given special privileges, including a visit to the NFB. They then present their projects at the festival. This year's program featured a diverse selection of works, from Boris Labbé's philosophical video installation to Laura D'Addazio's occult sex drama.

While the program is technically open to everyone, Cinematheque director Marcel Jean (who is also the artistic director of the Annecy Film Festival) stresses that knowledge of French is preferred. At least two seats are reserved for Canadians, with the rest reserved for international filmmakers.

Support is available for those who stay in Montreal to produce short films. Says Jean, "We try to refer them to either a private co-producer or the NFB." Private producers are relatively rare in Montreal, and he cited Unité Centrale, of which he was a producer, as an example.

This year, the festival held its first pitching contest, co-sponsored by Cartoon Brew. Selected filmmakers had 10 minutes to pitch a short film in development to the jury (of which I was a member), and out of five projects, we chose Max Vanienskoot's "O," a film about a man who is in the process of making a film about his friend's suicide. The film is a beautifully rendered tribute to a friend who committed suicide. Vanienskoot won a cash prize of C$1,000 from Cartoon Brew, as well as production services and support for distribution strategy.

His day job is as an animator at Blue Spirit Studios in Montreal. He began developing O on his own, taking advice from his NFB friends and researching available opportunities. Eventually, he discovered pitching contests. He said, "The fact that I was presenting my project gave me a new perspective on production and distribution, and most importantly, I met some great people.

Under the banner of "Tomorrow's Talent," Les Sommets organized a networking session where eight Quebec schools presented their animation courses. Most of them are tailored to Montreal's thriving industries, training students for careers in the city's VFX, video games, and 2D and 3D animation studios.

Concordia focuses on artistic exploration. The course, offered at the university's Mel Hoppenheim Film School, is open to students of all ages and backgrounds, with no animation skills required, and helps them produce short films that will be screened at film festivals. As expected, Concordia dominated the student program at Les Sommes, with about 15 films in competition.

According to Shira Avni, associate professor of animation at Concordia, graduates are working everywhere from the NFB to storyboards for major studios. We encourage our students to apply to the NFB's [emerging filmmakers] program," she said. We also explain the Canada Council grant process and artist residencies." She notes that the percentage of international students is increasing and estimates that more than half of all graduates stay in Quebec.

One of the events held at Les Sommets was a talk by Jocelyne Perrier on financing short films. An experienced producer, Perrier listed the institutions that can provide funding and other support to filmmakers: CALQ, SODEC, MAI, the Canada Council for the Arts (whose budget has increased significantly in recent years), the Conseil des Arts de Montréal, the NFB's ACIC program, and various competitions and artist centers.

There is a caveat, however. Perrier noted that these initiatives are constantly changing. She also recognized that the institutions she mentioned tend not to have animation-specific grants. Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre, one of the filmmakers in attendance, said that grants are generally biased toward live action and that animation filmmakers are expected to justify their chosen medium.

Later, St-Pierre told me: "Auteuristic animation is not appreciated here [in Montreal]."

Filmmakers who wish to avoid the whims and constraints of grants and production companies can always go it alone. Exemplifying this approach is Steven Woloshen, who has been making drawings-on-film animations in the city for 40 years. For decades he has worked as an insurance salesman, a driver in the feature film industry, and a record keeper for the NFB (his current position).

"When you do things for yourself," said Woloshen in a master class at Les Sommets, "you have to be able to do things for yourself. The boom in Montreal's animation and VFX industry has created an abundance of day jobs for artists. At the same time, the cost of living in Montreal has skyrocketed, putting enormous pressure on self-financed filmmakers.

Needless to say, the festival itself broadly favors indies over the industry, helping to bring all these filmmakers together. The proximity to Ottawa, home of one of the world's leading animation festivals, has forced the Les Sommets Film Festival to define itself. Les Sommets achieves this, first, through the performative aspect mentioned earlier, and second, by restricting its international competition to films that have never been shown in Ottawa (or any other festival in Montreal).

More importantly, the festival is small and locally based. Finally, one is exposed to the region's work through the many wonderful Quebec-Canada panoramas, not to mention the various fringe events described in this article Les Sommets has been running for 18 years. Long may it continue.

(Top image: "Pourritude" by Jessie Santerre of Concordia University)