Artists and museums get the red carpet treatment

Montreal’s reputation as an underground city, with its labyrinthine connections between shopping centres, hotels, stations, museums and civic centres, is enhanced this month as it tries to convince citizens and visitors to spend even more time in artificially lit spaces—contemplating the entries to the world’s principal festival of arts documentaries. The International Festival of Films on Art (Fifa) holds its 28th edition from 18-28 March, with the organisers expecting to screen more than 200 documentaries covering all art forms with, as ever, the visual arts, architecture and design strongly represented.

The festival attracts a wide range of entrants, from established TV presentations to monographs made for dedicated gallery screenings and student films made on tiny budgets. Most will not receive commercial theatrical distribution, and for many Montreal will provide the highest-profile exposure they will receive. However, founding director René Rozon also says that the festival is increasingly attended by buyers for TV companies, for whom it is a marketplace from where they can programme films for broadcast. For festival-goers the distinctions matter little—most screenings are well attended or full.”

More information at The Art Newspaper.