A sampling of art films

MONTREAL - Painting, dance, fashion, photography, sculpture, music, literature and cinema itself are just some of the subjects explored at the 31st Festival international du film sur l?art (FIFA), which launched Thursday and runs through March 24.

With some 300 films on the program, it?s impossible to see them all, but we?ve tried to catch a few. (See Bill Brownstein?s column on Page E1, for more). And here is a sampling to get you started:

The Fatwa: Salman?s Story (screening Saturday at 4 and March 22 at 9 p.m. at the Grande Biblioth?que auditorium). The BBC does what it does best, offering an informative, insider?s look at a story we thought we knew all about. Author Salman Rushdie was declared public enemy No. 1 by the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989, marked for death because of his controversial novel The Satanic Verses, which questioned certain tenets of the Islamic faith.

Through interviews with Rushdie, his publisher and many of his friends and associates in the literary world, BBC regular Alan Yentob reconstructs how the writer survived the global death threat that hung over his head for an entire decade.

The film coincides with the publication of Joseph Anton, Rushdie?s memoir of his time under the fatwa, the title a reference to the pseudonym he assumed while being shuttled from one place to the next as his security detail tried to keep him safe from harm.

Salvador Dali, g?nie tragi-comique (screening in French with English subtitles, March 22 at 9 p.m. at the Mus?e des beaux arts?s Maxwell Cummings auditorium). We?ve all seen the fantastical paintings of the Spanish surrealist master. Fran?ois L?vy-Kuentz shows us the wild-man behind the wild art in this playful look at Dali?s life and work.

He was as wacky as they come, as evidenced by extensive archival footage, including interviews with Dali in his later years, as well as some images from his youth.

The film opens with a black-and-white TV announcement warning of the controversial nature of what is to follow, asking all viewers under 18 to turn their sets off. It?s an amusing reminder of how challenging Dali?s work was in its time.

The self-professed ?paranoid madman? and ?congenital anarchist,? also called the ?Don Quixote of modern art,? Dali delighted in attention and smashing through taboos. This film shows that he didn?t just talk the talk; he lived the absurd dream.

Fallingwater: Frank Lloyd Wright?s Masterwork (screening March 24 at 1:30 and 6:30 p.m. at the Canadian Centre for Architecture?s Paul-Desmarais Theatre). The cubic outlines and loft-like openness of modern architecture is nothing new, it turns out. A fascinating film about one house built by one man, over 75 years ago, Fallingwater shows how the world is just now beginning to catch up to the genius of Frank Lloyd Wright.

The documentary is narrated with eloquence and intelligence by Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., whose parents commissioned Fallingwater from Wright in 1935. Kaufmann is well-placed to speak on the topic: aside from living in the home for nearly three decades, he was an apprentice of Wright?s at the time it was built.

Source: http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/sampling+from+FIFA/8099606/story.html

mlb trade rumors Misty May And Kerri Walsh Jake Dalton London 2012 field hockey Missy Franklin Hunter Pence NBCOlympics