FIFEQ-MTL's programming
This year, the FIFEQ-MTL team is proud to present 5 films from our last edition's program (2022), reflecting our vision of contemporary ethnographic cinema: an avant-garde cinema at the crossroads of visual anthropology and the 7th art, depicting various human experiences of reality and socio-cultural realities while distinguishing itself from a more classic form of documentary that would consider itself as informative or militant.
The FIFEQ, the only ethnographic film festival in Quebec and Canada, is unique and free of charge for the public. It has been promoting and disseminating this discipline for nearly 20 years to a growing audience.
Thanks to the mobilization of numerous volunteers, students (anthropology, sociology and cinema) and non-students, professors and various cultural partners, the FIFEQ-MTL has succeeded in making a place for ethnographic cinema in the Montreal cultural landscape, and this, beyond the university milieu.
Since its inception in 2003, the FIFEQ-MTL has sought to break away from the colonial, essentialist, racist and dehumanizing schemes inherited from the colonial anthropology of the first half of the 20th century. The festival aims to democratize ethnographic cinema for the general public according to a contemporary vision that questions the ethics of filming faces or realities in particular socio-cultural contexts, especially those where the relationships of domination are multiplied. The festival team wants to show innovative and daring films that confront our representations of reality and push the limits of this discipline, which deserves to be known.
At the FIFEQ-MTL, ethnographic film is not only a question of otherness, voyeurism or exoticism: through its varied programming, the festival seeks to open a critical look at a filmic ethnography that is humanistic, reflective and fundamentally cinematographic.
The FIFEQ-MTL team
5 products
La Forêt
This could be the story of a failed meeting. Or the story of filmmakers who can't find people for their film. Or a meta-film about the problems of remuneration in cinema and particularly in documentary. Or a film about money, about the word as capital, as a good that can be exchanged like any other good; about the meeting between two milieus that a priori are far apart; about the feeling of not...
CAUGHT
Subscription access
_CAUGHT_ is a documentary using fictional and observational methods to express the struggles for justice of trans Latina women working in the New York City sex industry. The film was made through the collaboration with the TRANSgrediendo Intercultural Collective, a grass root association defending the rights of trans Latina migrant women in Queens, New York City. It is also a tribute to Lorena ...
The Fantastic
Subscription access
_The Fantastic_ is a film about encountering the unknown and the relationship between imagination and reality. The film is built on interviews with exiled North Koreans, who describe what they imagined the outside world to be like, based on their experiences of watching smuggled foreign fiction films.
Elsewhere, Everywhere
Subscription access
A computer screen, images from all over the world. One click is all it takes to cross borders, whereas the tale of another journey unfolds in bits and pieces, through text messages, chats, phone conversations, and an interview at the British immigration office. It’s the journey of Shahin, a 20-year-old Iranian man who fled his homeland first to Greece then finally to England where he claims asy...
Brave
Subscription access
This documentary tells the story of how, when a Haitian voodoo priestess (a Mambo) dies, it is up to the children to celebrate the deity she served. It’s time for the filmmaker's mother to come home to perform this ritual in honor of his late grandmother.
La Forêt
This could be the story of a failed meeting. Or the story of filmmakers who can't find people for their film. Or a meta-film about the problems of remuneration in cinema and particularly in documentary. Or a film about money, about the word as capital, as a good that can be exchanged like any other good; about the meeting between two milieus that a priori are far apart; about the feeling of not...
CAUGHT
Subscription access
_CAUGHT_ is a documentary using fictional and observational methods to express the struggles for justice of trans Latina women working in the New York City sex industry. The film was made through the collaboration with the TRANSgrediendo Intercultural Collective, a grass root association defending the rights of trans Latina migrant women in Queens, New York City. It is also a tribute to Lorena ...
The Fantastic
Subscription access
_The Fantastic_ is a film about encountering the unknown and the relationship between imagination and reality. The film is built on interviews with exiled North Koreans, who describe what they imagined the outside world to be like, based on their experiences of watching smuggled foreign fiction films.
Elsewhere, Everywhere
Subscription access
A computer screen, images from all over the world. One click is all it takes to cross borders, whereas the tale of another journey unfolds in bits and pieces, through text messages, chats, phone conversations, and an interview at the British immigration office. It’s the journey of Shahin, a 20-year-old Iranian man who fled his homeland first to Greece then finally to England where he claims asy...
Brave
Subscription access
This documentary tells the story of how, when a Haitian voodoo priestess (a Mambo) dies, it is up to the children to celebrate the deity she served. It’s time for the filmmaker's mother to come home to perform this ritual in honor of his late grandmother.
