Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
Oh, man, it’s almost my favorite time of the year again... Fantasia time! If you’ve never been, then there’s more beautiful time of the year to visit Montreal than the summer, and this is a heck of an excuse. Check out the press release we got today here at the Labs:
Montreal, June 13th, 2005 - This summer, the Fantasia International Genre Film Festival will once again return in full swing to satisfy the ever-growing, enthusiastic crowd that will gather for our ninth edition. This year’s event will take place from the 7th to the 25th of July, in the heart of downtown Montreal at the Hall Concordia Theatre (1455 De Maisonneuve Blvd. West) and the J.A. De Sève Theatre (1450 De Maisonneuve Blvd. West).
One of Canada’s most important privately-owned post-production companies in the cinema and television industry, Vision Globale, is this year’s official presenter of the festival. Burger King, Kodak Motion Picture Film, Ben & Jerry’s, Magra Multimédia, the Sir Winston Churchill Complex and the Hong Kong Economic & Trade Office of Canada are this edition’s new members of the sponsorship partner group.
It is with great joy and pride that we announce the return of the following sponsorship partner to this year’s festival: Archambault, Pepsi Canada, Belle Gueule, Viacom and the Admission Network. Furthermore, Canoë, Space, Drive In Classics, Z la télé du futur, MusiquePlus and CJLO play the important role of media partners by giving us heightened exposure in the national media.
The Fantasia Film Festival benefits from the promotion and the celebration of the great genre films adored by the Quebec public and the 20-40 generation. Furthermore, the festival capitalizes on an impressive program that features the best and varied genre films from around the globe, in categories such as action, animation (particularly Japanese anime), martial arts, adventure, comedy, alternative documentary, urban drama, historical epic, fantasy, crime thriller, suspense and science fiction. With a huge variety of genres, Fantasia celebrates the cinema of imagination and its creators, and offers alternative ways to represent the world’s problems and contemporary issues in film.
For this year’s festival, more than 90 feature films and more than 50 short films will be presented, coming from Germany, England, Belgium, Canada, Korea, Denmark, Spain, U.S.A., France, Hong Kong, Iran, Japan, Malaysia, Russia, Thailand and Turkey.
Moreover, in this ninth edition, Fantasia will be awarding Ray Harryhausen, pioneer of stop-motion animation, the Lifetime Achievement Award. During the ’50s and ’60s, Harryhausen developed and improved animation techniques, such as the Dynamation process and the travelling matte, and mixing stop-motion animation and live action. He is the creative genius behind Jason and the Argonauts and The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. In 1991, Harryhausen was finally awarded an Oscar for his work. He will be in Montreal to do a special presentation on animation techniques, and to share with the public his earliest short films, which are rarely shown, and the movie Jason and the Argonauts (presented in a recently restored 35mm print).
Among the special events, the second weekend of the festival will once again be dedicated to Komikstok, a unique opportunity to discover movies inspired by or adapted from comics books and mangas. During this event, you will have the occasion to enjoy an abundance of feature animation films, adaptations with actors of comic books and mangas, presentations by artists in the field, short films produced by independent or alternative artists and also short films of superheroes.
The scheduling of the festival is available on our Web site right here, which will be on-line on June 22, 2005. Copies of the official program will go on sale July 1st although Quebec, notably at all Archambault locations. The tickets are available on July 5th through the Admissions network and at the ticket booth located at the Hall Building of Concordia University, at 1455 De Maisonneuve Blvd. West.
Come and Enjoy!
July 5th for ticket sales, eh? Sounds great. As soon as we’ve got the line-up, we’ll make sure to update again. I’d be willing to bet that GODZILLA: FINAL WARS will play there, along with a ton of stuff that I’m sure will rock your socks off. Stay tuned!
"Moriarty" out.
