Pop Montreal Day Five: It's A Wrap With Film Pop

ChartAttack sent Lorraine Carpenter to cover the adventure that is Pop Montreal. Here's her final report, from Sunday night:

7:20 p.m. Associacao Portuguesa

Since there were no fat ladies playing, I figured that the Film Pop closing party was as good a place as any to wrap up Pop Montreal 5. It was slim pickins' on the show front — Carolyn Mark cancelled, and Sunset Rubdown and the Constantines are a drag — but the film program was teeming with promising music and spectacles.

The cozy screening room at the Portuguese hall was packed, so I sat on the floor close to the screen. First up was a series of short films, roughly the length of music videos, starring local musicians and directed by local artists in collaboration with the National Film Board. The entry featuring electro-industrial princess Dandi Wind was a suitably unsettling, abstract piece of work with a brooding score by her bandmate, Szam Findlay, in which she, um, hatched. Their next album is called Yolk Of The Golden Egg.

Bell Orchestre were shot in close-up while performing at some outdoor festival, as were members of the audience, whose reactions ranged from enraptured to dismissive.

Martin Cesar of Dishwasher and Think About Life starred in the funniest film of the lot. He explained how he finds music in fields and creates sounds with a paper drum kit and a guitar made of cushions.

Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas of Besnard Lakes starred in what appeared to be a tense rural melodrama.

Socalled's entry was a clever music video in which the short 'n' curly rapper is blessed with two sets of arms. Later, when someone asked where else these films can be seen, Socalled delivered the zinger of the evening: "You can see mine on Jew Tube."

During the intermission, I stepped outside and ran into the ubiquitous Jonathan Cummins, who summed up this year's Pop with a disappointed review, largely because DJing and other festival duties forced him to miss some promising rock shows. But everyone's experience was unique and, for me, the film and hip-hop events were highlights, not the indie rock shows that the festival is so strongly associated with.

Half a block from the Associacao, I ran into the always affable Seth W. Owen, Film Pop programming director and member of local film collective Automatic Vaudeville. Like most of the festival staff, his upbeat, almost jubilant demeanour was marked with just a hint of relief that the end was in sight.

9 p.m. Associacao Portuguesa

It was time for San Francisco's Wet Gate, a trio who projected samples of 16 mm films to create an abstract audio-visual spectacle. In the darkened room, each "band" member operated a projector, facing the screen to effectively mix and match their images (side-by-side without super-imposition). The clips were culled from found footage, mostly old instructional videos and public service announcements, but because they were selected primarily for their soundtracks, a lot of the images were actually quite boring. Likewise, the sonic tapestry they created was more "interesting" than truly compelling. But, for the film fanatics in the room, the kind who get off on the process, and on the 16 mm format, I'm sure that it was a blast.

10:15 p.m.

Last, but hardly least, in an unannounced finale that was reportedly planned only hours earlier, The Besnard Lakes paid tribute to the flamboyant art films of a director who shall remain nameless (the audience was sworn to secrecy). They played an excellent live soundtrack that, I was shocked to learn days later, was entirely improvised. Not only that, but they hadn't even seen the film. Yet somehow they managed to mirror its mood, the subtle ebbing and flowing as well as the sudden movements and spikes in tension or passion. I sincerely hope that it wasn't the last time they tackle a live soundtrack. If I were a director, I'd be thrilled to have a band lay this level of skill on my work. The performance was a perfect book-end to Gary Lucas' live soundtrack to Le Golem, the event that launched the festival four long days ago. The Besnard Lakes brought Pop's curtain down in style.