HORS CHAMP
Reflecting on Programming:
Critical and Creative Gestures (Experimenting, Reacting, Decolonizing, Exhibiting Film)
Bette Gordon, Variety, 1983
update
Session 4
DecolonizingWinter 2026
Session 3
Exhibiting FilmDecember 6th, 2 – 5 PM
Cinéma public, Casa Italia Guest Curators: Ariane De Blois, Dominique Fontaine, Nicole Gingras, Michèle Thériault
Mediator : Maude Trottier, Hors champ
Since the openings and shifts brought about by the category of “expanded cinema” in the 1960s, numerous devices and installation forms have incorporated films into a variety of exhibition contexts. While Raymond Bellour's (2012) La querelle des dispositifs reflected on this diversity in terms of ontological differentiation, re-establishing cinema's connection to the theater, the term “exhibition cinema,” coined by Jean-Christophe Royoux (2000), opened the door to a fruitful consideration of “post-cinematic” devices .
Similarly, the research group “Cinéma exposé”, led by François Bovier and Adeena Mey between 2012 and 2014, produced an important synthesis defending a “plural history of devices and apparatus, at the intersection of the white cube and the black box.”
These different positions reflect an already extensive debate on films presented in the context of exhibitions. Engaged at pivotal moments, they also reflect a series of artistic, epistemological, and technical changes.
What happens today to film or filmic forms shown in an exhibition context and on the local scene? What does the more intimate, mobile, and cross-disciplinary circuit of the exhibition scene allow? How do curators approach the choice of filmic works in the creation of their corpus and in relation to the parameters of the gallery or museum? What parallels can be drawn between curating and film programming?
This session will aim to examine certain artistic and curatorial practices around exhibited films. The speakers will present case studies to feed into this cycle of reflection on film programming.
Session 2
Reacting to the WorldAugust 16th, 2 – 5 PM
Cinéma public, Casa Italia
In French
Guest programmers: Marlene Edoyan and Hubert Sabino-Brunette, RIDM
Discussant: Mustafa Uzener, Acéphale
Moderator: Charlotte Lehoux, Cinéma public et Hors champ
Propelled by the creation and activities of the NFB as early as 1939, documentary cinema holds a strong place within the Quebec film ecosystem, as evidenced historically and still today by a wide range of production initiatives and distribution outlets. Synonymous with social commitment and awareness of contexts of experience and identity that need to be made visible, documentary cinema is also a lively forum for exploring ways of portraying current realities and their sensitive issues, and for questioning the postures of enunciation.
Among the programming initiatives devoted to documentary in Quebec, the Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal offers a distinctive editorial line that has made its mark. Originally formed by a group of filmmakers in 1998, the festival channels a rich polymorphism of documentary cinema, focusing on filmic proposals that “renew the language of cinema” and where the spaces between reality and fiction, testimonial and experimental forms openly dialogue.
Another great strength of this festival is that its programming is balanced with discussion and the sharing of ideas, through workshops, master classes and round-table discussions. All forms that help to democratize documentary approaches, but also to question different states and statuses of the world through the prism of filmmakers' and cinephiles' eyes.
How have the festival's directors and programmers seen the festival evolve since its inception in 1998? What are the formal criteria and ethics for festival programming of Canadian and international documentaries? How can programming be adjusted to reflect current events, within the festival's broad yet circumscribed format? How does the festival's ample apparatus, in its momentum and the gears of its organization, dialogue with the world?
Films presented:
DETOURS WHILE SPEAKING OF MONSTERS
Deniz Simsek | 2024 | 18 min
CHANGE OF SCENERY (TAPETENWECHSEL)
Noa Blanche | 2024 | 5 min
L’ARCHE
Amira Louadah | 2021 | 10 min
Session 1
ExperimentingWith Lumière collective
May 3rd, 2 – 5 PM
Cinéma Public, Casa Italia
Discussions in French
Guest programmers: Benjamin R. Taylor and Noa Blanche, filmmakers and film programmers, from la lumière collective.
Moderator: Nour Ouayda, member of Hors champ, filmmaker and film programmer
Discussant: film programmer and distribution coordinator at Vidéographe.
Experimental cinema is unique in that it operates outside commercial circuits and the general public. At once very present and discreet on the scale of the Montreal scene, this cinema, which has links with the visual arts, performance art and animation, also has the particularity of diverting the narrativity of traditional cinema towards ways of making that are more closely linked to materiality, process and perception. In doing so, experimental cinema agrees to work within forms of opacity that reflect on creation and question conventional positions of spectatorship.
By virtue of this greater opacity, experimental cinema requires what might be described as more sustained support, something that has been deployed since 2015 by lumière collective, an organization that defines itself as a collective of artists and curators, a micro-cinema presenting films on their original medium and a space for artistic practice and residencies. Since its creation, the organization has overseen a series of programs (VISIONS, IN SITU) and sought to facilitate the dissemination of experimental forms. In an overtly collaborative and horizontal spirit, la lumière collective organizes screenings in the presence of artists and aims, in the words of co-founder Benjamin R. Taylor, to “dissect films together in a common space”.
What are the major and minor principles observed by la lumière collective in relation to this spirit of collaboration? How does the gesture of screening experimental cinema become enriched by the la lumière collective’s screening room, and how does this room’s identity, size and location influence the reception of the films? What does experimental cinema programming bring to cinema and art? How do discussions with artists and filmmakers enrich programs beyond what is considered obvious or what is assumed?
Films presented:
ALIKI
Richard Wiebe | 2010 | digital | 6 min;
SPACY
Takashi Ito | 1980-81 | 16mm to digital | 10 min;
SHAPE SHIFT
Scott Stark | 2004 | digital | 3 min;
WILD FILLY STORYJosefin Arnell | 2020 | digital | 20 min
project
Presented by Hors Champ with the collaboration of Cinéma publicFour sessions throughout 2025
As part of a retroactive reflection, Hors champ, both online magazine and programming organization, wishes to question film programming. To fuel this reflection, four sessions are planned, during which external organizations and programmers will discuss their approach, based on proposed films.
How can programming extend the writing of images and films? Can it be compared to editorial work or a creative gesture? What actions does it imply and presuppose? How can we conceive the time of a program, work upstream on the spectator's desire, extend the problematic to the work, include the artists' discourse, reflect on the contextual audience to which it is addressed, and think in terms of the distribution channel mobilized?
The aim of this initiative is to work on the various ethical, aesthetic, political and media dimensions involved in film programming, and to make them visible throughout the sessions, while at the same time unfolding the gestures involved.