Presented by Hors Champ with the collaboration of Cinéma public
Four 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.

Session 2

Reacting to the World
June 14th, 2 – 5 PM
Cinéma public, Casa Italia
In FrenchGuest 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

Experimenting
With 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