FANTASIA: 20 YEARS OF ART AND ARTISTS

JULY 6 – 31, 2016

The Fantasia International Film Festival is renowned for its original programming, its enthusiastic audiences, and its colourful posters. This exhibition is journey through the world of our posters over the last two decades. A selection of 50 works in all is presented in chronological order. A film festival must find the visual symbols that best represent its programming and give it a long-term, year-to-year identity. As much works of art as strategic marketing material, the items in this exhibition have done just that.

The festival’s posters can be divided into three distinct eras. The first period of our posters placed an accent on the iconic creatures, characters and personalities who defined the festival’s programming from 1996 to 1999. The second period witnessed the creation new, fantastic entities that added to the festival’s mythology. Certain leitmotifs and visual gags recurred during the years 2000 – 2010. The third and most recent period sees certain ubiquitous characters, drawn from Quebecois folklore. Since 2011, the majority of our poster images have been inspired by our traditional folk tales.

This exhibition also celebrates the work of the artists behind our many posters. Thus, four artists were invited to select works of their own, unrelated to the festival, to offer insight into their larger artistic identities. Discover the art of Rupert Bottenberg, Donald Caron, Jean-Pierre Normand and Heidi Taillefer.

Lastly, this exhibition includes a temporary commissioned work from the En Masse art initiative. Based in Montreal and co-directed by Rupert Bottenberg, En Masse creates large-scale murals and installations, always in black and while, always collaborative and spontaneous. The impressively large, improvised work in this exhibition has the iconography of international genre cinema as its theme.