Not only did former film critic Denis Côté chat with the young talents in the Future Frames section at the Karlovy Vary Festival, becoming a mentor for them, but he also met with the general public at the KVIFF Talk hosted by Czech critic Aleš Stuchlý, where the audience enjoyed his entertaining stories about the genesis of several of his original films.
Côté likes to alternate unscripted experimental projects with somewhat more expensive and conventional ones which, in contrast, he plans out a lot. The second type, such as Vic and Flo Saw a Bear, generally do better at festivals, but the director much prefers to talk about the first sort. "After a film like Bestiaire, where you spend 70 minutes watching shots of animals at the zoo, the discussions with audiences tend to be a lot more interesting," says the filmmaker, who considers himself an anti-Michael Moore. "I don't want to tell the audience what it should think."
"I like to set limitations and rules for myself. I'm allergic to convention," said the Quebec-based artist after showing his feature-length debut Carcasses, where he brought together a look at a real car collector and figures played by non-actors with Down's syndrome. "Of course they didn't know how to act. They were always looking at the camera and weren't very capable of dialogue," said the director on the film which was booed at Cannes.
The Canadian cinephile named Curling as his personal favourite project. If you want to see it, just write Côté on Facebook and he'll apparently send you a link. "I don't make money off my films. I just want people to see them," he promised.
