Noticias Destacadas
On Thursday, March 12, the Festival International du Film sur l’Art (FIFA) opened its 44th edition at the Monument-National, one of the most important film events dedicated to cinema about art. The film chosen to open the festival was the documentary Mon amour, c’est pour les restant de mes jours, directed by Quebec filmmaker André-Line Beauparlant, an intimate work that explores the life and work of her partner, filmmaker Robert Morin.
Running 95 minutes and narrated in Quebec French, the film unfolds as a deeply personal portrait. Beauparlant, known for her work as an art director on numerous Quebec film productions and for documentaries about members of her own family, turns her camera here toward the partner with whom she has shared her life for decades.
The two met when Morin was 44 and Beauparlant 27. She was just beginning her career in cinema and was working as a set decorator on Morin’s film Windigo (1994). From that encounter began a relationship that, over time, also evolved into a creative dialogue.
The documentary adopts a curiously dual form. Beauparlant almost never appears on screen, yet her presence is constant: we hear her voice, her reflections, and the questions and statements she directs to Morin. The film thus works as a kind of intimate diptych. On one side is the portrait of the filmmaker; on the other, the loving (and at times inquisitive) gaze of the person observing him.
With more than thirty-five films in his career, Morin emerges as a deeply atypical figure within Canadian cinema. He has never pursued commercial filmmaking. Over the years his work has moved through different formats, from Super 8 to magnetic video and, more recently, digital media. By revisiting her partner’s archives, Beauparlant shows how each technological shift became for him an opportunity for exploration.
When she asks him how he would define his art, Morin responds with disarming honesty: he is interested in showing things that unsettle people, images that make viewers uncomfortable. He confesses that making art is what helps him fight depression; art, he admits, is his addiction.
In one of the documentary’s most revealing passages, Morin speaks about “the weight of dreams”: the films that exist in one’s imagination but are never completed. For him, part of the craft lies in accepting the failure of certain projects that will never see the light of day. And yet, whenever he sits down at his computer, he feels as if he has entered a kind of sanctuary.
This absolute dedication to artistic work also implies a degree of selfishness, the filmmaker acknowledges. He explains that he has always tried to avoid distractions that might take time away from his creative practice. He had two children from previous relationships, but with Beauparlant he did not build a family in that sense.
As the conversation unfolds, a darker dimension of Morin’s biography also emerges. He recalls a traumatic childhood event: he was walking with a friend when suddenly a bus struck the boy. The child died instantly while Morin remained unharmed. The image of blood and bones deeply marked his memory; for several days, he says, he even lost his sense of time.
Death would appear again in other ways throughout his life. His father was injured in a collision with a train and remained bedridden for years, and their relationship was distant and lacking affection. Later, his mother died in a fire caused by Christmas decorations.
And yet the documentary makes clear that Morin is not a dark or fatalistic figure. Rather, he seems to be someone who has learned to live with the constant presence of loss.
This reflection on death also runs through the film project Morin attempts to make during the years Beauparlant is filming him. It is a fiction centered on a moose wounded by an arrow who, aware of his fate, lies down in the forest to await death. The director hopes to film how the animal’s body becomes food for other creatures (bears, coyotes, scavengers) and eventually decomposes.
But nature does not cooperate with the script. Only a few vultures, some birds, and occasionally a fox appear. The filmmaker’s persistence in trying to capture the moment becomes almost absurd and, at the same time, deeply human. At one point he even resorts to small manual tricks to simulate the breathing of the dying moose, hoping to record the animal’s final gasps.
In contrast to this obsession with death, Beauparlant’s documentary seems guided by another force. At one point in the film, Morin asks his partner whether she thinks about death. She answers that she does not. He, on the other hand, admits that he thinks about it often.
She then formulates a quiet conclusion: if Morin’s film about the moose is an attempt to understand death, hers is, instead, a film about love.
The opening screening also had a special element: both André-Line Beauparlant and Robert Morin were present in the theater, sharing the experience with the audience. It is one of the small kinds of magic that film festivals manage to weave, the direct encounter between a work and the people who created it.
For Morin, the evening carried particular significance. It was the first time he had seen the completed documentary his partner had made about him. Before the screening began, Beauparlant tried to reassure him with a simple phrase: “Everything will be fine, Robert.”
When the lights came up at the end of the film, unanimous applause filled the room. Visibly moved (and perhaps a little overwhelmed by the attention) Beauparlant and Morin went up together to the cinema podium to thank the audience. He told her then that she had done a tremendous job; she received the comment with genuine surprise and a smile.
Thus, amid emotion, complicity, and cinema, the first screening of the 44th edition of the Festival International du Film sur l’Art was officially inaugurated.
El jueves 12 de marzo se inauguró en el teatro Monument-National la 44ª edición del Festival International du Film sur l’Art (FIFA), uno de los encuentros cinematográficos más importantes dedicados al cine sobre arte. La película encargada de abrir el festival fue el documental Mon amour, c’est pour les restant de mes jours, dirigido por la cineasta quebequense André-Line Beauparlant, una obra íntima que explora la vida y la obra de su pareja, el cineasta Robert Morin.
Con una duración de 95 minutos y narrada en francés quebequense, la película se presenta como un retrato profundamente personal. Beauparlant, conocida por su trabajo como directora artística en numerosas producciones del cine quebequense y por documentales dedicados a miembros de su familia, dirige aquí su mirada hacia el compañero con quien comparte su vida desde hace décadas.
Ambos se conocieron cuando Morin tenía 44 años y Beauparlant 27. Ella comenzaba su camino en el cine y trabajaba como decoradora de set en la película Windigo (1994), dirigida por Morin. A partir de ese encuentro comenzó una relación que, con el paso del tiempo, se transformó también en un diálogo creativo.
El documental adopta una forma curiosamente doble. Beauparlant casi nunca aparece en pantalla, pero su presencia es constante: escuchamos su voz, sus reflexiones y las preguntas y declaraciones que le dirige a Morin. La película funciona así como un díptico íntimo. Por un lado, el retrato del cineasta; por el otro, la mirada amorosa (y a veces inquisitiva) de quien lo observa.
Morin, con más de treinta y cinco películas en su trayectoria, se revela como un cineasta profundamente atípico dentro del panorama canadiense. Nunca ha perseguido el cine comercial. Su trabajo ha transitado por distintos formatos a lo largo de los años: desde el Super 8 hasta el video magnético y, más recientemente, el medio digital. Beauparlant revisita los archivos de su compañero y muestra cómo cada cambio tecnológico fue para él una oportunidad de exploración.
Cuando ella le pregunta cómo definiría su arte, Morin responde con una franqueza desarmante: le interesa mostrar aquello que sacude al espectador, lo que lo incomoda. Confiesa que hacer arte es lo que le ayuda a combatir la depresión; el arte, admite, es su adicción.
En uno de los pasajes más reveladores del documental, Morin habla del “peso de los sueños”: esas películas que existen en la imaginación pero que nunca logran realizarse. Para él, parte del oficio consiste en aceptar el fracaso de ciertos proyectos que jamás verán la luz. Aun así, cada vez que se sienta frente a su computadora siente que entra en una especie de santuario.
Esa dedicación absoluta al trabajo artístico también implica un grado de egoísmo, reconoce el propio cineasta. Explica que siempre intentó evitar distracciones que pudieran alejarlo de su creación. Tuvo dos hijos en relaciones anteriores, pero con Beauparlant no formó una familia en ese sentido.
A lo largo de la conversación emerge también una dimensión más oscura de su biografía. Morin recuerda un episodio traumático de su infancia: caminaba con un amigo cuando, de pronto, un autobús lo atropelló. El niño murió en el acto mientras él permanecía ileso. La imagen de la sangre y los huesos marcó profundamente su memoria; durante días, cuenta, perdió incluso la noción del tiempo.
La muerte volvería a aparecer en su vida de otras formas. Su padre sufrió un accidente al chocar contra un tren y quedó postrado durante años, y su relación con él fue distante, sin afecto. Más tarde, su madre moriría en un incendio provocado por una decoración navideña.
Sin embargo, el documental deja claro que Morin no es una figura sombría ni fatalista. Más bien parece alguien que ha aprendido a convivir con la presencia constante de la pérdida.
Esa reflexión sobre la muerte atraviesa también el proyecto cinematográfico que Morin intenta realizar durante los años en que Beauparlant lo filma. Se trata de una ficción centrada en un alce herido por una flecha que, consciente de su final, se recuesta en el bosque para esperar la muerte. El director quiere filmar cómo el cuerpo se convierte en alimento para otros seres: osos, coyotes, carroñeros y, posteriormente se degrada.
Pero la naturaleza no coopera con el guion. Apenas aparecen algunos buitres, ciertas aves y ocasionalmente un zorro. La obstinación del cineasta por capturar ese momento se vuelve casi absurda y, al mismo tiempo, profundamente humana. Incluso llega a utilizar pequeños trucos manuales para simular la respiración del alce agonizante, intentando registrar los últimos estertores del animal.
En contraste con esa obsesión por la muerte, el documental de Beauparlant parece estar guiado por otra fuerza. En un momento de la película, Morin le pregunta a su pareja si ella piensa en la muerte. Ella responde que no. Él, en cambio, admite que sí lo hace con frecuencia.
Entonces ella formula una especie de conclusión silenciosa: si la película de Morin sobre el alce es un intento por comprender la muerte, la suya es, en cambio, una película sobre el amor.
La proyección de apertura tuvo además un elemento especial: tanto André-Line Beauparlant como Robert Morin se encontraban presentes en la sala, compartiendo la experiencia con el público. Esa es una de las pequeñas magias que los festivales de cine consiguen tejer: el encuentro directo entre las obras y quienes las crean.
Para Morin, la velada tenía un significado particular. Era la primera vez que veía terminado el documental que su pareja había realizado sobre él. Antes de que comenzara la proyección, Beauparlant intentó tranquilizarlo con una frase sencilla: “Todo irá bien, Robert”.
Al encenderse las luces al final de la película, un aplauso unánime llenó la sala. Visiblemente conmovidos (y también un poco abrumados por la atención) Beauparlant y Morin subieron juntos al podio del cine para agradecer la recepción. Él le dijo entonces que había hecho un trabajo tremendo; ella, sorprendida, recibió el comentario con una sonrisa genuina.
Así, entre emoción, complicidad y cine, quedó inaugurada la primera proyección de la 44ª edición del Festival International du Film sur l’Art.
La actividad turística en el Caribe Mexicano continúa desarrollándose con total normalidad durante la semana del 21 al 28 de febrero, periodo en el que los destinos del estado registran una ocupación hotelera promedio de 85.4% y una afluencia aproximada de 574 mil 706 turistas, reflejando la confianza de los viajeros nacionales e internacionales en Quintana Roo.
La République dominicaine annonce une importante expansion de son offre touristique avec l’arrivée de plusieurs hôtels et complexes parmi les plus prestigieux au monde. Cette nouvelle vague d’investissements internationaux, incluant le W Punta Cana, The St. Regis Cap Cana Resort et The Ritz-Carlton Reserve à Punta Cana, renforce davantage la position du pays comme l’une des destinations les plus dynamiques et prisées des Caraïbes.
Kimpov Eap’s studio is in her home, to the right as you enter; there is always a canvas in progress or freshly finished on her easel. It is a room where other works of hers hang, and a window lets in natural light. Nothing on her canvases immediately explains the history behind them. And perhaps that is the first clue: her painting does not illustrate the past or trauma; it metabolizes them, turning them into color and expression.
“I decided to simply be happy,” she says.
The statement is not rhetorical. It does not have the tone of someone proclaiming exemplary triumph. It is a serene assertion, made without emphasis. Between Cambodia, devastated by the Khmer Rouge regime, and her current life in Montreal, she does not construct a personal myth; she affirms an act of will.
But before the genocide in Cambodia, there was another life.
View of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Photo courtesy of Gaëtan Sheridan.
Kimpov Eap was born in the Kralanh district, in Siem Reap province, in northwest Cambodia. Before the devastation, there was childhood. Her personal history intersects with one of the most devastating episodes of the second half of the twentieth century. In April 1975, the Khmer Rouge (the Communist Party of Kampuchea led by Pol Pot) took Phnom Penh and established Democratic Kampuchea. The regime evacuated entire cities, abolished urban life, and subjected the population to forced labor under military supervision. Between 1975 and 1979, a quarter of Cambodia’s population died from execution, hunger, disease, and exhaustion.
Kimpov’s life was marked by this period. Her husband was taken by soldiers and never returned. She lost two of her children. What appears in her biography as absence also belongs to a collective devastation.
When asked about her beginnings, the picture is different.
“I had a happy childhood,” she recalls. The youngest of eight siblings, daughter of a merchant, she grew up surrounded by her mother’s affection. She never knew her father (he died when she was just a baby) but she never felt abandoned. She attended school, learned French from the fourth grade onward, had friends, a routine. At fifteen, she married a teacher. “He was very attentive. He took good care of our home.” They had children. Happiness, in her account, is not idealized; it is concrete.
On the left is Kimpov's house in Kralanh-Kampong Thkov, Cambodia, where she grew up with his mother and siblings. On the right is Kimpov visiting his country in recent years.
Then the soldiers arrived. One day, they gathered all the men from the village. Her husband was among them. They took him. He never returned. From that moment, her story was suspended.
Like many other women with children, she was expelled from her home and forced to work the land, in the rice fields. Her body no longer belonged to her. She walked until her feet bled, carrying sacks of soil. Hunger was not metaphorical. At one point, her children ate a raw mouse out of hunger.
She does not raise her voice when recounting this. She does not emphasize horror. She speaks as one who lists inevitable facts. Perhaps extreme suffering does not need embellishment. Or perhaps memory, when fully traversed, no longer demands dramatization.
“We are innocents who suffer because of the power games of those who wish to control us,” she says in a discreet speech for one of her exhibitions. “We ask for nothing more than peace and the privilege of subsisting.”
In 1979, she managed to escape to Thailand with her children. She lived in a refugee camp. There, she heard of people being sent to other parts of the world: France, the United States. She thought, “I want to go.” They arrived in Canada in 1980, first to Maniwaki, north of Gatineau, then Montreal. She recalls the plane and arriving at a military base.
—Did you arrive at the airport?
—We arrived at the Longue-Pointe military base (east of Montreal). Thirteen families from Maniwaki sponsored my family so that we could be adopted. They came to get us. Father Auguste Legault and Jacques Braso were there. They told me, “We are going to Maniwaki. We are going to Maniwaki, and we stay because we were listening to them.”
Kimpov does not know whether the plane was military or commercial. The detail lost importance. What remained was the desire to find a brother, to reconnect with a bond that confirmed her world had not completely disappeared.
As a refugee in the early 1980s, she eventually had to pay for her passage: “I don’t know, but we paid for that plane. After a few years, we paid it all. You have to pay.”
After paying for her passage, after settling that debt with the Canadian state, painting arrived nineteen years later. In 1999, she painted her first work. She did not begin with abstractions but with studies, portraits, and still lifes, just a small part of her oeuvre, which seems to reside solely in her inner world.
“Art is my friend. I speak with it. It inspires me. It lives within me. It always brings me happiness, never unhappiness,” she says. The formulation is simple, yet radical.
Excerpt from the painting: Silence is strength.
Art does not appear in her account as therapy in a technical sense, but as companionship. As a constant presence. As an interlocutor that manifests itself.
In Montreal, Kimpov first studied fashion design, then visual arts. Later, due to a bicycle accident, she trained as an osteopath to relieve her own bodily pain. Her life was not organized around trauma, but around practices: working, raising children, studying, learning, painting, and rebuilding herself.
“Between what happened there and here… here is my paradise.” Not because she forgets or renounces the past, but because she chose not to live solely from the wound. In her story, transformation does not present itself as a spectacular feat. It is a continuous, almost silent gesture. An internal reorganization that allows the past to exist without governing the present.
Perhaps this is why her paintings do not depict recognizable scenes of war or exile. Violence does not appear as a direct image. What appears is energy. Movement. Intensity. As if lived experience had shifted from narrative to the very matter of color. But that is another layer. In the next, painting ceases to be biographical context and becomes its own territory.
Kimpov’s paintings. From left to right: Father Effect, The Bonfire (Birth), The Master of Silence.
The Invisible Structure
If the first layer of her story reveals decision (the conscious choice to live in light), the second reveals gesture. Painting does not arise in Kimpov as an illustration of the past, but as an internal reorganization. She does not seek to represent war or narrate exile; she seeks something else. “I look for surprise,” she says. And in that word lies a profound key. Surprise implies openness, availability, the relinquishment of absolute control. It implies accepting that something may emerge without having been foreseen.
When she speaks of her creative process, she does not describe a rigid method or conceptual program. She does not calculate the composition in advance nor precisely define the outcome. She takes the brush, intuitively chooses a color, and lets the work unfold. Only afterward, stepping back, does she recognize the balance. That moment of retreat (observing what has emerged) is essential. It is not chaotic improvisation, but a cultivated trust in one’s own perception.
Here an unexpected link to her other profession appears. Kimpov has been an osteopath for over fifteen years, working with the body, with invisible tensions, with misalignments that are not always seen but felt. In consultation, she structures, adjusts, aligns. And when she speaks of that act, she uses words that could also apply to painting: balance, energy, circulation. “When I structure, it feels good,” she explains. It is almost like stretching. The act of ordering is not only technical; it is bodily, intimate.
Something similar happens on her canvases. What at first glance appears as a chromatic explosion (reds advancing, blues overlapping, lines crossing the surface) contains an internal logic of redistribution. It is not cold or minimalist abstraction. Nor is it purely gestural in the sense of expressive outburst. It is abstraction shaped by bodily experience. Tension is not eliminated; it is reorganized. Intensity does not disappear; it finds its course.
Above: painting by Kimpov, Untitled.
It is revealing that when asked whether she paints in order not to forget, she responds that she does not. She does not paint memory as archive or monument. She paints from the energy that remains afterward. Her work is not testimonial in the literal sense; it does not need to show recognizable scenes to be true. For some viewers, even before knowing her biography, her canvases can convey an intensity capable of moving, unsettling, or inviting deep reflection.
After having experienced the loss of her husband, the death of two children, and displacement, she does not speak of art as a substitute or dramatic salvation. She speaks of art as companionship, as an everyday presence, as joy. There is a quiet ethic at work here: the right to pleasure after suffering, the legitimacy of creating for one’s own delight, and the desire for others to see what one paints.
Her paintings are not anchored in a tragic past; they vibrate in the present. They celebrate, without naivety, the possibility of balance. When she verbally affirms that Quebec is her paradise, she is not denying the past. She is situating her life on a new axis. And that axis is perceptible in the painting: there is dynamism, but also stability; intensity, but also warmth. The freedom she exercises in front of the canvas is not only aesthetic; it is existential. Choosing a color without fear, allowing a form to emerge without censorship, accepting surprise: all of this is part of a broader practice of affirmation.
Ultimately, Kimpov Eap does not paint what it once was. She paints what remains in motion. Her work does not seek to fix memory, but to keep it circulating, transformed into something that does not paralyze, but propels. In that circulation (between body and color, between structure and spontaneity, between past and present) resides the deep coherence of her life. The same woman who once worked the land until her hands bled now holds the brush with a different firmness. As she herself says: “It’s as if I were digging the earth, the rock; I keep searching. I have found things, but I continue; maybe I can discover something more.”
If you would like to see Kimpov’s paintings, the exhibition Sans Crainte will be on view at the Centre multifonctionnel Guy-Dupré (500, rue Saint-Laurent, La Prairie) from January 21 to April 26.
This is the first of two articles based on an interview conducted with Kimpov. The second article is titled The Memory of Color. The interview was made possible with the support of Gaëtan Sheridan.
Philippe Katerine, Wajdi Mouawad, Gustavo Dudamel, Amadou et Mariam, Patrice Vermette,
André-Line Beauparlant, Robert Morin, Marlene Millar, Darlene Naponse, Ai Wei Wei, Tina Modotti, L’Opéra de Paris, Isabelle Adjani, Caravaggio, Gilbert & George, Rimbaud, Fellini, Chaplin, TATE Modern, Reina Sofía, Le Prado, National Gallery Singapore.
En salle du 12 au 22 mars et en ligne du 20 au 29 mars
à Montréal - à Québec - en ligne.
BANDE-ANNONCE | Le FIFA 44:
|
Montréal, le 19 février 2026 - Le plus grand festival dédié aux films sur l’art et aux films d’art au monde vous invite en salle à Montréal et à Québec du 12 au 22 mars et en ligne du 20 au 29 mars prochains. Venez découvrir le meilleur du film sur l’art avec une programmation au cœur de nos questionnements qui transcende les frontières de l’imagination.
|
Pour rappel, la 44e édition du Festival ouvrira avec Mon amour: c'est pour le restant de mes jours d’André-Line Beauparlant (Canada) en première mondiale. Projeté en salle, le jeudi 12 mars au Monument National à Montréal en présence de la réalisatrice, de Robert Morin et de l’équipe du film, il sera également en ouverture du FIFA à Québec, le vendredi 13 mars au Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (MNBAQ).
|
Cette année, le cinéma espagnol s'est imposé dans notre programmation par la force de ses productions. Portrait de l'architecte Enric Miralles récompensé d'un Lion d'or à la Biennale d'architecture de Venise (Miralles), film portant sur un immense talent du flamenco (Farruquito: A Flamenco Dynasty) ou encore documentaire retraçant le parcours d'un des créateurs de mode les plus doués de sa génération (The Designer is Dead), c'est une Espagne plurielle et contemporaine qui est racontée à travers les films que nous présentons.
Richard Avedon at the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal
Nearly one hundred portraits by Richard Avedon (1923–2004) line the museum’s pale gray walls, their white mats and frames suspended above coffee-colored parquet floors. Together, they form more than a retrospective: they assemble a visual chronicle of the second half of the twentieth century written on skin. The photographs (mostly vertical, some large-scale and others mid-sized) unfold in a spacious, quiet gallery that neither imposes solemnity nor demands slow contemplation; it is the viewer who decides how long to hold each gaze. And here, to hold that gaze is an act of confrontation.
Stripped of context and positioned frontally against an absolute white background, figures who shaped the cultural and political imagination of the last century pass before us: Ronald Reagan, Marguerite Duras, Jorge Luis Borges, Jean Renoir, Duke Ellington, Gabriel García Márquez, Samuel Beckett, Truman Capote, Patti Smith, John Ford, Gloria Swanson, Edward VIII alongside Wallis Simpson, Marian Anderson, Francis Bacon, and Willem de Kooning, among many others.
Yet before the camera they all seem to undergo the same process: the symbolic dismantling of status. Without setting or attributes, without the visual apparatus that typically sustains authority, the president, the Nobel laureate, the cinema icon, or the aristocratic myth are reduced to the evidence of their bodies. Cultural hierarchy is suspended, and what emerges is not the public persona but a shared vulnerability. Against the white ground, power becomes flesh, wrinkle, weary gaze.
Avedon worked with an 8 x 10 large-format camera, positioning his subjects directly before a seamless white backdrop. That technical choice was also conceptual. In Richard Avedon Portraits (2002), he asserted that there is an element of sexuality in every portrait: the moment one pauses to look, one becomes implicated. Portraiture permits an intensity that social life forbids; to stare for minutes at the face of someone powerful would be unthinkable outside the museum. What he sought was a confrontational quality erotic not in a sensual sense, but in the tension between gazes: not voyeurism, but encounter. The viewer does not spy; instead, the viewer holds and is held by the image.
This relentless frontalism turns skin into territory and archive. It is as if Avedon were drawing a cartography of time: the face transformed into a map of bifurcations, losses, and persistences, where each crease functions like a topographical line and each shadow like sedimented experience. Wrinkles are not softened; sagging is not disguised; spots and hollows remain. Fame dissolves before the material evidence of wear. The exhibition thus operates as chronicle, archive, and silent reportage of an era in which the face replaces the event and biography inscribes itself in the furrows of the skin.
On a key wall just inside the entrance, to the left, one portrait alters the reading of the whole: that of an African American man, one of the last people born into slavery in Louisiana. Among figures of cultural and political power, this face introduces another dimension of time not only the passage of years, but the structural weight of history. His eyes condense a memory that exceeds the individual and unsettles the narrative of elites. Avedon does not assemble a moral pantheon; alongside consecrated writers and admired artists appears the segregationist governor George Wallace, photographed across different decades, as though physical erosion itself operated as political commentary. Confrontation here is not only formal, but historical.
In a more intimate gallery, the museum recreates the series Jacob Israel Avedon, first presented in 1974 at the Museum of Modern Art. Nine portraits document the physical deterioration of the photographer’s father, ill with cancer, until his death. The gaze becomes filial, and the record of aging shifts from public observation to accompaniment. It is difficult not to think of contemporary works such as those by Becky Wilkes in The New Yorker, where parents’ illness during the pandemic becomes visual testimony; in both cases, the camera neither embellishes nor dramatizes, but remains.
Equally striking is the deliberate absence of the iconic fashion images and supermodels that consolidated Avedon’s fame. This omission reveals the duality that runs through his career: on the one hand, the photographer of glamour, haute couture, and urban sophistication; on the other, the portraitist who dismantles hierarchy, who places celebrities and anonymous figures on the same plane, and who turns the face into a field of ethical tension. The timeline ends in 2004, the year of his death, and includes images taken during his final year of life, as if, in the end, his interest no longer lay in the perfect surface but in the fragile truth of time.
Walking through the exhibition, one understands that the confrontation Avedon spoke of is neither provocation nor scandal, but a form of radical honesty: to look without décor, without indulgence, and without distance. If this exhibition traces a chronicle of the second half of the twentieth century, it does so as one might draw a map not of power or prestige, but of time inscribed upon faces. And in that human cartography, what endures is not myth, but shared vulnerability.
L'équipage du vol TS274 - Crédit photo : Frédérique Ménard-Aubin
Montréal, le 6 février 2026 – Air Transat, élue Meilleure compagnie aérienne loisirs au monde lors des Skytrax World Airline Awards 2025, a fièrement assuré ses premiers vols vers Rio de Janeiro (GIG) cette semaine. Le vol TS272 a quitté l'aéroport international Pearson de Toronto (YYZ) le mercredi 4 février en soirée, tandis que le vol TS274 a pris son envol de YUL Aéroport international Montréal-Trudeau le jeudi 5 février en soirée. Grâce à ces nouveaux vols sans escale, Air Transat offre aux voyageuses et voyageurs un accès facile à l'une des destinations les plus emblématiques d'Amérique du Sud et devient la seule compagnie aérienne à relier directement Montréal à Rio de Janeiro.
Arajet anunció el lanzamiento de una nueva oferta promocional dirigida a viajeros de Estados Unidos y Canadá, brindando a los clientes la oportunidad de planificar viajes al Caribe durante el primer semestre de 2026 con opciones de viaje flexibles y tarifas competitivas. Esta iniciativa forma parte de los esfuerzos continuos de la aerolínea por fortalecer la conectividad entre Norteamérica y el Caribe, manteniendo su compromiso con un transporte aéreo asequible.
Más Noticias (more news)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Harmonium Symphonique - Histoire sans paroles - Le film
-
Fitcuba 2024
-
-
Conozca Omán: País anfitrión oficial de ITB Berlín 2024
-
L'est de Cuba par Yannick Gervais
-
Revivez en images les temps forts de la 36e édition du Festival international Nuits d’Afrique, qui s'est déroulée à Montréal du 12 au 24 juillet 2022 ! Pendant 13 jours de programmation, 150 concerts et activités ont marqué cette année de grandes réalisations et de grandes retrouvailles ! Un événement qui s'est déroulé en salle et en plein-air, avec l'agrandissement du site extérieur et l'ajout d'une deuxième scène. On a voyager à travers le monde en musiques, avec de belles nouveautés. On vous donne rendez-vous l'année prochaine, pour une 37e édition, du 11 au 23 juillet 2023 !
-
Hello fellow travelers. Welcome to Travelmoji. We are a community of travel enthusiasts who find solace going around the world. In our sincerest efforts to satisfy your wanderlust, we bring forward insightful content featuring the wonderful places around the world neatly compiled into the ‘Top things to-do lists. We love all kinds of travel. Touristy and offbeat, short trips and long stays, luxury and modest. And we aim to give you a glimpse of anything and everything that speaks about the aura of the place. Our vision at Travelmoji is to form a community of like-minded travellers, who share our passion for unique experiences, breathtaking destinations, exploring different cultures, and connecting with people. Unplug, unwind and just breathe.
Sed tempus velit
Cras fringilla magna eros, eu ultricies velit mattis at. Sed tempus velit ac magna rutrum ullamcorper.
Aliquam fringilla tristique erat, id malesuada turpis congue vitae. Duis eget euismod dolor. Etiam ac tincidunt ipsum. Morbi ullamcorper erat et bibendum fermentum. Mauris consequat accumsan metus in vulputate. Proin odio ipsum, malesuada in arcu egestas, viverra tincidunt leo. Etiam fermentum felis consectetur fermentum auctor. Curabitur quis maximus turpis, eu porttitor velit. Praesent id sem porta, tristique massa et, euismod ante. Sed semper mauris metus.
Aenean at est
Proin suscipit nulla nec justo suscipit pulvinar. Vestibulum lobortis, tortor non sagittis elementum, nibh ligula vulputate purus, pharetra euismod ex augue a metus. Nullam fermentum lobortis risus, et placerat tellus malesuada at. Aenean at est massa.
-
fsdf kfs; kdf;s kd;fks df
La actividad turística en el Caribe Mexicano continúa desarrollándose con total normalidad durante la semana del 21 al 28 de febrero, periodo en el que los destinos del estado registran una ocupación hotelera promedio de 85.4% y una afluencia aproximada de 574 mil 706 turistas, reflejando la confianza de los viajeros nacionales e internacionales en Quintana Roo.
La République dominicaine annonce une importante expansion de son offre touristique avec l’arrivée de plusieurs hôtels et complexes parmi les plus prestigieux au monde. Cette nouvelle vague d’investissements internationaux, incluant le W Punta Cana, The St. Regis Cap Cana Resort et The Ritz-Carlton Reserve à Punta Cana, renforce davantage la position du pays comme l’une des destinations les plus dynamiques et prisées des Caraïbes.
L'équipage du vol TS274 - Crédit photo : Frédérique Ménard-Aubin
Montréal, le 6 février 2026 – Air Transat, élue Meilleure compagnie aérienne loisirs au monde lors des Skytrax World Airline Awards 2025, a fièrement assuré ses premiers vols vers Rio de Janeiro (GIG) cette semaine. Le vol TS272 a quitté l'aéroport international Pearson de Toronto (YYZ) le mercredi 4 février en soirée, tandis que le vol TS274 a pris son envol de YUL Aéroport international Montréal-Trudeau le jeudi 5 février en soirée. Grâce à ces nouveaux vols sans escale, Air Transat offre aux voyageuses et voyageurs un accès facile à l'une des destinations les plus emblématiques d'Amérique du Sud et devient la seule compagnie aérienne à relier directement Montréal à Rio de Janeiro.
Arajet anunció el lanzamiento de una nueva oferta promocional dirigida a viajeros de Estados Unidos y Canadá, brindando a los clientes la oportunidad de planificar viajes al Caribe durante el primer semestre de 2026 con opciones de viaje flexibles y tarifas competitivas. Esta iniciativa forma parte de los esfuerzos continuos de la aerolínea por fortalecer la conectividad entre Norteamérica y el Caribe, manteniendo su compromiso con un transporte aéreo asequible.
Une nouvelle année aux couleurs des
Îles de Guadeloupe
During a special press conference held in Montreal, high-level Cuban tourism representatives reassured Canadian media about the current state of Cuba’s tourism sector while presenting priorities, new developments, and perspectives for the year ahead.
On Thursday, March 12, the Festival International du Film sur l’Art (FIFA) opened its 44th edition at the Monument-National, one of the most important film events dedicated to cinema about art. The film chosen to open the festival was the documentary Mon amour, c’est pour les restant de mes jours, directed by Quebec filmmaker André-Line Beauparlant, an intimate work that explores the life and work of her partner, filmmaker Robert Morin.
Running 95 minutes and narrated in Quebec French, the film unfolds as a deeply personal portrait. Beauparlant, known for her work as an art director on numerous Quebec film productions and for documentaries about members of her own family, turns her camera here toward the partner with whom she has shared her life for decades.
The two met when Morin was 44 and Beauparlant 27. She was just beginning her career in cinema and was working as a set decorator on Morin’s film Windigo (1994). From that encounter began a relationship that, over time, also evolved into a creative dialogue.
The documentary adopts a curiously dual form. Beauparlant almost never appears on screen, yet her presence is constant: we hear her voice, her reflections, and the questions and statements she directs to Morin. The film thus works as a kind of intimate diptych. On one side is the portrait of the filmmaker; on the other, the loving (and at times inquisitive) gaze of the person observing him.
With more than thirty-five films in his career, Morin emerges as a deeply atypical figure within Canadian cinema. He has never pursued commercial filmmaking. Over the years his work has moved through different formats, from Super 8 to magnetic video and, more recently, digital media. By revisiting her partner’s archives, Beauparlant shows how each technological shift became for him an opportunity for exploration.
When she asks him how he would define his art, Morin responds with disarming honesty: he is interested in showing things that unsettle people, images that make viewers uncomfortable. He confesses that making art is what helps him fight depression; art, he admits, is his addiction.
In one of the documentary’s most revealing passages, Morin speaks about “the weight of dreams”: the films that exist in one’s imagination but are never completed. For him, part of the craft lies in accepting the failure of certain projects that will never see the light of day. And yet, whenever he sits down at his computer, he feels as if he has entered a kind of sanctuary.
This absolute dedication to artistic work also implies a degree of selfishness, the filmmaker acknowledges. He explains that he has always tried to avoid distractions that might take time away from his creative practice. He had two children from previous relationships, but with Beauparlant he did not build a family in that sense.
As the conversation unfolds, a darker dimension of Morin’s biography also emerges. He recalls a traumatic childhood event: he was walking with a friend when suddenly a bus struck the boy. The child died instantly while Morin remained unharmed. The image of blood and bones deeply marked his memory; for several days, he says, he even lost his sense of time.
Death would appear again in other ways throughout his life. His father was injured in a collision with a train and remained bedridden for years, and their relationship was distant and lacking affection. Later, his mother died in a fire caused by Christmas decorations.
And yet the documentary makes clear that Morin is not a dark or fatalistic figure. Rather, he seems to be someone who has learned to live with the constant presence of loss.
This reflection on death also runs through the film project Morin attempts to make during the years Beauparlant is filming him. It is a fiction centered on a moose wounded by an arrow who, aware of his fate, lies down in the forest to await death. The director hopes to film how the animal’s body becomes food for other creatures (bears, coyotes, scavengers) and eventually decomposes.
But nature does not cooperate with the script. Only a few vultures, some birds, and occasionally a fox appear. The filmmaker’s persistence in trying to capture the moment becomes almost absurd and, at the same time, deeply human. At one point he even resorts to small manual tricks to simulate the breathing of the dying moose, hoping to record the animal’s final gasps.
In contrast to this obsession with death, Beauparlant’s documentary seems guided by another force. At one point in the film, Morin asks his partner whether she thinks about death. She answers that she does not. He, on the other hand, admits that he thinks about it often.
She then formulates a quiet conclusion: if Morin’s film about the moose is an attempt to understand death, hers is, instead, a film about love.
The opening screening also had a special element: both André-Line Beauparlant and Robert Morin were present in the theater, sharing the experience with the audience. It is one of the small kinds of magic that film festivals manage to weave, the direct encounter between a work and the people who created it.
For Morin, the evening carried particular significance. It was the first time he had seen the completed documentary his partner had made about him. Before the screening began, Beauparlant tried to reassure him with a simple phrase: “Everything will be fine, Robert.”
When the lights came up at the end of the film, unanimous applause filled the room. Visibly moved (and perhaps a little overwhelmed by the attention) Beauparlant and Morin went up together to the cinema podium to thank the audience. He told her then that she had done a tremendous job; she received the comment with genuine surprise and a smile.
Thus, amid emotion, complicity, and cinema, the first screening of the 44th edition of the Festival International du Film sur l’Art was officially inaugurated.
El jueves 12 de marzo se inauguró en el teatro Monument-National la 44ª edición del Festival International du Film sur l’Art (FIFA), uno de los encuentros cinematográficos más importantes dedicados al cine sobre arte. La película encargada de abrir el festival fue el documental Mon amour, c’est pour les restant de mes jours, dirigido por la cineasta quebequense André-Line Beauparlant, una obra íntima que explora la vida y la obra de su pareja, el cineasta Robert Morin.
Con una duración de 95 minutos y narrada en francés quebequense, la película se presenta como un retrato profundamente personal. Beauparlant, conocida por su trabajo como directora artística en numerosas producciones del cine quebequense y por documentales dedicados a miembros de su familia, dirige aquí su mirada hacia el compañero con quien comparte su vida desde hace décadas.
Ambos se conocieron cuando Morin tenía 44 años y Beauparlant 27. Ella comenzaba su camino en el cine y trabajaba como decoradora de set en la película Windigo (1994), dirigida por Morin. A partir de ese encuentro comenzó una relación que, con el paso del tiempo, se transformó también en un diálogo creativo.
El documental adopta una forma curiosamente doble. Beauparlant casi nunca aparece en pantalla, pero su presencia es constante: escuchamos su voz, sus reflexiones y las preguntas y declaraciones que le dirige a Morin. La película funciona así como un díptico íntimo. Por un lado, el retrato del cineasta; por el otro, la mirada amorosa (y a veces inquisitiva) de quien lo observa.
Morin, con más de treinta y cinco películas en su trayectoria, se revela como un cineasta profundamente atípico dentro del panorama canadiense. Nunca ha perseguido el cine comercial. Su trabajo ha transitado por distintos formatos a lo largo de los años: desde el Super 8 hasta el video magnético y, más recientemente, el medio digital. Beauparlant revisita los archivos de su compañero y muestra cómo cada cambio tecnológico fue para él una oportunidad de exploración.
Cuando ella le pregunta cómo definiría su arte, Morin responde con una franqueza desarmante: le interesa mostrar aquello que sacude al espectador, lo que lo incomoda. Confiesa que hacer arte es lo que le ayuda a combatir la depresión; el arte, admite, es su adicción.
En uno de los pasajes más reveladores del documental, Morin habla del “peso de los sueños”: esas películas que existen en la imaginación pero que nunca logran realizarse. Para él, parte del oficio consiste en aceptar el fracaso de ciertos proyectos que jamás verán la luz. Aun así, cada vez que se sienta frente a su computadora siente que entra en una especie de santuario.
Esa dedicación absoluta al trabajo artístico también implica un grado de egoísmo, reconoce el propio cineasta. Explica que siempre intentó evitar distracciones que pudieran alejarlo de su creación. Tuvo dos hijos en relaciones anteriores, pero con Beauparlant no formó una familia en ese sentido.
A lo largo de la conversación emerge también una dimensión más oscura de su biografía. Morin recuerda un episodio traumático de su infancia: caminaba con un amigo cuando, de pronto, un autobús lo atropelló. El niño murió en el acto mientras él permanecía ileso. La imagen de la sangre y los huesos marcó profundamente su memoria; durante días, cuenta, perdió incluso la noción del tiempo.
La muerte volvería a aparecer en su vida de otras formas. Su padre sufrió un accidente al chocar contra un tren y quedó postrado durante años, y su relación con él fue distante, sin afecto. Más tarde, su madre moriría en un incendio provocado por una decoración navideña.
Sin embargo, el documental deja claro que Morin no es una figura sombría ni fatalista. Más bien parece alguien que ha aprendido a convivir con la presencia constante de la pérdida.
Esa reflexión sobre la muerte atraviesa también el proyecto cinematográfico que Morin intenta realizar durante los años en que Beauparlant lo filma. Se trata de una ficción centrada en un alce herido por una flecha que, consciente de su final, se recuesta en el bosque para esperar la muerte. El director quiere filmar cómo el cuerpo se convierte en alimento para otros seres: osos, coyotes, carroñeros y, posteriormente se degrada.
Pero la naturaleza no coopera con el guion. Apenas aparecen algunos buitres, ciertas aves y ocasionalmente un zorro. La obstinación del cineasta por capturar ese momento se vuelve casi absurda y, al mismo tiempo, profundamente humana. Incluso llega a utilizar pequeños trucos manuales para simular la respiración del alce agonizante, intentando registrar los últimos estertores del animal.
En contraste con esa obsesión por la muerte, el documental de Beauparlant parece estar guiado por otra fuerza. En un momento de la película, Morin le pregunta a su pareja si ella piensa en la muerte. Ella responde que no. Él, en cambio, admite que sí lo hace con frecuencia.
Entonces ella formula una especie de conclusión silenciosa: si la película de Morin sobre el alce es un intento por comprender la muerte, la suya es, en cambio, una película sobre el amor.
La proyección de apertura tuvo además un elemento especial: tanto André-Line Beauparlant como Robert Morin se encontraban presentes en la sala, compartiendo la experiencia con el público. Esa es una de las pequeñas magias que los festivales de cine consiguen tejer: el encuentro directo entre las obras y quienes las crean.
Para Morin, la velada tenía un significado particular. Era la primera vez que veía terminado el documental que su pareja había realizado sobre él. Antes de que comenzara la proyección, Beauparlant intentó tranquilizarlo con una frase sencilla: “Todo irá bien, Robert”.
Al encenderse las luces al final de la película, un aplauso unánime llenó la sala. Visiblemente conmovidos (y también un poco abrumados por la atención) Beauparlant y Morin subieron juntos al podio del cine para agradecer la recepción. Él le dijo entonces que había hecho un trabajo tremendo; ella, sorprendida, recibió el comentario con una sonrisa genuina.
Así, entre emoción, complicidad y cine, quedó inaugurada la primera proyección de la 44ª edición del Festival International du Film sur l’Art.
Kimpov Eap’s studio is in her home, to the right as you enter; there is always a canvas in progress or freshly finished on her easel. It is a room where other works of hers hang, and a window lets in natural light. Nothing on her canvases immediately explains the history behind them. And perhaps that is the first clue: her painting does not illustrate the past or trauma; it metabolizes them, turning them into color and expression.
“I decided to simply be happy,” she says.
The statement is not rhetorical. It does not have the tone of someone proclaiming exemplary triumph. It is a serene assertion, made without emphasis. Between Cambodia, devastated by the Khmer Rouge regime, and her current life in Montreal, she does not construct a personal myth; she affirms an act of will.
But before the genocide in Cambodia, there was another life.
View of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Photo courtesy of Gaëtan Sheridan.
Kimpov Eap was born in the Kralanh district, in Siem Reap province, in northwest Cambodia. Before the devastation, there was childhood. Her personal history intersects with one of the most devastating episodes of the second half of the twentieth century. In April 1975, the Khmer Rouge (the Communist Party of Kampuchea led by Pol Pot) took Phnom Penh and established Democratic Kampuchea. The regime evacuated entire cities, abolished urban life, and subjected the population to forced labor under military supervision. Between 1975 and 1979, a quarter of Cambodia’s population died from execution, hunger, disease, and exhaustion.
Kimpov’s life was marked by this period. Her husband was taken by soldiers and never returned. She lost two of her children. What appears in her biography as absence also belongs to a collective devastation.
When asked about her beginnings, the picture is different.
“I had a happy childhood,” she recalls. The youngest of eight siblings, daughter of a merchant, she grew up surrounded by her mother’s affection. She never knew her father (he died when she was just a baby) but she never felt abandoned. She attended school, learned French from the fourth grade onward, had friends, a routine. At fifteen, she married a teacher. “He was very attentive. He took good care of our home.” They had children. Happiness, in her account, is not idealized; it is concrete.
On the left is Kimpov's house in Kralanh-Kampong Thkov, Cambodia, where she grew up with his mother and siblings. On the right is Kimpov visiting his country in recent years.
Then the soldiers arrived. One day, they gathered all the men from the village. Her husband was among them. They took him. He never returned. From that moment, her story was suspended.
Like many other women with children, she was expelled from her home and forced to work the land, in the rice fields. Her body no longer belonged to her. She walked until her feet bled, carrying sacks of soil. Hunger was not metaphorical. At one point, her children ate a raw mouse out of hunger.
She does not raise her voice when recounting this. She does not emphasize horror. She speaks as one who lists inevitable facts. Perhaps extreme suffering does not need embellishment. Or perhaps memory, when fully traversed, no longer demands dramatization.
“We are innocents who suffer because of the power games of those who wish to control us,” she says in a discreet speech for one of her exhibitions. “We ask for nothing more than peace and the privilege of subsisting.”
In 1979, she managed to escape to Thailand with her children. She lived in a refugee camp. There, she heard of people being sent to other parts of the world: France, the United States. She thought, “I want to go.” They arrived in Canada in 1980, first to Maniwaki, north of Gatineau, then Montreal. She recalls the plane and arriving at a military base.
—Did you arrive at the airport?
—We arrived at the Longue-Pointe military base (east of Montreal). Thirteen families from Maniwaki sponsored my family so that we could be adopted. They came to get us. Father Auguste Legault and Jacques Braso were there. They told me, “We are going to Maniwaki. We are going to Maniwaki, and we stay because we were listening to them.”
Kimpov does not know whether the plane was military or commercial. The detail lost importance. What remained was the desire to find a brother, to reconnect with a bond that confirmed her world had not completely disappeared.
As a refugee in the early 1980s, she eventually had to pay for her passage: “I don’t know, but we paid for that plane. After a few years, we paid it all. You have to pay.”
After paying for her passage, after settling that debt with the Canadian state, painting arrived nineteen years later. In 1999, she painted her first work. She did not begin with abstractions but with studies, portraits, and still lifes, just a small part of her oeuvre, which seems to reside solely in her inner world.
“Art is my friend. I speak with it. It inspires me. It lives within me. It always brings me happiness, never unhappiness,” she says. The formulation is simple, yet radical.
Excerpt from the painting: Silence is strength.
Art does not appear in her account as therapy in a technical sense, but as companionship. As a constant presence. As an interlocutor that manifests itself.
In Montreal, Kimpov first studied fashion design, then visual arts. Later, due to a bicycle accident, she trained as an osteopath to relieve her own bodily pain. Her life was not organized around trauma, but around practices: working, raising children, studying, learning, painting, and rebuilding herself.
“Between what happened there and here… here is my paradise.” Not because she forgets or renounces the past, but because she chose not to live solely from the wound. In her story, transformation does not present itself as a spectacular feat. It is a continuous, almost silent gesture. An internal reorganization that allows the past to exist without governing the present.
Perhaps this is why her paintings do not depict recognizable scenes of war or exile. Violence does not appear as a direct image. What appears is energy. Movement. Intensity. As if lived experience had shifted from narrative to the very matter of color. But that is another layer. In the next, painting ceases to be biographical context and becomes its own territory.
Kimpov’s paintings. From left to right: Father Effect, The Bonfire (Birth), The Master of Silence.
The Invisible Structure
If the first layer of her story reveals decision (the conscious choice to live in light), the second reveals gesture. Painting does not arise in Kimpov as an illustration of the past, but as an internal reorganization. She does not seek to represent war or narrate exile; she seeks something else. “I look for surprise,” she says. And in that word lies a profound key. Surprise implies openness, availability, the relinquishment of absolute control. It implies accepting that something may emerge without having been foreseen.
When she speaks of her creative process, she does not describe a rigid method or conceptual program. She does not calculate the composition in advance nor precisely define the outcome. She takes the brush, intuitively chooses a color, and lets the work unfold. Only afterward, stepping back, does she recognize the balance. That moment of retreat (observing what has emerged) is essential. It is not chaotic improvisation, but a cultivated trust in one’s own perception.
Here an unexpected link to her other profession appears. Kimpov has been an osteopath for over fifteen years, working with the body, with invisible tensions, with misalignments that are not always seen but felt. In consultation, she structures, adjusts, aligns. And when she speaks of that act, she uses words that could also apply to painting: balance, energy, circulation. “When I structure, it feels good,” she explains. It is almost like stretching. The act of ordering is not only technical; it is bodily, intimate.
Something similar happens on her canvases. What at first glance appears as a chromatic explosion (reds advancing, blues overlapping, lines crossing the surface) contains an internal logic of redistribution. It is not cold or minimalist abstraction. Nor is it purely gestural in the sense of expressive outburst. It is abstraction shaped by bodily experience. Tension is not eliminated; it is reorganized. Intensity does not disappear; it finds its course.
Above: painting by Kimpov, Untitled.
It is revealing that when asked whether she paints in order not to forget, she responds that she does not. She does not paint memory as archive or monument. She paints from the energy that remains afterward. Her work is not testimonial in the literal sense; it does not need to show recognizable scenes to be true. For some viewers, even before knowing her biography, her canvases can convey an intensity capable of moving, unsettling, or inviting deep reflection.
After having experienced the loss of her husband, the death of two children, and displacement, she does not speak of art as a substitute or dramatic salvation. She speaks of art as companionship, as an everyday presence, as joy. There is a quiet ethic at work here: the right to pleasure after suffering, the legitimacy of creating for one’s own delight, and the desire for others to see what one paints.
Her paintings are not anchored in a tragic past; they vibrate in the present. They celebrate, without naivety, the possibility of balance. When she verbally affirms that Quebec is her paradise, she is not denying the past. She is situating her life on a new axis. And that axis is perceptible in the painting: there is dynamism, but also stability; intensity, but also warmth. The freedom she exercises in front of the canvas is not only aesthetic; it is existential. Choosing a color without fear, allowing a form to emerge without censorship, accepting surprise: all of this is part of a broader practice of affirmation.
Ultimately, Kimpov Eap does not paint what it once was. She paints what remains in motion. Her work does not seek to fix memory, but to keep it circulating, transformed into something that does not paralyze, but propels. In that circulation (between body and color, between structure and spontaneity, between past and present) resides the deep coherence of her life. The same woman who once worked the land until her hands bled now holds the brush with a different firmness. As she herself says: “It’s as if I were digging the earth, the rock; I keep searching. I have found things, but I continue; maybe I can discover something more.”
If you would like to see Kimpov’s paintings, the exhibition Sans Crainte will be on view at the Centre multifonctionnel Guy-Dupré (500, rue Saint-Laurent, La Prairie) from January 21 to April 26.
This is the first of two articles based on an interview conducted with Kimpov. The second article is titled The Memory of Color. The interview was made possible with the support of Gaëtan Sheridan.
Philippe Katerine, Wajdi Mouawad, Gustavo Dudamel, Amadou et Mariam, Patrice Vermette,
André-Line Beauparlant, Robert Morin, Marlene Millar, Darlene Naponse, Ai Wei Wei, Tina Modotti, L’Opéra de Paris, Isabelle Adjani, Caravaggio, Gilbert & George, Rimbaud, Fellini, Chaplin, TATE Modern, Reina Sofía, Le Prado, National Gallery Singapore.
En salle du 12 au 22 mars et en ligne du 20 au 29 mars
à Montréal - à Québec - en ligne.
BANDE-ANNONCE | Le FIFA 44:
|
Montréal, le 19 février 2026 - Le plus grand festival dédié aux films sur l’art et aux films d’art au monde vous invite en salle à Montréal et à Québec du 12 au 22 mars et en ligne du 20 au 29 mars prochains. Venez découvrir le meilleur du film sur l’art avec une programmation au cœur de nos questionnements qui transcende les frontières de l’imagination.
|
Pour rappel, la 44e édition du Festival ouvrira avec Mon amour: c'est pour le restant de mes jours d’André-Line Beauparlant (Canada) en première mondiale. Projeté en salle, le jeudi 12 mars au Monument National à Montréal en présence de la réalisatrice, de Robert Morin et de l’équipe du film, il sera également en ouverture du FIFA à Québec, le vendredi 13 mars au Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (MNBAQ).
|
Richard Avedon at the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal
Nearly one hundred portraits by Richard Avedon (1923–2004) line the museum’s pale gray walls, their white mats and frames suspended above coffee-colored parquet floors. Together, they form more than a retrospective: they assemble a visual chronicle of the second half of the twentieth century written on skin. The photographs (mostly vertical, some large-scale and others mid-sized) unfold in a spacious, quiet gallery that neither imposes solemnity nor demands slow contemplation; it is the viewer who decides how long to hold each gaze. And here, to hold that gaze is an act of confrontation.
Stripped of context and positioned frontally against an absolute white background, figures who shaped the cultural and political imagination of the last century pass before us: Ronald Reagan, Marguerite Duras, Jorge Luis Borges, Jean Renoir, Duke Ellington, Gabriel García Márquez, Samuel Beckett, Truman Capote, Patti Smith, John Ford, Gloria Swanson, Edward VIII alongside Wallis Simpson, Marian Anderson, Francis Bacon, and Willem de Kooning, among many others.
Yet before the camera they all seem to undergo the same process: the symbolic dismantling of status. Without setting or attributes, without the visual apparatus that typically sustains authority, the president, the Nobel laureate, the cinema icon, or the aristocratic myth are reduced to the evidence of their bodies. Cultural hierarchy is suspended, and what emerges is not the public persona but a shared vulnerability. Against the white ground, power becomes flesh, wrinkle, weary gaze.
Avedon worked with an 8 x 10 large-format camera, positioning his subjects directly before a seamless white backdrop. That technical choice was also conceptual. In Richard Avedon Portraits (2002), he asserted that there is an element of sexuality in every portrait: the moment one pauses to look, one becomes implicated. Portraiture permits an intensity that social life forbids; to stare for minutes at the face of someone powerful would be unthinkable outside the museum. What he sought was a confrontational quality erotic not in a sensual sense, but in the tension between gazes: not voyeurism, but encounter. The viewer does not spy; instead, the viewer holds and is held by the image.
This relentless frontalism turns skin into territory and archive. It is as if Avedon were drawing a cartography of time: the face transformed into a map of bifurcations, losses, and persistences, where each crease functions like a topographical line and each shadow like sedimented experience. Wrinkles are not softened; sagging is not disguised; spots and hollows remain. Fame dissolves before the material evidence of wear. The exhibition thus operates as chronicle, archive, and silent reportage of an era in which the face replaces the event and biography inscribes itself in the furrows of the skin.
On a key wall just inside the entrance, to the left, one portrait alters the reading of the whole: that of an African American man, one of the last people born into slavery in Louisiana. Among figures of cultural and political power, this face introduces another dimension of time not only the passage of years, but the structural weight of history. His eyes condense a memory that exceeds the individual and unsettles the narrative of elites. Avedon does not assemble a moral pantheon; alongside consecrated writers and admired artists appears the segregationist governor George Wallace, photographed across different decades, as though physical erosion itself operated as political commentary. Confrontation here is not only formal, but historical.
In a more intimate gallery, the museum recreates the series Jacob Israel Avedon, first presented in 1974 at the Museum of Modern Art. Nine portraits document the physical deterioration of the photographer’s father, ill with cancer, until his death. The gaze becomes filial, and the record of aging shifts from public observation to accompaniment. It is difficult not to think of contemporary works such as those by Becky Wilkes in The New Yorker, where parents’ illness during the pandemic becomes visual testimony; in both cases, the camera neither embellishes nor dramatizes, but remains.
Equally striking is the deliberate absence of the iconic fashion images and supermodels that consolidated Avedon’s fame. This omission reveals the duality that runs through his career: on the one hand, the photographer of glamour, haute couture, and urban sophistication; on the other, the portraitist who dismantles hierarchy, who places celebrities and anonymous figures on the same plane, and who turns the face into a field of ethical tension. The timeline ends in 2004, the year of his death, and includes images taken during his final year of life, as if, in the end, his interest no longer lay in the perfect surface but in the fragile truth of time.
Walking through the exhibition, one understands that the confrontation Avedon spoke of is neither provocation nor scandal, but a form of radical honesty: to look without décor, without indulgence, and without distance. If this exhibition traces a chronicle of the second half of the twentieth century, it does so as one might draw a map not of power or prestige, but of time inscribed upon faces. And in that human cartography, what endures is not myth, but shared vulnerability.
La segunda edición de la Semaine de la Critique de Montréal se llevó a cabo en el Cinéma du Musée, consolidando un espacio de encuentro que, apenas en su segunda edición, muestra una claridad de propósito y una sensibilidad curatorial pocas veces vistas en la ciudad. Fundada por la revista en línea Panorama-cinéma, la Semana se define como un festival no competitivo, un lugar de encuentro entre cineastas, críticos, investigadores y público general, con el objetivo de fomentar el diálogo, la reflexión y la experimentación cinematográfica.
Montreal se inserta así en una genealogía internacional de semanas de la crítica. Desde 1962, la Semaine de la Critique de Cannes, organizada por el Syndicat français de la critique de cinéma, ha funcionado como un espacio para descubrir las primeras y segundas películas de directores de todo el mundo, legitimando la crítica como práctica activa y no como comentario posterior. Paralelamente, la Critics’ Week de Berlín ha trabajado bajo el principio de que la crítica es una agenda: un lugar donde se discuten política, estética y formas de percepción, cuestionando cómo vemos las películas y qué cine deseamos. La Semana de la Crítica de Montreal se inserta en este legado, sin pretender competir, pero adoptando la misma filosofía: cine como conversación, como exploración y como construcción colectiva de significado.
Al llegar, cada acreditado recibía un pase singular: una pulsera de cuentas con letras que componían su nombre, elaborada por un artesano. Un objeto simple, hecho a mano, que desplazaba la acreditación del protocolo al gesto, y anunciaba desde el inicio una relación cercana y encarnada con la experiencia cinematográfica.
En Montreal, este tipo de experiencia se vuelve aún más relevante ante la ausencia del Festival du Film du Monde, que, tras décadas de actividad desde su primera edición en 1977, concluyó en 2019. Ese festival, reconocido por la F.I.A.P.F. y considerado internacionalmente como de gran envergadura, dejó un vacío que, afortunadamente, otros festivales independientes han comenzado a llenar. Entre ellos se cuentan el Festival Internacional de Documentales de Montreal, el Festival Internacional de Presencia Autóctona, el Festival du nouveau cinéma de Montréal y festivales especializados que, como la Semana de la Crítica o incluso el Festival Internacional de Cine sobre Arte buscan nutrir la comunidad cinematográfica, fomentar cruces interdisciplinarios y sostener la curiosidad del público. En este ecosistema, Montreal demuestra que la ciudad sigue viva, diversa y culturalmente fértil, incluso ante la desaparición de un gran festival.
La experiencia en la sala de Cinéma du Musée confirma esta idea. Se trata de un espacio acogedor y cuidado, donde la programación artística e independiente se combina con la posibilidad de asistir a funciones dobles o triples, y donde la comunidad de espectadores (estudiantes, investigadores, cinéfilos y cineastas) se involucra activamente. La interacción es constante: mientras se espera la proyección, se comentan las películas, se trabaja, se hace networking. Las preguntas y respuestas con los directores, la venta de revistas, carteles y merchandising, los pequeños gestos lúdicos como comprar palomitas o un totebag, crean un ecosistema de cine desbordado, donde el acto de ver la película se desplaza de su lugar central para integrarse en una experiencia crítica, relacional y contextual.
Entre las proyecciones de esta edición, Magallanes, de Lav Díaz, condensó de manera ejemplar el espíritu de la Semana. La película, situada en Filipinas y contada desde la perspectiva de los colonizados, desplaza la narrativa tradicional de la conquista y ofrece una revisión de la historia desde una mirada decolonial, investigada y reconstruida por el propio director. Su enfoque, lúcido, lúdico y confrontacional, resume la ambición de la Semana: cine que piensa, cuestiona y genera conversación.
Junto a Magallanes, la programación ofreció una serie de películas que destacaron por su diversidad formal y política. Cada obra, a su manera, dialogó con el marco curatorial de esta edición: explorando paisajes, cuerpos, sueños y tensiones sociales; combinando intimidad y epicidad; invitando al espectador a participar, reflexionar y emocionarse.
Water Sports de Whammy Alcazaren (Filipinas, 2024, 19'', Tagalog con subtítulos en inglés) es un cortometraje que condensa múltiples tensiones en un formato breve y visualmente intenso. Su estética casi cuadrada, con colores saturados deliberadamente “posterizados”, transmite el calor abrumador de Filipinas y el bochorno físico de los jóvenes protagonistas, estudiantes que entrenan lo que parece ser el servicio social militar. La película no muestra armas ni escenas de combate; centra la atención en la encarnación de la masculinidad a través del cuerpo, la disciplina y la cooperación, especialmente en la relación sutilmente LGBTQ de una pareja que se ayuda, se carga y se cuida entre sí. La repetición de la botella amarilla de agua funciona como un símbolo inquietante, mientras que la puesta en escena con hojas marchitas, moho y óxido refuerza la sensación de un mundo afectado por el calentamiento global y la corrupción institucional. Con sus juegos visuales y ritmo casi gif-animado, Water Sports logra que el espectador sienta físicamente el calor y la tensión de sus personajes, mostrando cómo la economía del tiempo breve puede amplificar la intensidad estética y política de una obra.
Revelations of Divine Love de Caroline Golum (73'', Estados Unidos, 2025, inglés) es un segundo largometraje que revisita la vida de la mística Julian de Norwich, primera autora femenina en inglés, y lo hace con un enfoque a la vez histórico y radicalmente estético. Ambientada en el siglo XIV, la película narra la reclusión de Julian tras experimentar visiones extraordinarias, utilizando maquetas que muestran el paso de las estaciones y un detallado diseño de vestuario y escenografía para reconstruir la Edad Media de manera ingeniosa y psicodélica. La obra recuerda en su teatralidad y precisión visual a Perceval el galés (Éric Rohmer, 1979), pero con un estilo más nítido y contemporáneo, donde las piedras y muros, aunque artificiales, sirven al ritmo narrativo y a la construcción del espacio. El tratamiento del sonido, minucioso y envolvente, refuerza el carácter meditativo de la película, mientras que el lenguaje elevado y epistemológico de Julian aporta una reflexión profunda sobre la experiencia mística, creando un diálogo entre lo histórico y lo imaginativo que resulta fascinante y envolvente.
Entiérranos en un desierto solitario de Nguyễn Lê Hoàng Phúc (Vietnam, 2025, 62'', vietnamita con subtítulos en inglés) es un largometraje que combina ternura, humor y reflexión sobre la muerte y el duelo. La película comienza con un ladrón que intenta robar una casa y termina cautivado por el dueño, un anciano viudo obsesionado con reunirse con su esposa fallecida. Lo que podría parecer un relato simple se convierte en un juego de pactos, cuidado mutuo y construcción de intimidad entre el anciano y su inesperado acompañante. La película experimenta con el formato visual, pasando de un encuadre circular al abrirse en el desierto, y utiliza la arena mostaza como un recurso poético que acompaña la eutanasia voluntaria del protagonista, así como su reunión simbólica con la esposa momificada. Con un tono absurdamente tierno, la obra recuerda a Taste of Cherry de Kiarostami en su delicadeza hacia temas difíciles, pero lo hace mediante un humor sutil y un afecto tangible entre los personajes. La narrativa circula entre la muerte, el duelo y la eutanasia, pero nunca pierde ligereza ni empatía, convirtiendo un acto final tan fuerte en una experiencia conmovedora, entretenida y profundamente humana.
Estoy Sintiendo Algo de Nuno Pimentel (Portugal, 2026, 13 min, sin diálogo, subtítulos en inglés) es un cortometraje de estreno mundial que despliega su narrativa en paisajes aparentemente desprovistos de presencia humana, donde la vida persiste a través de subtítulos autogenerados que describen acciones y emociones invisibles en la imagen. La obra juega con un humor sutil, memético, y con una relación entre texto e imagen que recuerda a los intertítulos del cine silente, pero en clave contemporánea y minimalista. Lejos de crear atmósferas impresionistas o paisajes cautivadores, Pimentel apuesta por la simplicidad y la experimentación con el lenguaje escrito, generando un efecto poético y ligero que involucra al espectador en un acto de lectura activa y contemplación. Su estreno fue recibido con calidez, celebrando la valentía de presentar una obra que explora cómo la narrativa y la emoción pueden surgir de lo que no se ve, sino de lo que se sugiere.
Cada una ofreció un gesto singular: algunas desafiaron formalmente la narrativa, otras reflexionaron sobre temas políticos y sociales, y todas contribuyeron a crear un diálogo abierto y enriquecedor con el público, confirmando que Montreal está en camino de construir una tradición crítica propia, accesible y estimulante, en paralelo con los grandes ejemplos internacionales de Cannes y Berlín.
En conjunto, esta segunda edición de la Semana de la Crítica de Montréal confirma la vitalidad del cine independiente y reflexivo en la ciudad. Espacios como este no solo permiten descubrir nuevas voces, sino que también construyen una comunidad crítica, interdisciplinaria y accesible, donde el cine se experimenta como diálogo y encuentro. Montreal, con esta Semana, demuestra que incluso ante la desaparición de grandes festivales, su ecosistema cinematográfico sigue vivo, diverso y capaz de inspirar a cineastas, investigadores y espectadores por igual.
Papa León XIV elegido como Sumo Pontífice
Momento Histórico - Aprobacion del Marco Mundial de la Diversidad Biologica en la COP15 en Montreal. Foto CDB
Emi Mahmoud | Poet, Activist, founder | UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador - Photo by: emi-mahmoud.com
El gran bateador Tim Raines saludando al público - Foto: Ben Pelosse
Evgenia Medvedeva, ganó la competencia Skate Canada International 2016 con una coreografía que dejó al público impresionado por su fuerza interpretativa. Foto cortesía Skate Canada/Stephan Potopnyk