fantasme fashion event

In my work, I experience 99% of the addresses, activities, events and products I recommend. Experience is key. It sets me apart.

I get lost, eat bad food, and make mistakes so my clients don’t have to.

The upside is reliability, and information designed for use. And I love sharing what’s great about Montreal.

The downside is that I can’t be everywhere, do everything.

So I need your help: I just received information about Fantasme. The one-night fashion event brings together Montreal-based art gallery the Darling Foundry, and designers Andrew Ly and Melissa Matos in an outdoor fashion show, fashion film screening and afterparty.

It’s just the kind of thing I like to cover on this blog. It takes place Thursday, Aug 20…and I can’t go!

Dear readers, would you attend, and report back?

Give us a few details about something you loved or hated. Tell us if it worked, and why (or why not).

The event is open to the public and free to attend. Read the overview and see a video at http://www.fantasme-event.blogspot.com/

Please rsvp to FANTASMESEVENT@GMAIL.COM

I look forward to hearing from you on the 21st!

Photograph courtesy Melissa Matos.

sidewalk sales, street fairs, and more

Yesterday was a glorious day to be out and about in Montreal. After four days of rain, the sky was blue, and the city sparkled. I wandered with friends in The Main, the Plateau, the Botanical Gardens, and Vieux Montréal…aahh, what a treat.

The Main - closed to traffic between Sherbrooke and Mont-Royal for the first of three summer sidewalk sales - was in its glory. Street food included chow mein, hot dogs and espresso (with chocolat chaud as a holdover from the preceding rainy days) - supplemented by café terraces, filled to overflowing.

Friends chatted in groups, couples walked hand in hand, and just about every breed of dog padded through the happy crowds. In sidewalk sale tents, prices plunged - and we got two swingy, Georges Lévesque nylon skirts at Scandale for half off.

Ex-centris had a free viral/visual project going. Apparently, there is still confusion about whether the state-of-the-art complex is still open. To promote the still intact Cinéma Parallèle, a friendly, goateed young man invited passersby to peer through a hole in a painted board, kind of like they do with Mickey Mouse at Disney. A professional photographer recorded the images.

I can’t say I understood the visuals (at first glance, a donut, with a bullet on trajectory toward the participant’s head), but I love the place - a cultural treasure, full of fun and surprises all year long.

In the Plateau, it was all about biking. Folding bikes, hybrids, and faithful old road models rolled along with the cars on Ave Mont-Royal. Bikes (and calmly panting dogs) waited in front of stores and cafés as their owners enjoyed the confluence of free time and good weather, shopping, brunching, and hanging out in puddles of sun.

Every BIXI station in and around Parc la Fontaine was empty - and the bike path between the park and the Botanical Gardens streamed with riders. At the gardens, bike parking was easy to come by; cars, packed with families and poussettes, were not so easily accommodated.

We saw a black tandem bike locked to a post, and imagined the couple who owned it: middle aged, helmeted cyclists wearing slim-fitting Pearl Izumi jackets, who had once toured Ireland, Italy and elsewhere under their own power.

Near the entrance, a pair of twenty-something cyclists leaned duffle-laden steeds against a tree, while he took her picture with a disposable point-and-shoot. Not in front of the joyously spattering fountain, or the ruffled yellow snapdragons - but in front of the Olympic stadium, with her left hand raised to shoulder height, and held flat, as if she held the white stadium tip in her palm.

In Vieux Montréal, a long line waited at Musée Point-à-Caillière, in honor of the city-wide Free Museum Day. On the grass near the science museum, aerobics instructors led warm ups for a walk benefiting Alzheimer’s patients.

We watched a parade of snare drummers wearing tri-cornered black and gold hats, and wandered through a food festival featuring lobsters and sugar on snow.

Finally, we staked out a table at Café Serafim, soaking in the sun, nursing lattes, and admiring Chapel Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours.

Across the street, wearing period dress, the Musée Marguerite Bourgeoys staff announced the free tour. Eventually we succumbed and climbed the 69 steps to the tower - breathing in the blue sky and the view of the harbor, watching our fellow revelers from above.

agnès varda at ex-centris

It’s not that I don’t like art - I do. But I love seeing original version films in a state-of-the-art independent film house more. Double that sentiment when the building is an architectural treasure.

So imagine my disappointment when I learned that March 19 will be the last day to see a movie at Ex-Centris.

Or that was what I first understood. Apparently, there has been some confusion. After years of supporting auteur and independent films, Ex-Centris is suspending its regular programming.

The key word is regular programming. Cinéma Parallèle will continue to operate, and the facilities will be used for a variety of projects ranging from theatre-style performances to new media productions, as well as cinema presentations that go beyond the traditional experience.

The facilities were designed from the start to offer more than film presentations - and their imminent transformation into multidisciplinary exhibition spaces will accommodate musical performances, interactive installations, and various combinations of stage performance and new technology.

That’s great, but I love movies. So to celebrate the ongoing presence of Cinéma Parallèle, I went to the premier of Agnès Varda’s new visual memoir, Les Plages d’Agnès.

The documentary opens with 80 year old Varda setting up mirrors in the sand. You look into other people’s lives, she says, and you uncover landscapes. Look into her life, and you find beaches.

Whether that’s because she’s always lived on the water (Varda even commuted to the Sorbonne in Paris by boat), or because of the imaginative powers that water evokes, I don’t know. But the opening was original and beautiful.

The film followed her life from childhood, in scenes that were at turns touching, funny and surreal. We met the loves of her life, and the artists who influenced her.

Best of all, the film put Varda’s career in the larger context of art and culture from the 50s to the present. It took us back to the plages de Paris in 68, to protests of the early women’s movement, and Black Panther rallies.

I would probably not have seen Les Plages d’Agnès if not for the impending changes at Ex-Centris. But I’m so glad I did. It’s fitting to welcome a new era of with a look back at what’s come before.