The Art Newspaper

Caro and Karsh: winners at Fifa art film festival

Documentary on sculptor's major French public commission among the prizes in Canada

By Iain Millar. Published online: 01 April 2009

MONTREAL. A French-made documentary on Sir Anthony Caro's commission to create a monument for the choir of the Church of Saint Jean Baptiste, at Bourbourg, near Calais, France, was the principal visual arts prize winner at the closing ceremony of the 27th International Festival of Films on Art (Fifa), at the Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal on Saturday evening (29 March). "Anthony Caro: La Sculpture Comme Religion [sculpture as religion]", directed by Alain Fleischer, took the prize for best film for television.

In an awards ceremony that was dominated by films on music, only two other films directly concerned with the visual arts—though not fine art—were given awards by the jury, headed by French art critic and former French commissioner to the São Paulo Biennial, Michel Nuridsany. Joseph Hillel's "Karsh is History", on the life of the photographer Josef Karsh, took the award for best Canadian film. Architecture was highlighted with the award of the prize for best reportage to Norway's Anne Elizabeth Andersen for her film "The Oslo Opera House", on the design and construction of the building in the Norwegian capital.

A surprise omission from the list of prize winners was the strongly favoured documentary "Ich Immendorff", by the German director Nicola Graef, which profiled the late German artist Jörg Immedorff in the final months of his life. Also tipped for a prize but leaving empty-handed was Canadian director Helene Klodawsky's "Malls R Us", a witty yet serious examination of the architectural, economic and social history of the shopping mall and its pervasive influence on contemporary commercial life.

Fifa (www.artfifa.com) ran from 19-29 March, and featured 280 films from 30 countries. A selection of winning films will be shown at Tate Modern, London, on 29 May 2009, from 10.30am-5pm; http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/eventseducation/film/17721.htm.