Twenty years after its inception as a showcase for Asian action films, Fantasia is now renowned as the largest and most influential genre film festival in North America. Over 130 feature films and hundreds of short films were screened at Concordia’s J.A. de Sève Cinema and Hall Theatre this year as part of the festival. Although the selections exhibit an extraordinarily wide range of production and budget scales, artistic visions, and cultural influences, each screening is bound together by the audience’s unparalleled passion and enthusiasm for the stories that unfold before them, and for the monsters that inhabit the screen.

Twenty years after its inception […], Fantasia is now renowned as the largest and most influential genre film festival in North America.

The films screened at Fantasia are marked by their monstrosities, from uproarious comedies such as Taika Waititi’s Hunt for the Wilderpeople, to bone-chilling thrillers like As the Gods Will directed by Fantasia’s Lifetime Achievement Award winner Takashi Miike. These monsters are not only human villains or fantastical creatures with fangs, fur, and scales, but also monsters of fear, anger, anxiety, mortality – the intangible monsters of the human condition. Although Fantasia is saturated with monsters of all forms, nothing is scaring away faithful festival-goers, most of whom arrive two hours early to screenings, waiting in lines that wrap around the block just to get good seats.

“We live in a very brutal world and you deal with it by creating creatures which serve a symbolic function, which illuminate the human condition. To me, reality can only be reached through these tales,” del Toro elaborated. He spoke passionately of his relationship to monsters, identifying himself as part of the “monster-geek” generation (those who grew up watching classic monster films) and likening their effect on him to spiritual salvation. “Monsters will save my soul,” he said earnestly, stressing that since his childhood, the existence of monsters has felt truly real to him.

“[Fantasia] is a rarity in the world of festivals; its core is fuelled with love.”

Born and raised in Guadalajara, del Toro learned English with only a dictionary and Mad Magazine, and worshiped Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as a sacred text. From these humble roots, del Toro has not only become a legendary director and producer, but one of the world’s premier monster creators – preferring the use of miniatures, makeup, and animatronic puppetry to the computer-generated imagery (CGI) genre film so heavily relies on. “People now use CGI because they’re lazy,” he declared, “they deal with it in post production. They just throw money at it.”

Animated monsters

The Outer Limits of Animation program was a refreshing break from the techniques and attitudes of the CGI-rich franchise films which del Toro deems indolent and impersonal. The event showcased a selection of some of this year’s most poignant and beautifully crafted animated shorts from around the world. Each was an allegorical tale of fantasy, created with a variety of animation techniques to take spectators on an emotional whirlwind of personal revelations. While these tales lack the presence of a del Toro-type monster, each short was an artistic manifestation of a human flaw, weakness, or fear, which in conventional genre film, monsters typically serve to communicate.

Each [animated film] was an allegorical tale of fantasy, created […] to take spectators on an emotional whirlwind of personal revelations.

James Cunningham’s Accidents, Blunders and Calamities and Cho Hyun-a and Kim Su-jeong’s The Animal Book bookended the program, providing comical yet sobering illustrations of one of the most frightful monsters plaguing the world today: ecological destruction through human negligence. In Accidents, Cunningham presents a barrage of hyperrealistic insects and small animals who meet their demise at the hands of careless humans, narrated by a father possum as a bedtime tale (and warning) to his children. His story begins with “now remember, it’s a scary world out there, and the most dangerous thing of all is humans,” followed by a montage of violent murders as disembodied human hands, feet, or man-made machines squash unsuspecting creatures. The Animal Book chronicles a similar story, in which an exhausted man drives down a long road that passes through several ecosystems. While falling asleep at the wheel he embarks on a roadkill rampage of endangered species, leaving a trail of corpses behind him as blood splatters coat his windshield.

Although these tales take place in fantastical animated worlds where possums tell poems and dolphins jump out of pavement into moving traffic, they convey a truly serious and cautionary message about humanity’s role in the destruction of the natural world and its inhabitants. The humans are portrayed as silent monsters whose heartless actions result in the destruction of the innocent and endangered – a typical conflict of genre film presented in reverse – which not only serves to increase awareness of ecological destruction, but to illustrate the hands in which this monstrosity lies.

“We live in a very brutal world and you deal with it by creating creatures which serve a symbolic function, which illuminate the human condition.”

At Fantasia, humankind is not only painted as the monster and nature as its victim. Often in genre film, and throughout Outer Limits of Animation, humankind becomes victim to its own weaknesses and fears. In Junction, Nathan Jurevicius urges us not to fear change and growth, but to invite them, embodied by the shapeshifting inhabitants of his plastic-toy world. Sacha Feiner manifests childhood isolation within the black and white halls of a labyrinthine mansion in her stop-motion film Dernière Porte au Sud (Last Door South) before building an escape route to a more colourful world. In the real world, fighting the monsters of fear and anxiety can be an daunting and abstract task, while in these fantastical tales, animation allows for conflicts to be represented concretely, and for solutions to be made palpable.

When asked why Fantasia stood out for him and his peers, del Toro replied, “We truly love it. […] We are diverse and we disagree, but not on the fact that this genre has produced some of the most enduring images ever created… [Fantasia] is a rarity in the world of festivals; its core is fuelled with love.” This is why genre film and Fantasia are such culturally and artistically important endeavours. They use modes of fantasy to construct distant worlds of past, future, or never-lands into which anyone can enter, onto which anyone can project personal or societal conflicts, and where refuge and solace in common strife can be found.

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Charlie Hilton has a lilting, lovely voice strengthened by a rich combination of sound. The artist breaks into her debut solo album with outstanding mastery, departing from lead vocals and guitar in Blouse, to create a work entirely her own. Released on January 22, the album’s title refers to Hilton’s given Sanskrit name. After finishing school she remade herself as “Charlie.” This feeling of transition and self-making defines Hilton’s unique solo album.

The album retains a base of Blouse’s early work but experiments and adapts to mix a pronounced sense of self-expression with an equally beautiful musical talent. “Pony,” an attention-grabbing single of the debut, illustrates Hilton’s sharp lyrics: “Get off my back / I’m not your pony / I’m getting tired of what you’re handing out.”

Palana moves effortlessly from the single’s psychedelic edge to a sweet, silvery guitar in “100 Million,” featuring vocals and music by Mac DeMarco. An ode to the small eternities of romance, the duet is effortlessly charming. “No One Will” is, in a similar vein, contributing to this soft, simple sound. A serenade in its true form, Hilton’s lyrics describe a love that is honest and easy. Other songs such as “Snow,” “Palana,” “WHY,” and “The Young” complete the artist’s vision of a hazy lullaby.

At times, however, the mellow lull of the tracks backfire. The clarity of Hilton’s lyrics is usually brilliant with occasional blunt moments in an otherwise extraordinary album. “Funny Anyway” is filled with rolling rhythm and melody, but falls flat due to its dull monotone and lack of lyrical insight.

The album is not lacking in bright self-expression, however. Alive with colour, Palana includes an assortment of rhapsody. Hilton chants to impulsive youth: “We don’t have to plan it / I never liked routine.” Another track, “Something for Us All” breaks out in an eclectic harmony that, for all its creative combination of alternative tones, doesn’t disappoint. “Long Goodbye” complements the song set, giving Hilton’s debut an impressive range.

In Palana, Hilton is bouncing synths, saccharine acoustics and everything in between, which makes for a stunning set. This album is a starkly modern take on vintage sound of the psychedelic era with something interesting for every listener.

Smileswithteeth – Walk Forever

When enveloped by Walk Forever’s bubbling synths, swelling vocals, and wind chime melodies, you can’t help but feel a rush of vitality. On January 21, Montreal dream pop band Smileswithteeth released their five-track EP, a cultivation of resonance that is simultaneously upbeat and meditative. Walk Forever creates a soundtrack to that hazy limbo of rushing thoughts and mellow calm.

In the album’s description on the band’s website, Smileswithteeth frontman Gabriel Gutierrez says the EP was inspired by his desolate and contemplative semester spent in Paris. Upon returning to Montreal, Los Angeles-raised Gutierrez pulled himself out of the recesses of loneliness, took a walk in the sunshine, and was overtaken by a newfound energy and optimism. This spirit was channeled into sound, resulting in the formation of two new band projects. Walk Forever, backed by Lillian King and Kyle Hutchins, extends a hand so that we can join this journey.

Smilewithteeth’s recent release has a lighter, more refined sound than the band’s previous album, Everyday Always. The sentiment of maintaining a positive and dynamic existence is what ties the two productions together. In Walk Forever, this positive energy reaches its apex in the tick-tock tempo of “Sup,” a song described by Gutierrez in an interview with Exclaim as “a tune made for peach sorbet at an imaginary beach.”

This is music to listen to while in motion, and music that will keep you in motion – regardless of where you’re walking to. From King’s haunting voice in the opening track to sampled passing laughter and mumbled conversation appearing later in the album, Smileswithteeth captures the texture and rhythm of a city street, evoking a sense of aimless wandering and instilling a desire for constant movement.

Walk Forever transcends the sound of footsteps on concrete sidewalks – you can hear raindrops filtering through a forest canopy, the warmth of a sunny beach, and the energy of life manifested. The result is a dreamlike buoyancy, but also a rhythmic stability that is grounding and palpable. Walk Forever is a reminder that we are surrounded by a boundless world of energy, light, and sound, and when we allow ourselves to roam and to be embraced by this world, no recess of loneliness is too deep to rise from.

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