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Hadassah Alencar

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Quebec preparing for holiday celebrations

With the holiday season fast approaching Quebec announced it will plan for family gatherings.

Not large gatherings according to Legault, but small ones with close family.

To prepare kids to go back to school, Quebec is considering extending the school holidays to give families time to quarantine.

Quebec seeks closer relationship with Indigenous communities

In other news, Quebec is working on strengthening relationships with Indigenous communities.

This will include a new political round table with the Assembly of First Nations Quebec and Labrador (AFNQL).

The initiative follows some of the recommendations made in a scathing report released last year in September, that called on the government to apologize to First Nation Communities for systemic racism.

McGill sports team changes name to Redbirds

Let’s go McGill Redbirds!

That's the new cheer for the men’s varsity athletics team at McGill. They’ve changed the team name to Redbird from “Redman”

It was a student-led campaign that pushed for the change, because the name Redman is seen as racist slur against Indigenous communities.

Reporter Hadassah Alencar

Stories by Luca Caruso-Moro

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Schools may be forced to leave windows open over winter

Montreal schools with poor ventilation may be forced to leave windows open in the winter. 

CTV News reports the English Montreal School Board has not received the necessary funding to upgrade their ventilation in all their schools. 

Proper ventilation is necessary to limit the spread of COVID-19 indoors.

Survey finds worry over French language in Quebec

A majority of Quebecers are nervous about the future of the French language, according to a new poll.
59 per cent of respondents said the French language situation has deteriorated over the past 10 years.

62 per cent of Quebecers are pessimistic about its future.

COVID-19 vaccine has 90 is reportedly 90 per cent effective

In an update US top doctor Anthony Fauci called just extraordinary, a COVID-19 vaccine has been reported as being 90 per cent effective in trials. 

While the tests are not complete, the Associated Press is reporting Pfizer and Biotech will apply for public health approval next month. 

If approved, it’s unlikely to become available before the new year, and initial supplies will be limited. 

The 49th edition of the Festival du nouveau cinéma took place this year from Oct. 7-31. It was sad to see theatres close down again on Oct. 1 because these festivals work great on a big screen with an audience. However, there was always the plan in place to have the festival go on, even if it meant as a virtual film festival online.  Relying more on international films and a few classics, the Festival du nouveau cinéma allows cinephiles a chance to explore something that they won’t get from regular festivals. 

Siberia, a film from director Abel Ferrara, is a psychological meditative drama where Willem Dafoe stars as an innkeeper of a tavern in Siberia. He must come to terms with his own past through meditative moments shot through Ferrara’s lens, as he reconciles with his past and present. This film is a must-see, as Dafoe is one of the talented actors today taking on more independent film roles, challenging the stereotypical Hollywood roles that he is known for. 

This Is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection was recommended to me as a film not to miss by this year's programming director Zoé Protat when I interviewed her this year about the festival. The film deals with death and the burial ceremony in a village community of Lesotho, which is completely bordered by South Africa. An 80-year old widow who has lost everyone most close to her has to protect the village from resettlement due to reservoir construction. With a newfound will to live she ignites a movement to protect the land and the customs. Unlike conventional narrative structures, the film is a great exploration of sound design, which in turn gives the film its narrative. Part of this is the implementation of tribal instruments or the community coming together through song to provide the narrative dialogue.

From the late Jóhann Jóhannsson comes a posthumous directorial debut Last and First Men. Jóhannsson in the past has worked on the scores for films including most of Denis Villeneuve’s including Arrival and Sicario. The film is an art feature in black and white of shots of architecture monuments and landscapes of socialist-era Yugoslavia, alongside Jóhannsson’s score. It explores the concept of a not so distant future of humanity being extinct. However, there is also a hopeful message alongside a history of how humanity began through a contemplative voice over from acclaimed actress Tilda Swinton. The film provides a transcendental journey for viewers through lush landscapes and soundscapes, which are used in innovative ways in this art-science fiction film. We are ultimately reminded of the brilliance of the late Jóhannsson not only as a composer, but now as a director — as well as the great Swinton as a voice over actress. 

What I enjoyed about the festival this year was the fact that I did not know any of the films taking place. Normally the Festival du nouveau cninéma has a way of getting in some big award contenders, however with the awards and Oscars still in limbo it was great to discover some hidden gems in the international scene. This is the case with the Festival du nouveau cinéma, as it has always allowed me to discover new filmmakers and international films. Here’s hoping that things will be different next year when the festival celebrates a milestone 50th edition and that the theatre's venue will be there to greet the audience on such an occasion. I hope for the same experience that I had sitting in the very front row of a towering screen watching Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma back in 2018 alongside a full house at the Cinéma Impérial.

Remi and Danny host At the Movies which features everything new and noteworthy in the world of cinema. The show goes live every Tuesday at 8:00AM.

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Back in 1980s, a mystery album titled Nightmare Theatre (1985) dropped in record stores around North America and parts of Europe, shocking those who were lucky enough to grab a first pressing. The band responsible was Exorcist, but they certainly weren’t a “band” in any sense of the word. They didn’t play any shows, didn’t do any interviews, nor did they release any follow-up material.

Everything about this release was meant to be kept secret. The album cover certainly didn’t convey much with its four masked figures. You could look into the album’s liner notes or at the track listing credits, but asking around about the names responsible, “Damian Rath” and “Marc Dorian”, wouldn’t have gotten you very far– keep in mind, this was before the internet was a proper thing– these names were pseudonyms. The only glimmer of hope for some sense of tangible connection between Nightmare Theatre and the real world was the grainy band photo contained inside copies of the album. Even then, making out the players standing in front of what looks to be an overgrown graveyard wouldn’t be an easy task. It doesn’t help that one of them sports something resembling a reverse-colour KKK costume.

Dropping the needle revealed yet another layer of mystery. Rather than sounding similar to other popular metal acts of the time like Iron Maiden, Mötley Crüe, or Black Sabbath –who’s singers and signature style can be easily picked out and identified by ear– Nightmare Theatre produced a rather gruesome and abrasive sonic output. The morbid concoction of aggressive speed metal, demonic vocals, and harrowing audio samples of witches being sentenced to be burned at the stake offered an immediate contrast to whatever metal music kids were listening to on MTV at the time.

It wouldn’t be too hard to guess that Nightmare Theatre wasn’t a chart-topper. Well, it didn’t really matter because that wasn’t the point of the whole thing, but we’ll get to that later. What was undoubtedly a flop in the eyes of the Hot 100, slowly became a minor underground sensation among metal fans who listened to the more extreme end of the genre. Today, nearly 35 years after its release, Nightmare Theatre is celebrated as a cult album that was ahead of its time, influencing the more extreme metal subgenres of black metal and grindcore which developed years later. Keep in mind, this was all without anyone knowing who actually played on the album or wrote its music.

Fortunately for us (or unfortunately, depending on how engaged you were with the mystery aspect of this story), those 35 years have also shed some light on the album’s secretive origins. Nightmare Theatre was actually written and performed by singer David DeFeis and guitarist Edward Pursino, who played together in Virgin Steele, a hard rock/heavy metal band based in Long Island, New York. While their main group had just released their third full-length, the Exorcist project allowed for the two musicians to experiment with something of a different speed (with the assistance of a few other players on the record, of course).

Well, allowed is probably a bit of a stretch. DeFeis and Pursino were more-so not-so-kindly asked to write and record the album because they owed a debt to their record company. As DeFeis put it in a 2017 interview with Oldschool Metal Maniac, “we had run into so-called monetary difficulties with certain people. In order to get a clean slate and go back to square one, we were invited to do this other kind of project.”

This situation actually wasn’t too uncommon. Labels would often loan an advance to a musician to record an album on the premise that their project would make enough money to pay off the loan (of course, if the record was a sleeper and the loan couldn’t be paid off from its profits, the musician would be in trouble). In these cases, labels would often throw fake bands together to write and record albums for free so musicians could pay off their debts - no royalties, nothing. I guess that’s better than getting your knee busted in with a baseball bat.

This was so common that a specific name for these releases was coined, aptly-dubbed “Metal-Ploitation.” Some albums to fall under this category are Original Sin’s Sin Will Find You Out (1986), Convict’s Go Ahead… Make My Day (1985), and Piledriver’s Metal Inquisition (1985), among many others. These “Metal-Ploitation” records are all rushed, poorly recorded, and feature mostly filler, as they were written by unpassionate musicians who were just doing it because they had to pay off their debts.

But, Nightmare Theatre is a diamond in the rough here. Despite DeFeis and Pursino not getting paid a dime for the record (which was written and recorded over two weekends), they used this opportunity to craft something that wasn’t possible with the mellower Virgin Steele. Rather, they used this fresh slate to write a totally off-the-wall release, with DeFeis taking heavy inspiration from his fascination with horror movies and the Salem witch trials. Since DeFeis’ manager didn’t want people thinking he was singing in a new band, he asked DeFeis to change his vocal style for the Exorcist record. Well, DeFeis took it to the opposite extreme, as his powerful clean singing style was now morphed into a guttural demonic growl. (He certainly succeeded in his manager’s request, as one can barely understand the lyrics he’s singing, let alone who’s singing them). Finally, the two musicians’ pseudonyms and lack of follow-up material set up a pretty neat mystery for a while, as finding out who played on this record would have been nearly impossible before DeFeis decided to come clean with some recent interviews.

In turn, these parameters all came together in a perfect storm, which is what makes Nightmare Theatre so special. If you listen to the extremity offered by DeFeis’ demonic vocals, Pursino’s scratchy galloping guitar, and the album’s occult imagery, it really is comparable to other landmark extreme metal releases of the time like Bathory’s The Return…... (1985) and Sodom’s In the Sign of Evil (1984).

However, rather than coming from a band that purposefully formed to shock and terrify listeners from the get-go, Nightmare Theatre was the haphazard product of many factors that should have gone wrong, but all ended up going right. Despite not getting paid a dime for the record, DeFeis and Pursino took the opportunity in stride, turning something that was just supposed to be a quick cash grab into a memorable album worthy of being celebrated decades later.

Hunter co-hosts The Iron Club with JP, your weekly dose of extreme metal from around the globe. Tune in on Sundays from 9:00-11:00PM.