Just realized that the Kino movement had developed
a collaboration with Apple through the “Off-Courts” festival in Trouville-sur-mer, Normandy. There’s even a podcast!
Members of the Kino movement produce short films (in French, «courts métrages» or «courts») which they present in fairly informal contexts. Unfortunately, haven’t had the chance to go to a Kino event myself (but did play a small part in a Kino film done by a friend). Kino’s philosophy can be summarized thus: do it well, from scratch; do better with little means; do it now. Simple and powerful. Kind of a grassroots version of Dogma 95. With more laughs.
Apple’s involvement makes sense. Several Kinoite producers were already using Apple products a few years ago and Apple’s movie production offerings have been improving since then. Apple also tends to get involved in this type of creative projects in different contexts. And the Kino movement can surely benefit from some of Apple’s resources. Apple also collaborate with the Wapikoni mobile. Both Kino and Wapikoni also collaborate with NFB’s Silence, on court!. In parallel, there’s also Danny Lennon’s Prends ça court! events which recently presented a series of Swiss shorts during the Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois. To weave the entangled web further, some of these events and movements seem to be connected, however loosely, with the Cinémathèque québécoise and possibly the INIS sound and image institute. Some feature films have been developed in direct or indirect connection with Kino, INIS, or other groups. Coupled with the presence of Avid’s Softimage and links to video game development, Montreal is certainly a cool place to work in audio-visual creation. Of course, Montreal is also the site of the Fantasia festival. Which all relates back to the dynamism of Quebec culture.

Biased? Me? Never!
😉