Conceived and produced by Alchimies, Créations et Cultures, the Arab World Festival of Montreal (Festival du Monde Arabe de Montréal or FMA) is a thematic event dedicated to the meeting of and dialogue between Arabic and Western cultures. Through its four sections – Performing Arts, Culture Forum, Cinema, and La Medina – the FMA presents modern bodies of work, concerning the heritage as much as the day-to-day lives of people through original productions in dance, music, theatre, multidisciplinary and arts.

Representing a myriad of tendencies and artistic orientations that allow reflection and experimentation, the FMA welcomes artists from all cultural horizons, local and international broadcasters and producers in order to build a space dedicated to cultural exchange and “breeding” as well as to provide festival-goers with a wide range of first-rate activities.

Objectives

– Establishing an artistic space dedicated to encouraging dialogue between cultural identities stemming from different horizons, by means of creating, producing and broadcasting innovative artistic projects.

– Offering Québec’s artists of all backgrounds, the opportunity to exchange their experiences and ideas with other cultures and to enrich their knowledge with new approaches and know-how techniques.

– Supporting and producing artistic initiatives based on the cultural diversity experience in Montreal.

Vision

The word “alchemy” refers to an absolute necessity for all artistic enterprises: the need to re-shape the world through reflection and creation. It also refers to a latent irrationality that allows transforming, merging and recreating different elements.

To develop an artistic scene, an audience or a “collective meaning”, the barriers that define disciplines, styles, traditions and rituals must dissolve, so that the exchange which demands losing sovereignty, can be born. A new work of art becomes able to both awaken and bewilder the public, through abandoning the contentment and comfort of preconceived ideas…

Themes

The artistic management of Alchimies, Créations et Cultures holds various activities, productions, and researches under the umbrella of one different theme each year. The program of the festival consists of reflection exercises that are the foundation of any artistic path, and it suggests new concepts, projects, and opportunities of meetings. Each theme is a voyage of memory and imagination towards a profound universe inscribed in each step, movement, word and meaning. Artists local and international, media crew, all adopt the festival as their own, and attempt to create a harmonious melody of dualities: the self/the Other, and the past/the present.

Alchimies, Créations et Cultures invites choreographers, composers, playwrights, filmmakers, poets and intellectuals to explore and open new doors to create new forms, colors, melodies and words, and to change conformities and mend differences. The selected or exclusively produced productions thus become an embodiment of the theme, pushing it forward to become a space of cultural exchange where the echoes of the other resound intensely in the depth of the self.