Category: Arts

Fattal Loft’s Uncertain Future

By the muddy banks of the train tracks there is a loft the locals call Death House. A venue used by punks and many others in the underground scene to express anger, confusion and rage at social inequalities and lack of justice in the system…

Quebec Harmony or Separation?

I walk into a painting class organized by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts as part of their Activities after forking over nearly $300 at the front desk. I greet all other art enthusiasts with a warm smile and exchange pleasantries. After a while the teacher, a dishevelled lady sporting a shabby attire walks in and welcomes everyone in French, and I, being in this great city long enough to know a few words, say a hearty “bonjour”, taking delight in managing to sound authentic…

Farewell Montreal Mirror

In what surely is a peak time for Montreal culture, with festivals and marches everywhere, the city as a whole and the English-speaking progressive and artistic communities in particular suffered a major loss yesterday. After 27 years, the Montreal Mirror abruptly stopped publication. News came first from a press release by Sun Media, a division of the Mirror’s parent company Quebecor. Then the alt weekly’s site redirected to a message from the editors thanking readers and contributors and stating that…

2011: The Year in Posts

While it may have taken a bit longer than expected (admittedly, this is really, really late, but we’ve been busy), our list of our top 20 posts of 2011 is here. We asked our writers to tell us their favourite posts or the posts they felt were the most important, both by themselves and other writers that appeared on FTB over the year…

Our Year in Photos

Forget The Box loves to go out onto the streets of Montreal and shoot photos of local shows and events. Over the course of the last year we’ve gotten some pretty good shots, so we wanted to collect a few of them for you all in one spot. Let us know in the comments below which ones are your favorites!

Like we’ve done one thousand times before: FTB’s 1000th post

I’d like to interrupt our regularly scheduled flow of news, arts and culture coverage and commentary to bring you an important announcement. Well, maybe not so important for you, to be honest, but for us here at FTB it’s kind of a mini-milestone. You see, the post which you are reading is the thousandth to appear on this site. Think about that for a second. We’re a small group. No one’s being paid, from administrators and editors to writers and photographers, we’re doing this because we love it. We’ve all got other things going on in our lives and have other ways to pay the bills. Despite this, in roughly two years’ time, we’ve managed to produce 1000 pieces of content…