TIFF Programming
I was around 13-years-old when Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner) came out. The three-hour Inuit epic complemented my dad’s obscure taste in films; he decided to take his two teenaged sons to the movies for some Canadian cultural enrichment. Thinking “a movie’s a movie,” my brother and I acceded. I hated Atanarjuat. My pubescent, bored self squirmed and slouched for 172 minutes of Inuits sitting in the snow. Now, years later as I watch Atanarjuat again, rapt, I laugh that my attitude has flipped over the years; Atanarjuat is a world-class movie. As the first film to screen in TIFF Bell...
Beginning Tuesday, June 19, 2012, TIFF Bell Lightbox features the series James Ivory: Elegant Pairings. Co-curated with James Ivory himself, the series consists of seven double features, one classic Merchant Ivory film followed by a second film that inspired or complements it. The opening night films include The Remains Of The Day and Rebecca, with both films featuring an introduction by James Ivory. For some pairings, the reasons they’re together may be quite obvious. For others, the reason is much more subtle. This seems to be the case for Alfred Hitchcock‘s Rebecca and James Ivory’s The Remains Of The Day....
The latest installment of TIFF’s Packaged Goods series, titled Girls of Film, offers us one reminder over and over again: women are making commercials, short films and music videos — and you needn’t dwell on their gender. Rae Ann Fera, Packaged Goods’ curator, has selected a totally diverse and entertaining bunch of films, from a Grimes music video to a men’s shaving commercial. Despite the theme, with “girls” as the one unifier, you’d be hard pressed to guess confidently whether any of these films have been directed by a woman or a man. First off, a quick overview: the films...
Short films are a weird format: they pass you by, ending abruptly just when you start to get invested in the story. But it’s also kind of fun to watch movie after movie after movie, and not feel like a bleary-eyed, sun-fearing cinephile. This year’s Student Film Showcase, screening at TIFF Bell Lightbox, offers you, the viewer, ten of the best short student films our country has to offer. “˜Best’ is a tough thing to quantify in art – these films vary wildly in style, substance and purpose. But even the fact that someone out there called each little gem...
If you love awkward outsiders in the movies, from Montgomery Clift and James Dean to Robert Crumb and Hedwig, then you probably have a place in your heart reserved for Crispin Glover. With a fascinating and eclectic onscreen acting resume going back more than 30 years, Glover has left an indelible impression in roles as diverse as George McFly in Back to the Future and Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment. He is a gifted performer, equally adept at light comedy and hard drama. What really sets him apart from other actors, though, is his remarkable capacity for being uncompromisingly weird....
It can be hard to commit to an experimental film. Without the gentle push of a coherent narrative, the moving image assumes a totally different identity. Words like ‘avant-garde’ and ‘non-linear’ tend to push the majority toward the multiplex. But we should all reconsider that thought, because Lewis Klahr’s epic collage film, The Pettifogger, is amazing. Collage has been enjoying somewhat of a renaissance these days. From collage parties like the one at last year’s Art Toronto event to a recently-launched Montreal magazine named Kolaj, all about – you guessed it – collage art, I’ve noticed a real surge in...
In 2002, Playback magazine did a poll to determine the best Canadian films of all time. It’s an eclectic, but genuinely Canadian list. With Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter at #1, the remainder of the list is a who’s who of classic Canadian film with entries from Don McKellar, Claude Jutra, Donald Shebib and Denys Arcand (Arcand and Egoyan received two spots each). It is not a mystery then, that Bruce McDonald is also on this list, but what might surprise is the film. It wasn’t Highway 61 or Roadkill. It wasn’t even Dance Me Outside. It was Hard Core...
There are two obvious ways to react to contemporary tragedy: either ignore, or take a deep breath and sombrely learn. But what about a less intuitive third option: entertainment? No, I don’t mean the 2008 version of Rambo, which “˜engaged with’ the Myanmar crackdown of 2007 by having Sylvester Stallone shoot big guns at socio-economically disadvantaged Asian people. I mean something that can engage a spectator on an educational level while still being fun. John Greyson’s Zero Patience (1993), a hilarious musical about AIDS, is that third option. Today’s popular discourse rarely mentions AIDS without saying “˜Africa’ in the same...
Having recently won the Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts, Jan peacock has cemented a spot as one of Canada’s leading video artists. In celebration of this milestone, TIFF Bell Lightbox's Free Screen series will be presenting Using Clouds for Words, a survey of her thirty-year practice. When you're approaching Jan Peacock’s work, especially in a cinema setting, it’s best to keep in mind that throughout her career, Peacock has chiefly used installation as her presentation method. This means that what we'll see at TIFF Bell Lightbox on a single screen may have originally been presented on...
The Sugarhill Gang may not have invented hip hop, but they’ll always shine in the annals of music history as the first rap group to hit mainstream airwaves. This Thursday, February 16, a new documentary on the Sugarhill Gang, I Want My Name Back, will premiere at the TIFF Bell Lightbox as part of their “Music, Magic, Clash: New Voices in the African Diaspora” series. Alert to hip hop fans: the Gang themselves will be there for a Q&A and a performance to accompany the screening””this event is not to be missed....
Feeling like your life has been lacking in austerity lately? This Thursday check out A Man Escaped (1956), the first screening from TIFF Bell Lightbox’s upcoming Robert Bresson retrospective, The Poetry of Precision: The Films of Robert Bresson, and get ready to begin an odyssey of Bach-scored morality tales – classic French cinema. The first thing you need to know about late French director Robert Bresson (1901-1999) is that he was never into thespians; there’s little acting to be found in a Bresson film. If you haven’t already had the Bresson experience, this is hard to fathom; like most directors,...
