TIFF ‘09 – what’s left

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The Toronto International Film Festival 2009 is almost over. It is worth taking a look at a few of the movies worth watching in the last days, if you have not seen any yet.

The Festival is known as one of the best tradeoffs between showing movies to the large public and wheeling & dealing distribution contracts. This year, it started with a protest letter signed by a number of well-known artists condemning “disproportionate focus on Israeli cinema at this year's festival”. Eventually, Jane Fonda, one of the signatories, expressed regrets of having signed a letter which she later felt did not help the cause of peace in the Middle East.

The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) is a publicly-attended film festival held each September in Toronto, Ontario. The festival begins the Thursday night after Labour Day (the first Monday in September, in Canada) and lasts for ten days. Between 300-400 films are screened at approximately 23 screens in downtown Toronto venues. Annual attendance at TIFF exceeds 300,000 from public and industry audiences. In terms of prestige, it is regularly ranked in the top five alongside Cannes, Berlin, Venice and Sundance.

Founded in 1976, the TIFF is now among the top prestigious film festivals in the world. In 1998, Variety magazine acknowledged that "the Festival is second only to Cannes in terms of high-profile pics, stars and market activity." Quoted by the National Post in 1999, Roger Ebert claimed "...although Cannes is still larger, Toronto is just as great...." It is the premiere film festival in North America, from which the Oscars race begins.

The festival is centered around the Yorkville neighborhood, an upscale area in the downtown core. The festival is known for the buzz it brings to Yorkville and cameras and media have taken to covering the red carpet with fashion and interviews with the stars. Although the Festival has begun to give more attention to mainstream Hollywood films, it still maintains its independent roots. It features retrospectives of national cinemas and individual directors, highlights of Canadian cinema, and a variety of African, South American, and Asian films.

But enough chit-chat. Here’s our recommendation for Saturday.. It’s the movie playing in the Dundas Square – guess what? FREE! Regular tickets are $21.00 in case you were wondering.

Copyright Criminals, an amazing documentary on the history of sampling has its world premiere. It’s worth watching, especially since the Canadian government has just closed its submission period on the copyright legislation..

Sources / More info: wiki-tiff, tiff.net, tiff-propaganda?, copyright-criminals, speak-out-on-copyright, michael-geist-submission, #tiff, #tiff09, #tiffreviews

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