I waited for my pal (and my ticket!) on Richmond street amidst the people pouring out of the previous screening on one side and folks lined up on the other side, which the TIFF volunteers shout "If you've already got a ticket you can proceed up the escalators right now!!" Famous-ish people were whisked in and out of cars. Men with expensive suits ( Read more... )

My fellow filmgoers were devout fans but I knew nothing at all about Kaurismäki except that he had directed a film a few years back called Man without a Past. I was a little surprised to see this film unfold. It was contemporary, about refugees and xenophobia, but appeared to exist in this movie world where the internet and cell phones never ( Read more... )

This looked great. It was apparently done using ink-and-cellophane tape transfers on a single sheet of paper. Images of (I'm told) paper fibres, but the blacks and greys that rupture on screen create wonderfully abstract textures over selected passages from Darwin. It's nice that people in the avant garde are still working with celluloid (it says ( Read more... )

Part of a multi-platform project. This was really nice. The images were so clean and sharp. The camera was so steady and otherworldy the way it crept through interiors and gazed wistfully at exteriors as the voiceover wonders, "'Uncle... I have been here for a while. I would like to see a movie about your life. So I proposed a project about ( Read more... )

I remember it beginning with music playing along side a black screen. It seemed to carry on like this for several minutes. Still, this didn't prepare me for the first image - which was pretty great looking - because I had trouble following what was said. It was very stagey, figures faced to the camera, reciting Cesare Pavese’s Dialogues with Leuco. ( Read more... )

Godard's one minute short film is a collage of images and sound. It typical Godard fashion there's a dialectic in the disconnect between sound and image. The image: scenes of Potemkin (1925), suffering, war, text, a slowed down scene from People on Sunday (1930); the sound: grunts and sounds of a tennis match, a piano, poetic recitation. Instantly ( Read more... )

Marina Gioti is a young "filmmaker and curator" who has done something interesting. She has taken a pre-existing film that she bought from a dump for 10 euros and remade it. The film in question is an educational film from the early 70s and what it teaches is related to the highly debatable of illegal “secret schools” allegedly ran clandestinely by ( Read more... )

Well, if I've accomplished nothing in my life at the very least I can now say that I was among the first people in the world to see Trash HumpersI should begin with the epic ticket buying fiasco which began with an hour and a half wait in line at the TIFF box office. When I emerged triumphantly with 4 tickets to this film I called Sumeena to ( Read more... )

More British realism following on the heels of Hunger by another relatively young filmmaker. The thing with realism is it's kind of like a potluck: it can be sublime and magical and poignant [Rome: Open City (1945), Professione: reporter (1975), Riff Raff (1991)] or it can be tedious and drag. This one dragged a bit, but had some magic of its own. ( Read more... )

I guess the place to start is the classroom discussion about third world debt because that scene stands out as perplexing in a family drama dominated by themes of loss, grief, and fear of lonely obsolescence ( Read more... )