[URBAN NOTE] The National Post on the struggles of the Toronto International Film Festival
In "Why is the Toronto International Film Festival struggling to remain at the front of the pack?", Chris Knight looks at how TIFF is struggle to keep up to its global competitors.
Nobody throws a big bash for their 41st birthday. When the Toronto International Film Festival hit the big four-oh last year, there was soul-searching and reflection, most of it positive. A year later, it’s merely another chapter in the life of one of the world’s most prominent fests.
“I was thinking about that the other day,” muses Cameron Bailey, TIFF’s artistic director and a festival programmer since 1990. “It feels like it’s the next chapter. We’ve been through four decades of building the festival and, buoyed on the enthusiasm of the audiences here in Toronto, have become what we are.
“And now we’re evolving into something new and something different.”
But evolution is a tricky process, full of dead ends and missed opportunities. In 2014, long-time festival goer and Time movie critic Richard Corliss decided to give TIFF a miss, citing competition from other fall festivals - notably Venice and Telluride - and sniffing that the opening weekend featured “upmarket but seemingly ordinary Hollywood movies … three of them starring Adam Sandler.” (To be fair, none of them was Grown Ups 2.)
TIFF has grown hugely - some say unmanageably - since its 1976 debut as the Festival of Festivals. In those days, it played second-run best-ofs from other global fests. This year, almost half its 296 features will be world premieres, beginning with the opening night gala, Antoine Fuqua’s The Magnificent Seven.
Those numbers hide the fact that Toronto is frequently in intense competition with Telluride (Sept. 2 to 5 this year), Venice (Aug. 31 - Sept. 10) and sometimes New York (Sept. 30 - Oct. 16) for world premiere bragging rights. Premieres of first features or African co-productions don’t carry the same cachet as, say, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone in La La Land, Venice’s opening night film.
Nobody throws a big bash for their 41st birthday. When the Toronto International Film Festival hit the big four-oh last year, there was soul-searching and reflection, most of it positive. A year later, it’s merely another chapter in the life of one of the world’s most prominent fests.
“I was thinking about that the other day,” muses Cameron Bailey, TIFF’s artistic director and a festival programmer since 1990. “It feels like it’s the next chapter. We’ve been through four decades of building the festival and, buoyed on the enthusiasm of the audiences here in Toronto, have become what we are.
“And now we’re evolving into something new and something different.”
But evolution is a tricky process, full of dead ends and missed opportunities. In 2014, long-time festival goer and Time movie critic Richard Corliss decided to give TIFF a miss, citing competition from other fall festivals - notably Venice and Telluride - and sniffing that the opening weekend featured “upmarket but seemingly ordinary Hollywood movies … three of them starring Adam Sandler.” (To be fair, none of them was Grown Ups 2.)
TIFF has grown hugely - some say unmanageably - since its 1976 debut as the Festival of Festivals. In those days, it played second-run best-ofs from other global fests. This year, almost half its 296 features will be world premieres, beginning with the opening night gala, Antoine Fuqua’s The Magnificent Seven.
Those numbers hide the fact that Toronto is frequently in intense competition with Telluride (Sept. 2 to 5 this year), Venice (Aug. 31 - Sept. 10) and sometimes New York (Sept. 30 - Oct. 16) for world premiere bragging rights. Premieres of first features or African co-productions don’t carry the same cachet as, say, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone in La La Land, Venice’s opening night film.