With TIFF just over two weeks away, organizers in Toronto have put the final touches on their lineup this morning for what already promises to be a memorable year. The last batch of titles has been added to the already crowded, impressive slate, and as always there are a few surprises in the mix.
Perhaps most notably, before Spike Jonze heads to the New York Film Festival to premiere “Her,” he’ll stop at TIFF for an “In Conversation With…” presentation that will cover his entire career in films and music videos, and will also include a preview of his upcoming movie. It sounds pretty much identical to what the L.A. Film Fest did earlier this summer, but hopefully there will be a different set of footage shown. Among the other titles of note: Ron Howard‘s Jay Z documentary “Made In America” will screen, and keeping on the music tip so to will “Metallica Through The Never.”
Meanwhile, more films from other fests continue to pour in with Clarie Denis‘ “Bastards,” Gia Coppola‘s “Palo Alto,” Kim Ki-Duk‘s “Moebius,” Jia Zhangke‘s “A Touch Of Sin” and more screening.
Check out the full slate of additions below. TIFF runs from September 5-15.
DISCOVERY
1982 Tommy Oliver, USA World Premiere
All About the Feathers (Por las Plumas) Neto Villalobos, Costa Rica World Premiere
The Amazing Catfish (Los insólitos peces gato) Claudia Sainte-Luce, Mexico North American Premiere
Around the Block Sarah Spillane, Australia World Premiere
Bends Flora Lau, Hong Kong North American Premiere
Beneath the Harvest Sky Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly, USA World Premiere
Bethlehem Yuval Adler, Israel North American Premiere
Bobô Inês Oliveira, Portugal International Premiere
Border Alessio Cremonini, Italy World Premiere
Canopy Aaron Wilson, Australia World Premiere
Fat Mark Phinney, USA World Premiere
Giraffada Rani Massalha, France/Germany/Italy/Palestine World Premiere
I Am Yours (Jeg Er Din) Iram Haq, Norway International Premiere
Ilo Ilo Anthony Chen, Singapore North American Premiere
The Militant (El Lugar Del Hijo) Manolo Nieto, Uruguay World Premiere
Miracle (Zázrak) Juraj Lehotsky, Slovakia/Czech Republic International Premiere
My Love Awaits Me by the Sea (Habibi Bistanani And il Bahar) Mais Darwazah, Germany/Jordan/Palestine/Qatar World Premiere
Of Good Report Jahmil X.T. Qubeka, South Africa International Premiere
Palo Alto Gia Coppola, USA North American Premiere
Paradise (Paraiso) Mariana Chenillo, Mexico World Premiere
Salvation Army (L’Armée du salut) Abdellah Taïa, France North American Premiere
South is Nothing (Il Sud è Niente) Fabio Mollo, France/Italy World Premiere
The Stag John Butler, Ireland World Premiere
The Summer of Flying Fish (El verano de los peces voladores) Marcela Said, Chile/France North American Premiere
Trap Street (Shuyin Jie) Vivian Qu, China North American Premiere
MASTERS
A Touch of Sin (Tian zhu ding) Jia Zhangke, China/Japan North American Premiere
Abuse of Weakness (Abus de Faiblesse) Catherine Breillat, France/Belgium/Germany World Premiere
Bastards (Les Salauds) Claire Denis, France North American Premiere
Closed Curtain (Parde) Kambozia Partovi and Jafar Panahi, Iran North American Premiere
Concrete Night Pirjo Honkasalo, Finland/Sweden/ Denmark World Premiere
Home From Home – Chronicle of a Vision (Die Andere Heimat – Chronik einer Sehnsucht) North American Premiere Edgar Reitz, Germany/France
How Strange to be Named Federico: Scola Narrates Fellini (Che strano chiamarsi Federico: Scola racconta Fellini) Ettore Scola, Italy International Premiere
Moebius Kim Ki-duk, South Korea North American Premiere
Norte, The End of History (Norte, Hangganan ng Kasaysayan) Lav Diaz, Philippines North American Premiere
Our Sunhi (Uri Sunhi) Hong Sangsoo, South Korea North American Premiere
MIDNIGHT MADNESS
Witching & Bitching (Las brujas de Zugarramurdi) Alex de la Iglesia, Spain/France World Premiere
MAVERICKS
12.12.12.
Featuring one of the greatest lineups ever assembled — including Bruce Springsteen, The Rolling Stones, Bon Jovi, Paul McCartney, The Who, Kanye West, and Alicia Keys — this extraordinary concert film, produced by Amir Bar-Lev, documents the event that would raise over 30 million dollars to aid the victims of Hurricane Sandy. Following this world premiere screening, the Festival welcomes concert co-organizer Harvey Weinstein for a live discussion.
For No Good Reason
For No Good Reason explores the connection between life and art, seen through the eyes of seminal British artist Ralph Steadman. We take a trip through the wild and dark days of Steadman as he recalls adventures such as travelling with Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas author Hunter S Thompson to see the Rumble in the Jungle; or engaging in gun fights with literary giant William S Burroughs. The framework of the documentary is a visit to Steadman’s studio by Johnny Depp. Director Charlie Paul spent 15 years meticulously amassing the footage and creating the remarkable animations for the film to match the same anarchic energy, anger and free spirit of Steadman’s pictures. The audience is able to reach to the heart of what makes this artist tick, discover his friendships and fallings out, his love for art and his passion for civil liberties. As part of the Future Projections programme, the Festival also proudly presents the world premiere of the Ralph Steadman For No Good Reason installation at the CIBC Canadian Film Gallery at TIFF Bell Lightbox, which runs daily from September 5 to 15.
In Conversation With… Irrfan Khan
The Festival is delighted to welcome Bollywood screen legend Irrfan Kahn (appearing at the Festival in The Lunchbox and Qissa) for an in-depth onstage discussion of his storied filmography, which includes the Academy Award–winning features Slumdog Millionaire and Life of Pi.
In Conversation With… Spike Jonze
Since bursting onto the scene with groundbreaking music videos for the likes of Daft Punk, Björk and the Beastie Boys, actor, photographer, and filmmaker Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation) has become one of cinema’s most inventive, irreverent, and visionary talents. This unique interactive session will survey Jonze’s singular career and offer the audience an exclusive preview of his highly-anticipated new project, Her — an original love story, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson, that explores the evolving nature, and the risks, of intimacy in the modern world.
InRealLife
In a short span of time, our lives have been transformed by mobile phones and internet technologies — what does this mean, particularly for a generation who’s never known anything else? Beeban Kidron’s (Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason) timely and insightful documentary encourages us to think critically about our adoption of technology.
Made in America
Director Ron Howard takes audiences behind the scenes of Jay Z’s maiden voyage as curator of an ambitious and wildly diverse music festival in Philadelphia. Made in America examines the roots of Jay Z’s vision and unique leadership abilities, the challenges of staging such an event and the individual journeys artists and everyday people had taken to arrive at this point in popular culture. Exciting and inspirational, the film showcases performers from all genres of music including Pearl Jam, Janelle Monáe, Skrillex, Run–D.M.C. and Jay Z himself. Following this world premiere screening, Academy Award–winning filmmaker Ron Howard will be on-stage for a live conversation.
Our Man In Tehran
Our Man In Tehran — which chronicles the true story behind Argo’s Hollywood embellishments — reveals new information about the true story of Canadian Ambassador Ken Taylor and the CIA, the secret dealings between the US and Canadian governments to rescue six fugitive American diplomats, and the covert planning of the military rescue “Operation Eagle Claw” during the Iranian Hostage Crisis of 1979. In conjunction with the world premiere of Drew Taylor and Larry Weinstein’s in-depth documentary, the Festival is proud to present a conversation with the venerable Ken Taylor, Canada’s former ambassador to Iran, who personally sheltered the six Americans in the operation that became known as “the Canadian Caper.”
What is Cinema? (Qu’est ce que le cinéma?)
Significant cinema is far more than story-telling. It contains moments of truth that can’t be expressed any other way except through cinematic style. Just what cinema is and could be is explored with over 100 clips, many of them surprising, and through interviews with the likes of Alfred Hitchcock, Akira Kurosawa, Robert Bresson and David Lynch, in What is Cinema?, documentarian Chuck Workman’s engrossing visual essay about mastery of cinematic form. The world premiere will be followed by an on-stage conversation with the filmmaker.
Women & Film 40th Anniversary
preceded by I Am Somebody
In celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Toronto Women & Film Festival, founder, scholar and former programmer Kay Armatage joins us for an onstage discussion with director Madeline Anderson, preceded by a special screening of Anderson’s short film, I Am Somebody, which screened at the original event. The film documents 400 hospital workers who went on strike to fight for union rights, equal pay for equal work, dignity and respect. All but 12 of the workers were women, and all of them were black. This struggle took place in Charleston, South Carolina and it was one of the last of the coalitions between civil rights and labour.
FUTURE PROJECTIONS
Grosse Fatigue, 2013 North American Premiere
Multidisciplinary artist Camille Henrot won the Silver Lion for best young promising artist at this year’s Venice Biennale for her heady “encyclopedic” video, which mixes slam poetry-style narration with a percussive soundtrack as it describes an increasingly breathless excursion through the history of the universe. Presented in collaboration with MOCCA, 952 Queen Street West. Runs daily, September 5 to 15.
Ralph Steadman For No Good Reason, 1970 to 2013 World Premiere As a complement to the documentary of the same title screening in the Festival’s Mavericks section, this exhibition highlights the work of the legendary illustrator, Ralph Steadman, whose distinctively grotesque drawings — most famously for the books of Hunter S. Thompson — have placed him in the exalted company of artists Saul Steinberg and Robert Crumb. Presented at CIBC Canadian Film Gallery, TIFF Bell Lightbox, Reitman Square, 350 King Street West. Runs daily, September 5 to 15.
Sweat, 2012 World Premiere Projected every night of the Festival onto the facade of the Drake Hotel, the new work from Radical Friend (Los Angeles-based directing duo Kirby McClure and Julia Grigorian) randomly collages images from contemporary mass culture’s darker expressions — murder, bikers, deserts — into a hypnotic, dystopic, multi-layered projection wall. Presented in collaboration with The Drake Hotel, 1150 Queen Street West. Video installation runs from dusk till dawn. September 5 to 15.
The following installations make up David Cronenberg: Transformation.
Treatment, 2013 World Premiere In this fascinating, unnervingly ingenious new work, media artist Candice Breitz deploys her therapist, her parents and herself to redub a trio of key scenes from David Cronenberg’s eerily personal 1979 horror film The Brood, flushing out the film’s universal themes of marital disintegration and parental anxiety. Presented and organized in partnership with MOCCA, 952 Queen Street West. Runs daily, September 5 to 15. Exhibition continues until December 29, 2013.
Une Danse des Bouffons (or A Jester’s Dance), 2013 World Premiere The new film by Canadian-born multidisciplinary artist Marcel Dzama (featuring music by Arcade Fire and an appearance by former Sonic Youth frontwoman Kim Gordon) pays oblique tribute to the cinema of David Cronenberg while dropping playful art-historical quotations from Duchamp to Picasso, Beuys to Orsler. Presented and organized in partnership with MOCCA, 952 Queen Street West. Runs daily, September 5 to 15. Exhibition continues until December 29, 2013.
Swarm, 2013 World Premiere United Kingdom-born, Seattle-based artist James Coupe fuses surveillance technology and social media in his new, JG Ballard-inspired installation. Presented and organized in partnership with MOCCA, 952 Queen Street West. Runs daily, September 5 to 15. Exhibition continues until December 29, 2013.
Introduction to the Memory Personality, 2012/2013 North American Premiere For this startling new variation on his acclaimed installation Introduction to the Memory Personality, Jeremy Shaw places the spectator alone in a kind of cabin, where strategies around hypnotism and mind manipulation generate a profound sense of dread, a feeling that a buried taboo — in the form of a foreign body — has been shot directly into the brain. Presented and organized in partnership with MOCCA, 952 Queen Street West. Runs daily, September 5 to 15. Exhibition continues until December 29, 2013.
Rough Cut (Hiker Meat), 2012-2013 World Premiere The new project from British conceptual artist Jamie Shovlin is a fabricated documentary about the imaginary exploitation film Hiker Meat, which Shovlin created by splicing together 1,500 separate sequences from myriad low-budget slasher films from the last 30 years. Presented and organized in partnership with MOCCA, 952 Queen Street West. Runs daily, September 5 to 15. Exhibition continues until December 29, 2013.
walkthrough, 2013 World Premiere The newest installment of Laurel Woodcock’s site-specific series continues her exploration of the relationship between cinema and the written word by culling slug lines from the screenplays of David Cronenberg’s films and scattering them throughout the galleries of MOCCA. Presented and organized in partnership with MOCCA, 952 Queen Street West. Runs daily, September 5 to 15. Exhibition continues until December 29, 2013.