Archive: September 6th-22nd, 2005: Toronto International Film Festival 2005 / Torontoist

Every week on Torontoist, the Toronto arm of the (rather celebrated) Gothamist line of blogs, I file at the very least my “Film Friday” column, though often, depending on the week, I’ll post a few more bits and bobs, usually related to film.

I became a regular member of the Torontoist team shortly after I arrived in Toronto, as I had contacted several of the local publications and websites interested in doing some sort of coverage of the then upcoming Toronto International Film Festival 2005. TIFF is an unusual festival: arguably the biggest in the world, yet under-reported compared to a disgusting paparazzi chum-bucket like Cannes. That’s largely to do with the Toronto International Film Festival Group’s strict policy with journalists and photographers; I think they accredit about 10% of the numbers at Cannes. Which means there are a lot of unaccredited journalists in the city at the same time, who have to have a little extra fight in them to get good coverage, and with luck, get noticed by the group for the following year. Un-accredited, I pitched coverage anyway, eventually settling on covering the festival for Twitch Film and Torontoist, as I thought both outlets would have serveral people covering the festival. I was right about Twitch, but surprisingly I wrote roughly all of the coverage on Torontoist, and it’s that, I think, that helped me become and accredited journalist under their banner at the festival this year.

Pre-festival, I wrote 4 festival preview articles, concentrating on a few programmes at a time (written without having seen the majority of the films, educated guesses and the wonderful TIFF programme book helped me out):

TIFFist: Let the Film Fest Coverage Begin (The Midnight Madness programme)
TiFFist: Galas and Masters
TIFFist: Contemporary World Cinema, Reel to Reel
TIFFist: Visions, Special Presentations, Discovery, and Canada First!

Post-festival:

TIFFist: Reviews Round-Up
Does what it says on the tin, featuring capsule reviews of Evil Aliens; Isolation; Dave Chappelle’s Block Party; Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story; The Duelist; The District!; Citizen Dog; Pusher I, II, III; SPL; The Wayward Cloud; Drawing Restraint 9; and Hostel. Phew!

TIFFist: Festival Farewell
A final short little piece on why the festival is a good thing for Toronto, and why we shouldn’t forget about the Toronto International Film Festival Group either. A perhaps out of character article, as pleasant as it was, but I was so heartily sick of the festival by that point I think I needed to remind myself what an amazing thing it really is.

August 23rd, 2006 : Features, Torontoist