TIFF 2011 attracts A-list stars, film lovers

By Marcia Chen

The Toronto International Film Festival is the Holy Grail for cinephiles.

Francis Ford Coppola will attend TIFF’s 36th edition as will Madonna, George Clooney, U2 and dozens of other A-list celebrities.

Programmers have scheduled more than 300 features and shorts over 11 days starting Thursday — everything from mainstream to art-house. And it’s the place where an audience can create enough buzz to carry a movie like Slumdog Millionaire to the Oscars.

“When I introduced (filmmaker) Krzysztof Kieslowski at the Showcase Cinema in 1989, the entire audience jumped to their feet,” TIFF co-director Piers Handling says. “Ten days earlier, most of them didn’t even know who he was.

“That’s the power of this festival.”

Starting with Thursday’s opening night party at the new Ritz-Carlton on Wellington Street, Toronto hotels and clubs will host their own Hollywood-style parties, including the OneXOne Charity Gala with Harry Connick Jr. and the annual Vanity Fair bash, a paparazzi favourite.

All are a big part of the $170 million the TIFF organization generates year-round.

Maclean’s film critic Brian D. Johnson, who covers both the Cannes festival and TIFF, says though the latter has kept its artistic integrity, it has become a more “cold-blooded organization.”

“It doesn’t mean that Cannes is a better festival,” he says. “In fact, (TIFF) has gotten too good. It’s kind of like the industrial outlet mall of movies that matter.”

The storied French event, which was the inspiration for Toronto’s own, has stayed manageable while its progeny has ballooned.

The festival that grew

At first, TIFF aimed mainly to nurture Canadian cinema, Johnson says, but it now serves many purposes. It’s a giant publicity machine to launch films into the market. It entertains one of the most “astute” and “dedicated” audiences in the world. And it brings to the fore world cinema that might otherwise never get seen.

Though studios and indie players come to sell their “fall lines” — Paris fashion week being TIFF’s sartorial equivalent — films tend to get lost with such a broad focus and, unlike Cannes, no competition.

A scheduling conflict at last year’s TIFF had Johnson choosing between gala screenings of Black Swan and The King’s Speech. And this year he may have to turn down interviews with celebrities he would normally be clamouring to talk to, like Keira Knightley and Sarah Polley.

On its website, TIFF acknowledges its place as “the most important film festival after Cannes,” but Johnson says Cannes has in fact become more marginal all things considered.

And, the author of the retrospective Brave Films, Wild Nights: 25 Years of Festival Fever adds, TIFF’s ambitions were always lofty.

“It wasn’t an accident,” he says. “It wasn’t just a little festival that grew. In (founder) Bill Marshall’s mind, it was always a big festival.”

In the decades since it began, there have been only a handful of directors, all of them passionate about film and all acutely aware of the importance of throwing a good party.

Johnson says the celebrity side to TIFF took off in the early ‘80s when the festival staged its slickly-produced tributes to Martin Scorcese, Robert Duvall and Warren Beatty.

“The Warren Beatty tribute — the last of the three tributes — was where you really felt everything shift,” he says. “That was when all of sudden doors where closing and parties started to have velvet ropes for VIP areas.”

Spotting celebrities

Many of those VIPs will be staying at the Ritz-Carlton, which has hired uniformed police officers and brought in barricades to keep stargazers at bay.

It has also ordered 2,000 bottles of wine and champagne and about 450 kilograms of chocolate and enlisted staff from its other properties around the world.

And despite the TIFF Bell Lightbox drawing much of the activity south — and competition from the Ritz-Carlton — it’s also still one of the busiest weeks of the year for Yorkville’s Four Seasons, which has been preparing for months.

One year that meant removing the furniture from a suite and converting it into a full kitchen with induction burners and refrigeration to cater to a star on a strict Japanese diet.

“It’s all hands on deck,” says food and beverage director Marc Dorfman. “It’s a busy week, but very rewarding.”

Brian D. Johnson’s picks

Footnote: The outcome of a great rivalry between a father and son, both professors in the Talmud department of Hebrew University in Jerusalem. —TIFF website

The Artist: “A black and white silent comedy that is wonderful and perhaps one of the most mainstream films I saw in Cannes. You could stick anyone in there and they’d have a great time. You’d think it would be more obtuse, like a Guy Maddin film. But no, it’s incredibly entertaining.” — BDJ

Melancholia: Denmark’s most celebrated and notorious filmmaker returns with a fantasy/domestic drama about depression, severely dysfunctional families and the end of the world. —TIFF website

Take this Waltz: Canadian actor and filmmaker Sarah Polley makes a welcome return to directing with her first feature since the 2006 Festival favourite Away from Her. Luke Kirby, Seth Rogen, Sarah Silverman and two-time Oscar-nominee Michelle Williams star in this bittersweet story about a married woman struggling to choose between her husband and a man she’s just met. —TIFF website

A Dangerous Method: “I would look forward to anything that Canadian director David Cronenberg has to make, especially something starring Michael Fassbender, Viggo Mortensen and Keira Knightley.” — BDJ

Drive: Canadian actor Ryan Gosling plays a stunt driver by day, getaway driver by night in this lean and mean crime thriller by the director of Valhalla Rising that won Best Direction in Cannes. —TIFF website

Steve Gravestock’s picks (TIFF’s associate director of Canadian programming)

Pink Ribbons, Inc.: Léa Pool’s devastating documentary about the industry and “culture” around breast cancer addresses the rise of corporate involvement in fundraising for charities and the impact it has had on research into the disease. —TIFF website

“A really smart and in-depth analysis of the impact of corporations on charitable fundraising. I think it will ruffle a few feathers. I can’t remember the last time I left a film that angry.” —SG

Monsieur Lazhar: Bachir Lazhar, an Algerian immigrant, is hired to replace an elementary school teacher who died tragically. While the class goes through a long healing process, nobody in the school is aware of Bachir’s painful former life. —TIFF website

“It’s a cliche for me to say it, but it really is a beautiful film. It’s really, really strong.” —SG

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