Confessions of a Festival Junkie: It’s A Wrap

For at least the press and industry segment that attends the Toronto International Film Festival it’s an event that kind of fizzles out. Toronto doesn’t have an official market component even though there are years (not 2008) when there’s as much buying and selling going on to equal Berlin or the American Film Market. It’s a tacit market with something called a Sales Office that keeps organizers from having to tell the wheeler dealers who owns rights to a movie and where they’re keeping an office.

Toronto also doesn’t give awards per se. The audience determines the main prize and this year it went to Danny Boyle’s energetic Bollywood-style Slumdog Millionaire. There are also critics juries that included a Discovery award to Steve McQueen’s Hunger (the first film winner at Cannes) and an assortment of kudos for Canadian films that included a runner up first feature prize to Lyne Charlebois’ female empowerment Borderline – the best of the indigenous movies I saw this year.

It’s difficult to say how well the event works for local movie goers but their continued enthusiasm and the near capacity level of screenings more than suggests it does. The on going irony is that the fervor evidenced during its 10-day span hasn’t appreciably increased the audience for alternative movies in the Ontario capitol during the other 50 weeks of the calendar. That fact has driven Victor Loewy (among others), President of Canada’s largest distribution company, to near hysteria for decades and, at one time, to unsuccessfully push for one-time only showings at the festival.

On the flip side, Toronto works almost ideally for industry visitors. The fest has been more than compliant to requests that major releases screen during the opening weekend. The intensity of the schedule doesn’t seem to bother buyers, sellers and junket press just as long as they can wrap up business and be headed home by Monday or Tuesday. Everyone likes the atmosphere which is typically described as “easy going,” they like the accessibility of product and people, the restaurants and the ability to walk to screenings that tend to be in relatively close proximity.

By the time I slipped away on Wednesday all press conferences had been completed, there was no waiting for a computer in the Sales Office, one could shoot off a cannon in the hallways and not hurt anyone and put lipstick on a pig if one were to be found. Still, more than past Toronto experiences I found my anxiety level heightened throughout. It might have been an anomaly but the pressure of seeing the 35 to 40 movies in the roughly 300 screened this year seemed more challenging.

Early in the festival I ran into Charlie Martin Smith whose saga of Scottish nationalism Stone of Destiny was the closing night film. He was jazzed about the high profile spot but certainly not unaware that key buyers would be long gone from the scene. Smith was scurrying about setting up early showings as a result and taking it in stride that potential sales people wouldn’t have the benefit of seeing it with a real audience.

One of the last people I encountered prior to making my exit was festival CEO Piers Handling who appeared understandably wary though not particularly frazzled. If things continue on schedule the event’s new home – Bell Lightbox – will be operating in 2010. I’d heard rumors that the festival still had $25 million to raise to complete the project but handling corrected me. The outstanding amount is $49 million he confirmed without popping a single bead of sweat.

The new building will house five screening rooms and he indicated that talks are underway with AMC for more screens at its Scotia multiplex (located close to the Lightbox) once the festival relocates. Ideally they want to keep all the screens they’re currently using with the new edifice replacing the Sutton Place as the hub of press/industry activity.

– Leonard Klady

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