Festival draws industry players

By Marla Shelton
Contributing Writer

The Toronto Film Festival is worth the trip.
Located alongside Lake Ontario, the city of Toronto serves as a scenic site for an international film festival, offering a sophisticated program of over 300 films in quality showcases and attracting talent from around the world. From Sept. 5-14, cinephiles flocked to Toronto to celebrate the city's 21st International Film Festival, and for only the sixth time in its 21-year span, this festival kicked off its festivities with a non-Canadian picture. While the festival has an established practice of giving the lead spot to high-profile Canuck films, several of the top Canadian features passed on Toronto this year. David Cronenberg's "Crash" was launched earlier this year at Cannes, and Robert Lapage's "The Polygraph" and Bruce McDonald's "Hard Core Logo" premiered at the Venice Film Festival.
However, the opening film, "Fly Away Home," a feel-good film from Columbia Pictures, despite its non-Canadian distributor and a predominantly American cast did reflect emblems of Canada since it is based on Bill Lishman's experience as an Ontario artist who managed to lead a bunch of geese south with his ultra-light plane. In "Fly Away Home," directed by Carroll Ballard, a young girl (Academy Award winner Anna Paquin) fights to save a small community of geese and in the process forms a close bond with her estranged father (Jeff Daniels). Most of the picture was filmed on Lishman's farm just north of Toronto and the film's digital visual effects were designed by CORE Digital Pictures. CORE's CEO is Canadian-born "Star Trek" alumnus William Shatner. "Fly Away Home" screened to a welcoming black-tie audience eager to commence a festival that would challenge the step-sister status Toronto holds in relation to the more prominent international film festivals held in Cannes and Berlin.
Toronto Film Festival planners are quick to point out that this festival places an emphasis on up-and-coming directors as well as on show business. During the 10-day event, Debbi Nightingale, producer of the Rogers Industry Centre, noted that "without a doubt, the players are here--from all the studios down to the independents. There are acquisitions and development (executives), and there're more agents scouting talent, especially American agents. They're scouting Canadian directors with great interest. They see Toronto as a place of discovery." USC film students may want to trek to the Toronto festival with their best Canuck accent to find financing next year.
But American agents were not the only deal makers in this film town. Canadian producers developed co-productions and international partnerships here because Toronto now attracts more European sales agents who use the event to tie North American deals for European product. Helen Loveridge, a sales director at Fortissimo Film Sales of Amsterdam, explained, "For us, (Toronto is) the best place to come and talk to the North Americans because they're more accessible than (they are) in Cannes."
The Toronto Film Festival would not be a film festival without pitches for low-budget projects juxtaposed with grand-scale hawking of high-profile films. Falling somewhere between those extremes, First Look Pictures and Overseas Filmgroup presented the world premiere of "Infinity," starring Matthew Broderick and Patricia Arquette. Based on the life of Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman, "Infinity" marks Broderick's directorial debut and is slated for U.S. release on Friday, Oct. 4. Other gala screenings included the comedy "Bogus," directed by Canadian Norman Jewison; "Jude," adapted from Thomas Hardy's famous novel Jude the Obscure and realized by Michael Winterbottom; "Kama Sutra," a sultry and sensuous film from Indian filmmaker Mira Nair; "Michael Collins," an Irish bio-pic from Neil Jordan with Liam Neeson; "Mother," a comedy from Albert Brooks, and "That Thing You Do," which is Tom Hanks' directorial debut.
While the impressive list of players and directors added glimmer to the festival program, special attention to the Vietnamese film industry highlighted the events this year. This long-isolated country continues to remain uneasy about foreign influences from more developed nations and grassroots film production is hampered by obsolete equipment and a domestic audience that craves Hong Kong-style kung fu pictures. However, industry watchdogs spy a budding market for western films due to Vietnam's ideal setting. During the course of the 10-day festival, 11 films from Vietnam were screened as part of a retrospective.
In addition to celebrating Vietnamese cinema, the Toronto film festival has relaunched its long dormant documentary program. According to Festival Director Piers Handling, "there is a renaissance, especially theatrically" since "Roger & Me," "Crumb," "The Celluloid Closet," "Hearts of Darkness" and "Hoop Dreams" have used festival buzz to propel themselves into international theatrical release. Film spectators may note that documentaries used to be considered education; now they're considered reality-based entertainment.
"You have these new specialty channels that are hungry for reality-based programming," said Simcha Jacobovici, founding partner of Associated Producers, a Canadian production company specializing in feature-length documentaries. "Right now, a documentary made for $400,000 can deliver better ratings than a multi-million dollar TV movie." The long-term viability of feature-length documentaries, however, remains debatable.
While buyers and journalists complain of oversubscribed screenings and scheduling clashes due to too many sidebar events at the Venice International Film Festival this year, the Toronto Film Festival successfully staged a savvy film celebration where all participants could appreciate the art and industry of cinema.