2010 CONTACT Photography Festival, May 1-31

On Friday, a launch party was held for the 2010 CONTACT Photography Festival at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art. The festival runs for the entire month of May around various venues mostly in the downtown region of Toronto. This year's theme is "Pervasive Influence."

For more information, visit their website at http://scotiabankcontactphoto.com/

Here are the events for this opening weekend:

Saturday May 1, 7:30 – 9:30pm
Come and celebrate the openings of two primary exhibitions at the University of Toronto.

The Brothel Without Walls
University of Toronto Art Centre
15 Kings College Circle
The pervasiveness of photography leads us to question its effects on society. Exploring photographs as “dreams that money can buy” and how the illusions images create are often preferable to reality, the exhibition features works by Susan Anderson, Evan Baden, Douglas Coupland, Jessica Dimmock, Marina Gadonneix, Clunie Reid, Stefan Ruiz, Joachim Schmid and Christopher Wahl.

Hot Docs opening night

Last night was the opening of the 2010 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, the largest documentary film festival in North America. It kicked off in style with two gala presentations. The first was the Canadian premiere of Babies by French director Thomas Balmès. It's a pure vérité documentary where there is no narration or interviewing, just straight-ahead fly-on-the-wall observation of the subjects. In this case, the primary subjects are four babies from four different countries in the first year of their lives. They are Ponijao from Namibia, Bayarjargal from Mongolia, Mari from Tokyo, and Hattie from San Francisco.

The film provides an interesting side-by-side comparison of cultural similarities as well as the expected differences. No subtitles are provided for the adults who appear because in many ways what they say is irrelevant. The babies are the focus, and they wouldn't understand the words anyhow.  Perhaps the film might have gone deeper and looked at social issues as the The Up Series. But at this early stage in their lives, the children have an angelic innocence that the film captures beautifully.

Awards News: 9th Tribeca Film Festival awards

As the 9th Tribeca Film Festival draws to a close, they announced their award winners on Thursday night at a ceremony in Manhattan’s Union Square. The top winner of the night was Die Fremde (When We Leave), which earned the Best Narrative Feature award (and $25,000 cash) for director Feo Aladag, and Best Actress for its star Sibel Kekilli. Just last week, Die Fremde similarly won Best Film (Bronze) and Best Actress at Germany's Lola Awards. Shocked by her win, Kekilli hugged the jurors and let out a string of "fuck" exclamations, before asking jokingly if the award would be taken away as a result.

Other winners include Kim Chapiron who was named Best New Narrative Filmmaker for Dog Pound, and received $25,000. The jury had wanted to give Dog Pound a first-ever Best Ensemble prize, but were told that it was too late to add that category. Also winning $25,000 were Best New Documentary Filmmaker winner Clio Barnard for The Arbor, and Best Documentary Feature winner Alexandra Codina (Monica & David).

The Audience Award will be announced Saturday at the festival's wrap party.  All the winning films will screen at the Village East Cinemas on Sunday.

UPDATE:  RUSH: Beyond the Lighted Stage won the Heineken Audience Award on Saturday May 1. The award comes with a $25,000 cash prize.

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Complete list of Tribeca Film Festival Award Winners

When racially incorrect casting is a good thing

The Guardian posted an interesting piece yesterday - Idris Elba defends Thor film role. Idris Elba is a respected British actor who played Stringer Bell on TV's The Wire. He's playing the Norse god Heimdall in Kenneth Branagh's upcoming film adaptation of the comic book Thor. He also happens to be black. The subheading of the article was "Race debate stirs after London-born star of The Wire wins role as Norse deity Heimdall in Kenneth Branagh's new film Thor."

The fact that he's black has caused no end of consternation in the fanboy world. Comments on various message boards have been bitter and nasty. The Guardian article quoted some of them. An older article on superherohype.com racked up 223 comments on 23 pages. Here's a typical rant:

"I am sick of white characters being changed into black characters. Call me racist all you want but if a black character was changed into a white character people would go nuts!! I agree with the top posters, lets have a white Blank Panther. ... Would black people mind if someone casted a white person to play Luke Cage? ... Then why is it alright to screw with other Superheroes that were white from day one? Apparently it doesn't matter if your white. Now that is racism at it's best!"

NFTKK diary #3: bumps on the road in pre-production

Pre-production continues on the short film I'm currently making in partnership with Katarina Soukup of Catbird Productions. It's called Notes From the Kuerti Keyboard and is being made with a grant from Bravo!FACT. I stated in a previous posting that scouting locations was a very time-consuming drag and one of the things I enjoy the least about filmmaking, but that we had finally taken care of it and that the rest of the way "should be relatively smooth sailing."

I spoke too soon.

On the weekend we found out we lost a key member of our team. Our Director of Photography was required for a stretch on a television series and felt compelled to take that gig. I wasn't upset because that sort of thing happens all the time. Still, it was a shock and could potentially have been a major blow.

TIFF Announces Programmers for 2010 Festival

Piers Handling, Director and CEO of TIFF, and Cameron Bailey, Co-Director of the Festival, today announced the line-up of programmers for the 35th annual Toronto International Film Festival which runs from Thursday, September 9 to Sunday, September 19, 2010.

Some programmers from previous years have moved on, including Jesse Wente, Raymond Phathanavirangoon and Kathleen Mullen. Others such as Martin Bilodeau and Magali Simard have stepped in, while Agata Smoluch del Sorbo moves from Short Cuts Canada to Canadian Features. TIFF is known for having some of the finest programmers around and giving them a remarkable degree of autonomy in making their selections.

“We have assembled a stellar team of programmers for the Festival who have a wealth of experience among them. They will curatorially guide our audiences through programming which will connect and inspire people of all ages and backgrounds,” said Handling. “These programmers are truly the best in the business, and audiences can once again look forward to a wide-ranging and exciting line-up in September,” said Bailey.

In addition to Handling, who programs from the UK, France, Italy and Poland, and Bailey, who programs from USA, Europe, South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, the programming team for the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival is as follows:

Film subjects attend Hot Docs screenings

One of the delights of attending a film festival is the opportunity to see the people behind the movie. At many screenings, one or more representatives from the film will attend and possibly introduce the film, interact with the audience in a post-screening Question & Answer period, or both. Usually it's the director who is present, but sometimes it can be a producer, actor or any key personnel from the film. With documentary films, often the real-life subject(s) of the film will attend. 

For the upcoming Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Film Festival, a good number of the film subjects will be guests at their respective screenings. Hot Docs has released a list of the guest subjects who are featured in films at this year’s upcoming Festival which starts this coming Thursday. The first guest subjects presented will be from one of the two opening night films, RUSH: Beyond the Lighted Stage (D: Scot McFadyen, Sam Dunn, 106 min). Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson of Rush will attend the film's Canadian premiere at the Winter Garden Theatre on Hot Docs' opening night, Thursday, April 29. Filmmakers Scot McFadyen and Sam Dunn will also attend the screening of their film.

Additional guests are listed below. In most cases, the guests will be present at one or more of their film's screenings.

Awards News: 60th Deutscher Filmpreis (German Film Awards)

On Friday night, the German Film Academy held a ceremony for their 60th Deutscher Filmpreis (German Film Awards), also known as the Lolas in honour of Marlene Dietrich's character Lola in Der blaue Engel (The Blue Angel). The big winner on the night was Das weiße Band (The White Ribbon), which took 10 awards out of its 13 nominations.15-year-old Maria Victoria Dragus won the best supporting actress Lola and thanked her teachers for allowing her to take the day off school and attend the show. Das weiße Band also won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and was one of my top 10 films of 2009.

Hans-Christian Schmid's war crime trial drama Sturm (Storm) was next with three awards from its five nominations. Bernd Eichinger, the producer of the much parodied film Der Untergang (Downfall) featuring Hitler working himself into a rage, won a lifetime achievement award.

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Complete list of 60th Deutscher Filmpreis (Lola) winners:

Filmmaker opportunities at the Toronto International Film Festival

In addition to being the most important public film festival in the world, the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) hosts a very important industry component. Their industry pass allows access to special industry events, press/industry screenings, panels, industry sessions, and the Filmmakers’ Lounge (formerly Match Club). It's a good opportunity to meet and schmooze with some movers and shakers. Industry registration opens on May 5.

In addition to this, TIFF has two terrific programmes that can really kick-start a filmmaker to the next level: Telefilm Canada PITCH THIS! and Talent Lab. Applications for both are now open. The events themselves take place during the festival, which in 2010 runs from September 9-19.

Free screening of Banksy's Exit Through the Gift Shop

The film Exit Through the Gift Shop by Banksy made a splash earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival. It ostensibly tells the story of how an eccentric French shopkeeper turned documentary filmmaker tries to track down and film the elusive British graffiti artist Banksy only to have the camera turned back on him. It was billed as 'the world's first street art disaster movie' and proved quite controversial. Some critics doubt its authenticity and feel that it blurs the line between fiction and documentary forms. Nonetheless, the film was widely acclaimed.

For those in Toronto, now is your chance to catch the film. The film's Canadian distributor Mongrel Media is having a free "secret" screening of Exit Through the Gift Shop tonight Saturday April 24 at 12:00am midnight. The first 350 people at AMC Theatres at Yonge and Dundas get in free. You should, however, arrive much earlier to be sure to get in.

Location, location, location

As of late, I haven't been able to post as often as I'd like because I'm gearing up to shoot another short film project that I'm doing with a Bravo!FACT grant: Notes From the Kuerti Keyboard.  It has been quite busy for me in preparation for the shoot itself. Several things have made the pre-production part of it rather tricky, but the hardest and least enjoyable is usually trying to find the right locations.

My filmmaking partner Katarina Soukup (Catbird Productions) is based in Montreal and our talent for the music short film is distinguished pianist Anton Kuerti. We first received news of our grant in early March. However, Anton was just about to leave for a European tour, so we weren't able to meet with him to get a firm sense of his availability until earlier this month. After that, the other key team member we needed to nail down was our director of photography (DP, i.e. cinematographer) who was going to be quite busy as well.

Katarina and I are both attending the Hot Docs Festival from April 29-May 9. Since she was planning to travel later in May as part of a documentary project she's working on, we were looking at the week or so following Hot Docs for our shoot. Anton is scheduled to play in Montreal on May 11 and would be traveling back on the 12th, so he was fine anytime after that. However, our DP told us that he starts something else on May 15 and wouldn't be available after that. That left us only two days, May 13-14. We were only planning a two-day shoot, so that wasn't too terrible. But it meant that we had no flexibility in our next hurdle: locations.

Awards News: 14th annual WGC Screenwriting Awards

Over 600 people attended the 2010 Writers Guild of Canada (WGC) Screenwriting Awards on Monday in Toronto. It was a packed house who turned up to recognize the 43 nominees in 11 categories. Jacob Tierney was the winner of the Best Feature Film category for writing The Trotsky, in which a Montreal high school student Leon (Jay Baruchel) believes he's the reincarnation of Leon Trotsky.

The ceremony was hosted by Debra DiGiovanni, and written by her as well as Steven and Daniel Shehori. The evening featured a variety of presenters including Yannick Bisson, Kristin Booth, Inga Cadranel, Enrico Colantoni, and screenwriters Mark Farrell, Michael McGowan, Jennifer Pertsch, Christin Simms, Shelley Eriksen, Leila Basen and David Preston.

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Complete list of 2010 WGC Award winners

Awards News: 29th Hong Kong Film Awards ‎

On Sunday April 18, the 29th Hong Kong Film Awards, announced Sunday at the Hong Kong Cultural Center: The historical/martial arts thriller Bodyguards and Assassins was the big winner on the night, taking eight awards, including best film and best director for Teddy Chen. Nicholas Tse again won Best Supporting Actor, a prize he took last month at the Asian Film Awards.

Next with four awards wasthe nostalgic 1960s Echoes of the Rainbow. Its prizes included Best Screenplay and Best Actor Simon Yam. In February, it won the Crystal Bear for best film in the Generation Kplus category at the Berlin International Film Festival.

Director and martial arts choreographer Lau Kar-leung, (The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, Drunken Master II) was given a lifetime achievement award. Unfortunately due to his age, his speech was very slow and long. It would have been much longer had his wife not urged him to finish as he hit the five-minute mark. Generally, the ceremony as a whole was a long and drawn out affair.

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Complete list of 29th Hong Kong Film Award winners

Awards News: 2010 Romy Awards (Austria)

This past Saturday, Austria hosted it's 2010 Romy Awards for film and television at the Hofburg in Vienna.. They consist of both audience awards and awards given by the Austrian Academy. The Romys were created in 1990 in honour of the late actress Romy Schneider by the Austrian newspaper Kurier. The newly established ROMY Academy consists of all previous 259 winners, and awards prizes to directors, cameramen and other crew. 

The audience voting was considered a great success as over 115,000 votes were submitted. However, there was a bit of a scandal with Dominic Heinzl's win as Most Popular Moderator. He works on the public broadcaster ORF, and private channel ATV made accusations of vote manipulation when their moderator Volker Piesczek didn't win. They've threatened a boycott of the ceremonies for next year.

American actress Olivia Wilde from the television series House took part in the ceremony. She was a presenter and gave the Most Popular Television Star award to actress Ursula Strauss.

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Complete list of 2010 Romy Award winners

Call for Submissions: RBC Tarragon Under 30 National Playwriting Competition

Call for Submissions: RBC Tarragon Under 30 National Playwriting Competition, Tarragon

The deadline for submissions is Friday, April 30, 2010 at 5 pm.

Since 1970, Tarragon Theatre has been a leader in the development of new Canadian plays, introducing theatre audiences to talented home-grown playwrights, and contributing countless plays to the Canadian canon.

As part of our mandate to seek out and nurture new and vital voices, Tarragon Theatre, with the generous support of RBC Foundation, is pleased to announce the second annual RBC Tarragon Under 30 National Playwriting Competition.

If you are. . .

• A Canadian citizen or permanent resident; and
• Under 30 years of age

. . . we encourage you to submit your play!

The winning playwright will receive:

• A cash award of $3000; and
• The opportunity to participate in Tarragon’s annual Play Reading Week in November 2010.