Free screening in Toronto of Barney's Version

Tonight at Innis Town Hall, located at 2 Sussex Ave., Toronto, ON (right beside Robarts Library), the University of Toronto hosts a free advance screening of Barney's Version. Directed by Richard J. Lewis, the film is an adaptation of the prize-winning comedic novel by Mordecai Richler. It stars Paul Giamatti, Dustin Hoffman, Minnie Driver, Rosamund Pike, Bruce Greenwood, Rachelle Lefevre and Scott Speedman.

The screening begins at 6pm sharp. You do not need passes and anyone may attend - you need not be a student. Doors will open at 5:45.

After the screening, the film's producer Robert Lantos will be on hand for a Question & Answer session.

Award winners for 2010 Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal

Although the 13th Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal (RIDM) continues all day today, the Closing Night screening and Awards ceremony were held last night at the auditorium in the Grande Bibliotheque. The major awards went to Jia Zhang-Ke's I Wish I Knew which took the international Kino Pen Award, and Philippe Lesage's Ce Coeur qui bat (The Heart That Beats) which Cinémathèque québécoise Award for Best Film from Québec or Canada. Ce Coeur qui bat also won the Prix Meilleur espoir Québec/Canada for most promising filmmaker. Other films which won more than once were Cuchillo de palo by Renate Costa and Helena Treštíková's Katka.  

Chercher le courant by Nicolas Boisclair and Alexis de Gheldere received a special mention for the EcoCamera Award, but then claimed the Audience Award. It screens again later tonight at 7pm. All awards other than the Audience Award were decided by a jury of industry professionals. 

The screening was of the Oscar short-listed film Waste Land. Director Lucy Walker was unable to attend, but taped a personal greeting and introduction to the film which was shown prior to the film. After the film, the closing night party took place at the Cinémathèque québécoise.

47th Golden Horse Film Awards - winners announced

Today in Taoyuan, northern Taiwan, the 2010 Golden Horse Film Awards for Chinese-language films were handed out. Taiwanese indie films dominated the evening, as the family drama When Love Comes won Best Feature Film in addition to Best Cinematography and Best Art Direction. Taiwan's Chung Mong-hong won Best Director for The Fourth Portrait which also won Best Supporting Actress and Outstanding Taiwanese Film of the Year. Taiwanese gangster film Monga won awards for Best Leading Actor, Best Sound Effects and Outstanding Taiwanese Filmmaker of the Year.

The gay romance from China, Spring Fever, won Best Editing and Best Original Film Score awards. Legendary martial arts action star Sammo Hung won Best Action Choreography for Ip Man 2.

This is the 47th edition of the awards which are given by the organization which also hosts the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival and which honours Chinese-language films from Taiwan, China (including Hong Kong and Macau), Malaysia and Singapore. Previously, the Golden Horse Film Awards excluded films from mainland China, but began allowing them in 1992 after a protest by famed Australian cinematographer Christopher Doyle (Hero, In the Mood for Love). 

3rd Annual Breast Fest Film Festival, Toronto, Nov. 19-21

The Breast Fest Film Festival in Toronto is world's first breast cancer film festival. Now in its 3rd year, it hosts screenings, contests and discussions and runs from November 19-21.

Tonight, it kicks off with a screening of Busting Out with the filmmaker Francine Strickwerda in attendance. The closing night film on Sunday night will be the Japanese film April Bride. The Live. Laugh. Lunch! event is for women who have experienced breast cancer and features esteemed author, Ruth Rakoff. She will read from "When My World Was Very Small. A Memoir of Family, Food, Cancer and my Couch" and lunch will be served.

Screenings take place at the Royal Ontario Museum Theatre in downtown Toronto.

2nd Annual Ekran - Toronto Polish Film Festival, November 19-21

The 2nd Annual Ekran - Toronto Polish Film Festival begins tonight and runs until Sunday night. The screenings will be held at the Revue Cinema, 400 Roncesvalles Avenue in the heart of the Polish village. Some screenings will take place with invited special guests. All screenings are in Polish with English subtitles.

The screening on Saturday at 1pm of animation and short films is a free screening. All other screenings of features and documentaries are $10 admission.

In addition, cinematography Prof. Maria Kornatowska from the Polish Film School in Lodz will preseent a lecture about Polish Cinematography at University of Toronto on Monday, November 22.

Call for participants: the 69 Hour Film Challenge

Darryl Gold is back with this year's 69 Hour Film Challenge. In addition to his annual Hard Liquor and Porn Film Festival (which is really just a raunchy comedy festival) which he hosts in Toronto and Montreal, he runs the 69 Hour Film Challenge in which filmmakers are required to make a film in 69 Hours incorporating at least 3 items from a secret list of 10 which is revealed at the contest start. Films are to be 5 minutes or shorter, including credits.

The contest begins at 9pm EST on Thursday, December 2, when the secret list will be revealed on the website http://hardliquorandporn.com/. The submissions must be received by 6pm on December 5, 2010 EST in Toronto (location to be determined) or uploaded online. The entries will be shown on Thursday December 9, 2010 at 10pm at The Comedy Bar (945 Bloor St.W, Toronto). An award will be given for best 69 Hour Film.

Best Documentary Oscar short list of 15 films announced

This has been an particularly strong year for documentaries that has many people speculating that a documentary may even crack the Best Picture category for the first time. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) has whittled down the record 101 eligible submissions and today they announced the short list of fifteen films that will be vying for the eventual five nominations. Included in the list of fifteen films is the outstanding Canadian film Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould, one of my favourite films of 2009. To the surprise of many, the highly-regarded Last Train Home did not make the list.

There are many other surprises with the announced list of films. The controversial documentary (or is it fiction?) film Exit through the Gift Shop made the cut and some feel that it now becomes a favourite. But another sort-of documentary that was a possible nominee Catfish did not have the same luck and is not on the list. The Afghanistan war doc Restrepo made the list but the equally strong (some say stronger) Danish-made Armadillo did not. Two popular but dubious anti-public education films made the list, Waiting for 'Superman' and The Lottery. But many strong documentaries didn't make the final fifteen including The Oath, A Film Unfinished, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work and Frederick Wiseman’s La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet. Marwencol was not eligible this Oscar season, but will be the following year.

2010 Montreal English Critics Circle Awards nominations announced

The nominations have been announced for the 2010 Montreal English Critics Circle Awards (MECCA) for English-language theatre. Miss Sugarpuss Must Die and Haunted Hillbilly each received four nominations including Best Production. A Line in the Sand also received four nominations, but missed out on the Best Production category.

This year's ceremony will be held at Theatre Ste-Catherine on Monday, November 29.
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The MECCA awards were initiated in 1998 by Gaetan Charlebois, a local theatre critic.

Originally just a widely-distributed media list of Montreal’s best English-language live performance achievements over the past season, the MECCAs have grown to encompass a live presentation ceremony. Over the years, participating media have included representatives from CBC, CKUT, Montreal Gazette, The Suburban, Montreal Mirror, Hour Magazine, and more.

European Union Film Festival 2010, starts today in Toronto and Ottawa

Tonight is the opening night for two Canadian editions of the European Union Film Festival. the traveling film festival of European cinema. One takes place in Toronto while the other is in the nation's capital Ottawa. The Toronto edition opens with the Belgian film The Barons and runs until November 30, while the Ottawa edition also starts with a Belgian film The Perfect Match and spills into the next month and wraps up December 5. Vancouver has their own European Union Film Festival, which begins next week and runs from November 26-December 9. Although there is a lot of overlap in the selection, there are slight differences in the programming. All three will show 23 or more films, generally one from each of the European Union countries which submitted a film. 

The Ottawa and Vancouver festivals are partnered at the website http://www.euff.ca/. The Toronto festival has a separate website, but it has the added benefit of being a free festival. They accept donations at each screening, however it isn't mandatory.

11th aluCine Toronto Latin Film & Media Arts Festival November 18-21

Tonight is the opening night of the 11th aluCine Toronto Latin Film & Media Arts Festival which focuses on excellence and innovation in contemporary independent film/video and new media by Latin artists. In addition to a number screenings, they host installations, workshops and performances. Many of the events are free or pay-what-you-can (PWYC).

A good number of the events will also have the artist(s) in attendance. Check their website here for details. The festival runs until Sunday night, when it closes with an awards screening and closing ceremony.

Free screening of SING-ALONG MESSIAH documentary

Just in time for the Christmas season, you'll have an opportunity to get into the holiday spirit with a free screening of Sing-Along Messiah in Toronto. The documentary film looks at the popular oratorio by George Frideric Handel as performed by the period-instrument group Tafelmusik.

Their annual interactive performance in which the audience is invited to participate in the music-making began in 1986 and has been a Toronto tradition ever since. It is always a rousing, sold-out event, attracting about 2,700 enthusiastic audience members each show. Choir Director Ivars Taurins usually conducts the concerts dressed up as Handel himself.

The screening is this Thursday night at 7pm at the Regent Theatre, 555 Mount Pleasant Rd. The movie will air on the Bravo! network next month.

Call for submissions: 2nd annual Everyday Heroes Film Festival

The Everyday Heroes Film Festival has announced a call for submissions for their 2nd annual festival. Like the Toronto Urban Film Festival, Everyday Heroes is a free festival that plays silent one-minute short films in the ONESTOP screens in the Toronto subway system. Films are expected to be mini-documentaries about real people who make a difference with there large or small acts of environmental "heroism." 

Awards will be given in the categories of Activism, Education, Conservation and Great Ideas. They will be decided by a jury consisting of Kathleen Mullen, Brenda Longfellow, Jed Goldberg and Sharon Switzer. Deadline for submissions is March 1, 2011. The festival runs April 15 - 24, 2011.

Call for Submissions: Write From the Hip 2011, Nightwood Theatre

Nightwood Theatre in Toronto has put out a call for submissions for their mentorship program Write from the Hip 2011 for women playwrights aged 18-29. You only need to apply with an idea that you will develop over the course of the program. The program will run from April 2011 until the following year, culminating in a staged reading of the completed play.

Deadlines for submissions is December 3, 2010.
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Write from the Hip
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15 films qualify for Best Animated Feature Oscar nomination

This year, only fifteen films qualified for consideration in the Best Animated Feature category of the Academy Awards. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) released their list of qualifying films today, and the list did not reach the magic number of 16. According to Academy regulations, if there are 16 or more qualifying films, then there will be five nominees as was the case last year. If there are only 15 or fewer films, then the number of nominees is limited to three.

This is causing some angst in Hollywood, since it's assumed by many that Toy Story 3 and How To Train Your Dragon are shoo-ins. That leaves one spot left for some other heavy-hitters including Despicable Me, Shrek Forever After, Megamind, The Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole, L'illusionniste (The Illusionist) and Tangled.  Personally, I'm hoping one of the hand-drawn films gets selected, especially L'illusionniste, Sylvain Chomet's follow-up to his Academy-Award nominated Les triplettes de Belleville (The Triplets of Belleville). The other hand-drawn films are the Chinese feature The Dreams of Jinsha, Bill Plympton's Idiots and Angels, Summer Wars and My Dog Tulip. This year lacks the good number of stop-motion animated films that last year had.

2010 Inside Film (IF) Awards for Australian film - winners announced

Last night in Sydney, the teen action flick Tomorrow When The War Began dominated the Inside Film (IF) Awards, winning each of the four categories for which it was nominated - Best Film, Best Actress, Best Script and Best Music. It bested Animal Kingdom and Mao's Last Dancer, even though both of those films led with seven nominations each. Animal Kingdom managed wins for Best Director and Best Actor, but Mao's Last Dancer failed to win any of its nominated categories and only took the Box Office Achievement Award for receipts totaling $15.5 million.

The Inside Film Awards are the people’s choice awards for Australian films. The awards were created in 1999 by IF Media, and votes are tallied from audiences attending one or more of the 20 major film festivals and cinema screenings, and from IF eligible DVD releases.133,000 votes were cast this year. The exceptions are in the categories of Living Legend Award (won by actor-producer Bryan Brown), the Independent Spirit Award (Caught Inside), and the Rising Talent award (Ariel Kleiman) which are decided by industry panels.