27th Toronto International Film Festival: 9/5-15/02

• Published in: Take 1 (Toronto. 1992) Vol. 11; no. 40; p. 34
• Main Author: Cummins, Kathleen
• Format: Magazine Article
• Language: English
• Published: Toronto Wyndham Wise 01.12.2002
• Subjects: Canadian movies; Motion picture festivals; Toronto Ontario Canada
• ISSN: 1192-5507

10:00 a.m. First day of TIFF. Arriving at a crowded press office in the Four Seasons Hotel, I pick up my screening coupons and make a beeline for the Perspective Canada (PC) desk. There I forage for press kits and any premature buzz about the Canadian films this year. A PC staff member excites about two documentaries: Jennifer Baichwal's The True Meaning of Pictures: Shelby Lee Adams' Appalachia and Peter Mettler's Gambling, Gods and LSD. I notice there are no press kits for the big Canadian films such Ararat, Bollywood/Hollywood, Spider, Mina Shum's Long Life, Happiness and Prosperity or even newcomer Keith Berhman's Flower & Garnet. Apparently the distributors (Alliance Atlantis and Odeon) didn't send over its press material. Instead, they wanted the press to go directly to their festival offices, located in a separate hotel. A real nuisance. 2:00 p.m. Attend press screening of highly anticipated Atom Egoyan's Armenian historical epic Ararat. The film, of course, being an Egoyan film, is not particularly epic and the historical part is background stuff. The premise, as always, is intriguing. A present-day Armenian-Canadian man searches for identity, and the meaning of his terrorist father's death, as he works as a gofer on a movie set about the past horrors of a "forgotten" Armenian genocide. Dramatically, the film-within-a-film "distancing" device distances us a little too much from the unimaginable cruelties and sufferings of genocide to identify with the young man's pain. Hence, the young man's internal turmoil about who he is and who his father was, is lost in among the wreckage of the film-with-a-film's war-torn movie sets. There's blood and fire here, but it's not "real" blood and fire. 9:00 a.m. I stumble into Jennifer Baichwal's documentary The True Meaning of Pictures: Shelby Lee Adams' Appalachia. I screen this film over Bollywood/Hollywood and Long Life, Happiness and Prosperity because someone somewhere decided to schedule three Canadian features at the same time. There is only one press/industry screening for every film. Baichwal's bio-documentary is a truly meaningful film, deconstructing the Gothic images seen through the lens and heart of controversial photographer Shelby Lee Adams. Unlike most bio-documentaries, Baichwal explores her subject with integrity, guts and a critical eye. I exit the cinema elated and inspired.