I’ve just realized that 2009 marks the more-or-less 20th anniversary of the beginning of my cinephilia. Back in the late ‘80s, Toronto had a handful of repertory cinemas under the Festival banner. The flagship was the Bloor Cinema, but I also saw films at the Revue, the Capitol (now an “event theatre”) and the Fox. The Kingsway, the Paradise, and later the Royal were a bit far for this east-end boy to get to at the time, but luckily they rotated the films around a fair bit. Each month, the newsprint Festival programme opened up a world of cinema riches to a young lad like myself. Though the Festival theatres no longer operate as a chain, most are still functioning movie houses, though it’s painfully evident that the best days of Toronto’s repertory cinemas are now gone. Here are some of the films I saw that made an impression on me all those years ago. In particular, I think the first four are sadly overlooked nowadays.
- Paperhouse (1988, Director: Bernard Rose)
- Toto le héros (1991, Director: Jaco van Dormael)
- Paper Mask (1990, Director: Christopher Morahan)
- Chameleon Street (1989, Director: Wendell B. Harris Jr.)
- The Sacrifice (1986, Director: Andrei Tarkovsky)
- Delicatessen (1991, Directors: Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro)
- The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989, Director: Peter Greenaway)
- Mediterraneo (1991, Director: Gabriele Salvatores)
- Cinema Paradiso (1988, Director: Giuseppe Tornatore)
- Metropolitan (1990, Director: Whit Stillman)
- Life Is Sweet (1991, Director: Mike Leigh)
- Roger and Me (1989, Director: Michael Moore)
- Withnail and I (1987, Director: Bruce Robinson)
- The Double Life of Veronique (1991, Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski)
- Wings of Desire (1987, Director: Wim Wenders)
Thanks to John Vetterli for making his photo available under a Creative Commons licence.
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