Toronto is blessed to host perhaps the largest number of film festivals in the world, and now finally there is a site that can help make sense of them all. Toronto Film Festivals is an initiative supported by George Brown College and the City of Toronto. It appears to have been around since May but I only discovered it this morning through a random tweet.
It gathers more than 75 festivals together and puts them all on one calendar, and a handy submission form means that any new festival can submit its information instantly. I’m still checking it out, but it appears to be much more useful than my pathetic little sidebar listings. One thing that would be nice would be a list on one page of all the festivals in chronological order and with links to their sites, but it appears that the site is designed for a very small screen and so that might not quite fit.
I’m Here (Director: Spike Jonze): A random Tweet a few days ago brought I’m Here to my attention, which seems fitting, since it’s a love story about robots. Spike Jonze’ made this 30-minute short film with support from Absolut Vodka, but it’s not at all a commercial for booze.
Sheldon is a robot library assistant leading a lonely and rather boring existence before a random encounter with Francesca, a free-spirited and creative robot, changes his life. As the two fall deeper in love, Sheldon realizes how much he is willing to give. The film is set in a present-day Los Angeles where humans and robots co-exist, although robots are subject to a form of racism and exclusion. But this isn’t at all a science-fiction film.
Instead, Jonze uses the fact that his protagonists are robots in the same way animators use that form, to break through the limitations that human actors face. These characters feel just as human characters would, except that Jonze uses their physical differences from humans in innovative ways to make a poignant observation about the nature of love.
Watch I’m Here in its entirety online
(8/10)
Tagged as:
shorts
Celebrating the one year anniversary of their online screening room, and following the success of such 3D titles as Avatar and Up, Canada’s National Film Board has continued to innovate by making some of the films in its online screening room available in 3D. Short films Drux Flux by Theodore Ushev and the Genie Award-winning Falling in Love Again by Munro Ferguson are available now, as well as excerpts from Facing Champlain, a stereoscopic production created for the 400th anniversary celebrations in Quebec City. The films will be viewable both in the online screening room and on the iPhone application using 3D glasses, which can either be ordered from the NFB web site, or picked up for free at their Toronto Mediatheque (150 John Street).
Visit the NFB 3D portal for more information.
In addition, they are making 26 of their films available in HD, including celebrated shorts like Madame Tutli-Putli, Ryan, and The Cat Came Back. No glasses required for these, just head to their HD portal and enjoy.
Tagged as:
3d,
nfb
I’ve been paying a lot more attention to short films over the past few years, and I’m exited to have found a really excellent resource for finding and seeing these bite-sized gems of cinema.
Short of the Week is a fabulous site where short films are presented, reviewed and discussed. Not only is it attractively designed, but the curators have done a great job in presenting a variety of great work, both animated and live-action. Short films are difficult to see in the same way as we consume traditional films (theatrically and on DVD) so it only makes sense to present them online, and this site, established in 2007, has been amassing a great collection. The short reviews are also well-written and informative. I’ve made Short of the Week a regular stop on my film surfing, and so should you.
While we’re on the subject of shorts, I held an event for a few friends last weekend that I hope will develop into a regular series. Shorts That Are Not Pants featured a mixed programme of recent short films mostly screened from issues of Wholphin:
- El ataque de los robots de nebulosa-5 (The Attack of the Robots from Nebula-5) (Dir. Chema Garcia Ibarra, Spain, 6 minutes)
- Land of the Heads (Dir. Cédric Louis and Claude Barras, Canada, 6 minutes)
- Isabelle au bois dormant (Sleeping Betty) (Dir. Claude Cloutier, Canada, 9 minutes)
- Love You More (Dir. Sam Taylor-Wood, UK, 15 minutes)
- Glory at Sea (Dir. Benjamin Zeitlin, USA, 25 minutes)
- Two Cars, One Night (Dir. Taika Waititi, New Zealand, 12 minutes)
- Tørt og kjølig (Cold and Dry) (Dir. Kristoffer Joner, Norway, 12 minutes)
- Smafúglar (2 Birds) (Dir. Rúnar Rúnarsson, Iceland, 15 minutes)
- New Boy (Dir. Steph Green, Ireland, 11 minutes)
The two that generated the most discussion were Glory at Sea and Smafúglar (2 Birds), which didn’t surprise me at all. They were the two most dramatic films in the programme, and I look forward to more great work, of whatever length, from both directors.
Tagged as:
shorts
Well, I should clarify. Good news for fans of Icelandic cinema, that is. If you’re a cinema buff from Iceland, this post may only be of interest to a subset of you.
In any case, despite being underwhelmed by the two Icelandic films screened at this year’s TIFF, I remain a huge fan of the films and directors of this tiny island nation. One of the highlights of my trip to Reykjavik last September was being present at two receptions hosted by the Icelandic Film Centre in which my wife and I were wined and dined and able to mingle with some of the actors and directors of this intimate fraternity. So I was very happy to find two new (or new to me) sites that focus on the cinema of Iceland.
Iceland Cinema Now has some official support from the Icelandic Film Centre, the Association of Icelandic Film Producers and the Icelandic Film School, so I expect it will be more a source of news rather than any critical opinions. For that, I’ll be consulting Iceland On Screen, a blog written by UK native Ben Hopkins. He’s reviewing all kinds of Icelandic films and I’m looking forward to diving into his archives. His recent interview with Icelandic film critic Ásgrímur Sverrisson was particularly interesting. Since Iceland is such a small community, it can be difficult to maintain critical distance when a lot of the filmmakers are your friends.
Since one of the major hurdles to greater exposure for Iceland’s films is the general unavailability of DVDs, I’m glad to see that Iceland Cinema Now is in the process of setting up an online store. Hopefully, there will be a good selection of films with English subtitles available, though I suspect anyone in North America may require a region-free DVD player.
Tagged as:
iceland
