|
October 9 - 22
Celebrating Toronto’s 175th birthday, TIFF’s recently published anthology, Toronto on Film, discusses both the development of feature filmmaking in the city and seminal archival works, and features essays by Geoff Pevere (who contributes a wide-ranging thematic look at filmmaking in the city); TIFF CEO Piers Handling; award-winning critic Matthew Hays; scholar Brenda Longfellow; writer Wyndham Wise; and a glossary listing 175 key films. Inspired by the Toronto on Film book, this series looks at key points in Toronto’s cinematic history, beginning in the late Fifties with Julian Roffman’s cult classic, The Bloody Brood.
***
Though Toronto has long been one of Canada’s largest cities, its significant film history really only begins in the Sixties, when pioneers like Don Owen, David Secter, Allan King, Don Shebib and David Cronenberg started making movies. There are numerous reasons for the city’s late appearance onscreen. As Piers Handling points out in his essay, “By Way of an Introduction” (which focuses on early feature filmmaking efforts in and around the city), one of the major factors was the decision to headquarter the National Film Board in Ottawa, initially, and, ultimately, in Montreal. The only game in town in terms of production and training, the NFB was also the only official funding and distribution body and it emphasized alternative methods of distribution rather than commercial venues.
Prior to the Sixties, few producers found profitable filmmaking avenues. In the Fifties, though, filmmakers like Sidney Furie and Julian Roffman made courageous forays into feature film production with movies such as A Dangerous Age; A Cool Sound from Hell; and The Bloody Brood. Lacking support, the films still floundered commercially – despite the fact that most of them were either genre works or addressed current subjects. (The Bloody Brood, for instance, evoked The Wild One and was set in the beatnik-hipster world.) In addition, it was only in the late Fifties and early Sixties that technology – in the form of lightweight 16mm cameras – made filmmaking less onerous and more viable. (In this, Canada followed the filmmakers of the French New Wave and other contemporary movements.)
This all changed with the first efforts by Owen et al.
|