TORONTO—The annual Toronto Film Festival, the second biggest international film festival in the world, closed its curtains for the 36th time this September, but as we all know an end always marks a new beginning, and this is especially true for Canadian film producers.
Shortcuts being Canadian cinematographers’ strongest area, future projects include either developing their films into features, or continuing to develop short films.
“[Shortcuts] are certainly a strength of Canadian cinema. We’ve always been very very strong and we’ve always had very strong filmmakers that were doing shorts. I think it’s important to continue doing that,” Telefilm Canada executive director Carolle Brabant told The Epoch Times.
A short film is any film not long enough to be considered a feature film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as “an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all credits.”
Shortcut directors largely agree that their movies are not only a means to an end, a trial run before making a feature, but an art form in themselves. For some of these directors, TIFF serves as a platform to strike a deal with production companies that are willing to make shortcuts into features.
Craig Goodwill, who worked as producer and assistant director for mainstream Hollywood films like Good Will Hunting and directed many CBC and National Geographic shows, signed with Montreal-based Suki Films to make his shortcut Patch Town into a feature at TIFF.
Patch Town is described as a “satirical comedy-meets-musical clashes Russian folklore and Soviet style oppression with western-style consumerism, and a culture of discarded love.”
At the third Talent to Watch session called Not Short on Talent, Goodwill and five other Canadian shortcut film makers talked movies, including Mark Slutsky with his real-life comedy Sorry, Rabbi, Chelsea McMullan with her documentary on Frederico Fellini’s unmade film Derailments, and Andrew Cividino with his dark drama, “We Ate the Children Last.”
These young artists see their shortcuts as an art form; Cividino compared a short film to a poem and Brabant agreed that there is perspective for shortcuts in Canada.
“There are immense opportunities with the digital environment here, and we’re looking into seeing how we can help them,” said Brabant. “You just have to look at the amount of people who are watching ... the most content on the Web.”
Goodwill, however, doesn’t want to stop at a short. “Short films are great because they can show a moment in time or an emotional context, but for me it’s about providing those insights into a character or a project or a story that an audience wants to learn more about,” he said, in reference to Patch Town.
It’s worth noting that TIFF did showcase the Oscar winning Juno by Montreal born Jason Reitman in 2007 and Ontarian Paul Haggis’s Crash in 2004.
To further promote Canada’s talent, TIFF opened a new Rising Stars Programme where four lucky young actors and actresses are selected to showcase their talent on an international level.
Sarah Allen, Katie Boland, Sarah Gadon, and Keon Mohajeri have starred in TV series and already made their debuts in a couple of the films that premiered at TIFF. For instance, Gadon starred in A Dangerous Method and The Moth Diaries.
Movie lovers should stay on the lookout for these four names in the credits next time they watch an Oscar-nominated feature.
Shortcuts being Canadian cinematographers’ strongest area, future projects include either developing their films into features, or continuing to develop short films.
“[Shortcuts] are certainly a strength of Canadian cinema. We’ve always been very very strong and we’ve always had very strong filmmakers that were doing shorts. I think it’s important to continue doing that,” Telefilm Canada executive director Carolle Brabant told The Epoch Times.
A short film is any film not long enough to be considered a feature film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as “an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all credits.”
Shortcut directors largely agree that their movies are not only a means to an end, a trial run before making a feature, but an art form in themselves. For some of these directors, TIFF serves as a platform to strike a deal with production companies that are willing to make shortcuts into features.
Craig Goodwill, who worked as producer and assistant director for mainstream Hollywood films like Good Will Hunting and directed many CBC and National Geographic shows, signed with Montreal-based Suki Films to make his shortcut Patch Town into a feature at TIFF.
Patch Town is described as a “satirical comedy-meets-musical clashes Russian folklore and Soviet style oppression with western-style consumerism, and a culture of discarded love.”
At the third Talent to Watch session called Not Short on Talent, Goodwill and five other Canadian shortcut film makers talked movies, including Mark Slutsky with his real-life comedy Sorry, Rabbi, Chelsea McMullan with her documentary on Frederico Fellini’s unmade film Derailments, and Andrew Cividino with his dark drama, “We Ate the Children Last.”
These young artists see their shortcuts as an art form; Cividino compared a short film to a poem and Brabant agreed that there is perspective for shortcuts in Canada.
“There are immense opportunities with the digital environment here, and we’re looking into seeing how we can help them,” said Brabant. “You just have to look at the amount of people who are watching ... the most content on the Web.”
Goodwill, however, doesn’t want to stop at a short. “Short films are great because they can show a moment in time or an emotional context, but for me it’s about providing those insights into a character or a project or a story that an audience wants to learn more about,” he said, in reference to Patch Town.
It’s worth noting that TIFF did showcase the Oscar winning Juno by Montreal born Jason Reitman in 2007 and Ontarian Paul Haggis’s Crash in 2004.
To further promote Canada’s talent, TIFF opened a new Rising Stars Programme where four lucky young actors and actresses are selected to showcase their talent on an international level.
Sarah Allen, Katie Boland, Sarah Gadon, and Keon Mohajeri have starred in TV series and already made their debuts in a couple of the films that premiered at TIFF. For instance, Gadon starred in A Dangerous Method and The Moth Diaries.
Movie lovers should stay on the lookout for these four names in the credits next time they watch an Oscar-nominated feature.
