Inside Out and Toronto Japanese Film Festival Rise to Pandemic Challenges

By Liam Lacey

Among the many oxymorons of the pandemic (“social distancing,” “anonymous tracing”) we might add “virtual film festival,” the cinema equivalent of party of one. Nonetheless, two of Toronto’s popular film festivals — Inside Out and the Toronto Japanese Film Festival —are forging ahead this week with their online facsimiles of the real thing. Whatever they lose in the local human touch, they can potentially gain by expanding their audience online.

A scene from Jump Darling.

Thursday (October 1), Inside Out, Canada’s biggest annual LBGTQ cinema event, opens with a drive-in version of the new David Bowie-based drama, Stardust. The festival, which is held simultaneously in Toronto and Ottawa, was postponed from late May. This year marks its 30th birthday, and while the celebration may be the equivalent of a candle in a cupcake and a Skype call from mom, it’s still a party!

Inside Out Highlights

Stardust: According to early reviews, director Gabriel Range’s Stardust begins with a warning that “What follows is (mostly) fiction.” A dramatization about how David Bowie (Johnny Flynn), then 24, arrived in the United States to promote his record, The Man Who Sold the World, and found his alter-ego Ziggy Stardust. With Jena Malone as his wife, Angie, and Marc Maron as Mercury Records publicist Rob Oberman. (October 1, 8 pm, RBC Lakeside Drive-In).

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Jump, Darling: Aspiring drag queen Russell (Thomas Duplessie) joins his ailing grandmother (Cloris Leachman) in Prince Edward County as she tried to avoid the nursing home. Featuring Toronto drag queens Tynomi Banks, Miss Fiercalicious, and Fay Slift. (October 2, 8 pm, RBC Lakeside Drive-In).

The Obituary of Tunde Johnson: A gay African American teen experiences the same day repeatedly, in which he ends up being killing by the Los Angeles police. Directed by Ali LeRoi (creator of TV’s Everybody Hates Chris) from a script by 19-year-old Stanley Kalu. (October 1, 12 pm to Oct 11, 11:59 pm, watch online here).

Keyboard Fantasies: The Beverly Glenn-Copeland Story: This documentary from English director Posy Dixon will be a treat for anyone who followed the Canadian singer/songwriter in the 1970s and 1980s, as an introspective folk-jazz musician and composer and actor on children’s TV shows. Glenn-Copeland had a sexual reassignment in the early 2000s and, in the last decade, his music has been rediscovered by a new international audience, Now in his mid-seventies, he is beginning to enjoy the breakthrough that long eluded him. (Check listings online)

Breaking Fast: At the end of Ramadan feast, Mo is heartbroken when his boyfriend says he has to get married to a woman. A year later, Mo meets a hunky dreamboat Kal but in the Holy Month even impure thoughts are forbidden. This Ramadan-a-rom-com looks like a sleeper: It’s currently rated 100 percent Fresh on 10 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. (October 1, 12 pm to Oct 11, 11:59 pm, watch online here).

Also: Check out our Original-Cin reviews of two recent Toronto International Film Festival films, repeating at Inside Out: Emma Seligman’s sharply funny comedy Shiva Baby, and the documentary No Ordinary Man, about the late jazz musician and trans bandleader, Billy Tipton.

How to Festival: For more information and the virtual box office, go here. As with several other COVID-era festivals, Inside Out is offering a combination of streaming and some drive-in movies. A single $11 ticket to an all-access pass for $250 ($200 for members). Each film is available for 48 hours after purchase and press play. Also, through a CBC sponsorship, the four features and seven short films in the Spotlight on Canada section are free for a single viewing per household.

A scene from It Feels So Good.

Now in its ninth year, the Toronto Japanese Film Festival (October 3-22) — North America’s largest showcase for Japanese cinema — offers 22 films over the festival’s three-week run. All films can be watched any time, beginning on October 3. In a welcome international touch, screenings will also take place live in Japan during the same period in Tokyo Hibiya Midtown Centre.

TJFF Highlights

The Journalist: The winner of the most recent Japanese academy awards for best picture, best actress and best actor is a newspaper thriller which explores the endangered role of the press in a democracy. Rookie journo Erika Yoshioka works at a Tokyo newspaper and is assigned a story about a government plan to start a new private university. Her story leads her to the suicide of a cabinet minister and a collaboration with a young intelligence agency spin doctor, as they risk their careers to expose a political scandal.

It Feels So Good: The emphasis on raw sex and serious conversations in this romantic two-hander has a vintage arthouse vibe, but the subject is contemporary — the social aftershocks of the 2011 tsunami and Fukushima Daiichi plant disaster. Kenji, an unemployed divorced man in Tokyo, is invited to the wedding of a former flame, Naoki, in the northern town of Akita. When he gets there, Naoki, whose military fiancé is away on important government business, suggests they have a one-night stand, which turns into a doom-shadowed week-long affair.

To the Ends of the Earth: Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, best known for his horror movies (Pulse, Cure) offers this warmly offbeat travel drama about a Japanese television host, Yoko (J-Pop singer Atsuko Maeda) who loses her way, literally and emotionally, on assignment in Uzbekistan in a movie about the complexities of cultural tourism and bridge-building.

Tora San: Wish You Were Here: Need to catch up on Japanese popular films of the past half-century? You could start with this 50th film in this comedy-drama series about a travelling salesman (Kyoshi Atsumi) who’s unlucky in love. Star Atsumi died in 1996, but the series continues and this reboot film, from 88-year-old writer-director Yoji Yamada, is both a tribute and includes long excerpts from the previous films along with a fresh story focusing on Tora’s nephew, Mitsuo Suwa, a novelist and widower, who invokes the spirit of his uncle in negotiating his own troubled romantic life.

How to Festival: All tickets are $9.99 and are available through video-on-demand. Go here to buy tickets. The festival warns that not all films are suitable for young audiences. You will need to set up an account with the SHIFT72 streaming platform before buying tickets. After you hit the play button, movies will expire within 30 hours.