Four Fantastic Fall Festivals for Discerning Film Fans
By Liam Lacey
Birds and humans form in lines in autumn. The birds to get the flock out of here before snowfall while humans join queues at specialized film festivals. There are four niche film festivals opening in Toronto over the next month, two of them this week. Here are a few highlights and information about their programs.
Arthur Erickson: Beauty Between the Lines
Architecture and Design Film Festival (Oct. 23-26) held at TIFF Lightbox, is an offshoot of a festival started by New York architect Kyle Bergman in 2009, which has since spread to Toronto, Vancouver (Nov. 6-20), Los Angeles, Chicago and Mumbai and, next April, in Winnipeg.
The Toronto ADFF festival opens Wednesday night with a new documentary from Danny Berish and Ryan Mah, Arthur Erickson: Beauty Between the Lines, looking at the artistic and personal travails of Canada’s first “starchitect” whose notable works include Simon Fraser University, the Museum of Anthropology and Robson Square in Vancouver; Roy Thomson Hall, and the Canadian Chancery in Washington. The film repeats on Saturday night at the TIFF Lightbox.
Rendezvous with Madness (Oct. 25-Nov. 3) The unique Toronto arts and film festival dealing with mental health and started in 1987 by former psychiatric nurse Lisa Brown has become a fixture on the fall festival scene.
This year’s edition includes 10 features and three shorts programs and a group textile art show, “The Looms We Resemble,” which will open at the conclusion of the festival and run through Dec. 3. The festival opens with Cree filmmaker Jules Koostachin’s WaaPaKe (Tomorrow), which examines intergenerational trauma of the residential school system, focusing on her own family. (The film is also available on the NFB website).
Other films include A Man Imagined by Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky, an exploration of the life of Lloyd, a 67-year-old man with schizophrenia living on the streets of Montreal. The fictional film Drive Back Home by Michael Clowater, set in the 1970s, follows a plumber (Charlie Creed-Miles) who travels to Toronto to bail his estranged gay brother Perley (Alan Cumming) out of jail for having sex in a public park.
Rendezvous with Madness. Venues: The CAMH Auditorium, 1025 Queen Street West and The Tranzac Club, 292 Brunswick Avenue. All tickets are pay-what-you-can with both in-person and virtual viewing options.
A Man Imagined
Cinéfranco, which started in 1998, is always a welcome chance to catch up on quality French and French-Canadian films, with English subtitles, that haven’t made it to the multiplex. Among this year’s 20 features (screening Nov. 1-10) are a couple of popular French comedies Un Pet’t Truc En Plus (A Little Something Extra), about a criminal and his son hiding out at a camp for young adults with disabilties and N’Avoue Jamais (Riviera Revenge) about a retired general who discovers his wife cheated on him 40 years before.
The festival opens with Quebec director Ricardo Trogi’s box office hit 1995, the latest and reportedly funniest in his series of semi-autobiographical comedies (1981, 1987, 1991) and closes with the family drama When Fall Is Coming, a new film from the reliably elegant François Ozon (8 Women, Swimming Pool).
Cinéfranco Francophone International Festival. Venue: Carlton Cinema, 20 Carlton Street.
Tickets go on sale this week for 28th iteration of Toronto’s Reel Asian Film Festival (Nov. 13-24), a festival which defies the idea of niche since the 17 features and 49 shorts attempt to represent the world’s most populous continent and its global diasporic communities.
The festival opens with Canadian Ann Marie Fleming’s speculative sci-fi feature Can I Get A Witness?, a combination of live action and animated feature which tells the story of a mother (Sandra Oh) and daughter (Keira Jang) in the near future when, following an ecological disaster, most technology is banned and no one is allowed to live past 50.
Fleming’s film had its premiere at this year’s TIFF, as did Johnny Ma’s dramedy The Mother and The Bear, about a Korean mother who comes to winter-bound Winnipeg to manage the life of her comatose daughter. This year’s festival includes “Colliders,” a new short film program in partnership with ImagineNATIVE and Media Arts Festival, which has postponed its 2024 edition as it moves to June next year to coincide with Indigenous Peoples Month.
Real Asian International Film Festival. Venues include Innis Town Hall, TIFF Lightbox, 401 Commons, Festival Lounge, Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema and Centre for Social Innovation and The Annex Theatre.