Perspective Canada lineup

Perspective Canada, the Toronto International Film Festival’s 11-year-old Canadian showcase, is off with a bang, according to programmer Cameron Bailey. Sex, he says, is the overriding theme of this year’s crop of 19 feature films and 33 shorts. Submissions totaling 301 films were barely up from last year, with a 50:50 balance between Ontario and the rest of Canada.

Bailey says there is evidence in this year’s program of a new guard of documentarians, with such feature documentaries as Tahani Rached’s Medecins du coeur, a film about aids practitioners/activists in Montreal, and Narmada: A Valley Rises, Ali Kazimi’s take on a conflict in central India that involves a 200 kilometer protest march.

The two-year run of the Perspective Canada suite (a press and sales office) has come to an end. Its demise is due to cutbacks at its sponsor, the National Film Board, and the feeling that an increasing number of Canadian films now arrive with distributors on side and no longer need the services of the suite.

Of the 19 features in Perspective Canada, 10 are hooked up with domestic distributors. Producers are encouraged this year to get in with the crowd in the sales and press offices, which handle any and all festival films.

Perspective Canada opener Dance Me Outside, based on the W.P. Kinsella novel, is director Bruce McDonald’s third round at the festival. McDonald says the festival exposure has definitely helped his career, especially when his first feature, Roadkill, won the Toronto-City Award for best Canadian feature film in 1989.

‘It’s another way to maximize exposure of the film, especially with a prize (which) signals that it’s not just another mongrel film,’ says McDonald. He also says the award helped launch the film to international markets such as Germany and Australia.

Other festival veterans include Mike Hoolbloom with two shorts – Frank’s Cock and Justify My Love – and the feature Valentine’s Day, Atom Egoyan with Exotica, Peter Mettler with Picture of Light, Andre Forcier with Wind from Wyoming, and Srivinas Krishna with a short film called Untitled.

Festival features are: Brigitte Berman’s The Circle Game, Douple Happiness from Mina Shum, Jeremy Podeswa’s first feature, Eclipse, Gary Ledbetter’s Henry and Verlin, Gregory Wild’s Highway of Heartache, Paint Cans from Paul Donovan, Harriet Wichin’s Silent Witness, Kal Ng’s Stories of Chide the Wind: The Soul Investigator, Bruce La Bruce’s Super 8 1/2; Micheline Lanctot’s La vie d’un heros, Judith Doyle’s Wasaga and Robert Morin’s Windigo.

There are eight short programs this year and Bailey warns audiences to buy their tickets early, since the Perspective Canada shorts ‘sell out faster than a lot of the big, splashier films do.’