Hindsight always provides clarity. Looking backwards, through the years, it is now obvious that the original organizers of the Festival of Festivals had a master plan in place back in 1976.

Sure, Dusty Cohl, with his trademark black hat, and the charismatic Bill Marshall and Henk Van der Kolk were colorful characters back then and they made their share of mistakes. But what seems clear, after a perusal of the festival’s archives, is that the duo knew exactly what was needed to make their enterprise successful, even during their inaugural year.

The festival wanted glitz and glamor and the support of the Hollywood industry. They didn’t get it in year one. Jack Nicholson and Julie Christie canceled their trips and the only mogul who arrived was the peripatetic Dino de Laurentiis. So Marshall effectively hanged the Hollywood producers in effigy, creating such a fuss through the Canadian Association of Motion Picture Producers that Hollywood and Ottawa had to sit up and listen.

Just a year later, an Al Pacino vehicle, Bobby Deerfield, and Tony Richardson’s Joseph Andrews, were given to the festival. They weren’t great movies, but it was a start.

Over the next few years, acclaimed academics Robin Wood and Peter Harcourt curated major retrospectives, Wood on horror films and Harcourt on Jean-Luc Godard.

In 1978, an overview on New Australian Cinema showcased such tough but fascinating fare as The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith and Don’s Party, while the American Midnight Express wowed audiences.

Later, breakout films, including France’s Diva, Chariots of Fire and The Big Chill sealed the festival’s reputation for being an ideal venue for producers to launch a film. Meanwhile, a pattern was established: unique films for the critics and the buffs and star power for the masses.

When the Producers’ and Craft Conferences didn’t prove to be so successful, the festival shook things up, creating a Trade Forum that immediately, according to the industry paper Cinemag, ‘proved itself to be a success beyond the highest expectations of the organizers.’ With an industry link established, the festival was ready to take on all comers, including its rivals in Montreal.

Wayne Clarkson, a splendid organizer and a visionary thinker, took over as festival director in 1978 – with Andra Sheffer as his managing director – and director-general in 1980.

In Praise of Older Women, the opening night gala in 1978, proved to be a huge hit, igniting a condition the city now sustains each year – ‘festival fever.’ The gala party, which drew such stars as Karen Black ‘dressed in a grey mink coat trimmed with grey fox,’ Susan Strasberg and Helen Shaver, only added to the city’s fervor. Attendance rose to 77,000 that year and hit 100,000 the next.

Since that time, the festival has gone from strength to strength. One hundred and fifty films screened in 1979, surpassed by 187 features in 1983, then usurped by 216 in 1985 and 306, including 225 features, in 1986. The budget hit $1 million in 1983, rose to more than $2 million five years later, increased to $3 million by 1990 and is nearing $7 million now.

The Trade Forum eventually added a Sales Office and the two became part of the Rogers Industry Centre. By the late ’90s, that part of the festival, which changed its name in 1994 to the Toronto International Film Festival, had become ‘a major business-of-film convention,’ according to then managing director Suzanne Weiss.

The industry’s response to the festival was triggered, in part, by the astute programming that Clarkson and his Ottawa colleague, Piers Handling, did themselves and the fine programmers they brought on board. Kay Armatage, Cameron Bailey, Ramiro Puerta and Dimitri Eipides joined David Overbey to form a cadre of remarkable taste-makers.

They advocated the talents of such maverick international filmmakers as New Zealand’s Jane Campion, Spain’s Pedro Almodovar, Finland’s Aki Kaurismaki, the u.k.’s Stephen Frears, and Poland’s late Krzysztof Kieslowski, to name a few.

They also established the festival as an important launching pad for American independent filmmakers such as Joel and Ethan Coen (Blood Simple), Gus Van Sant (Drugstore Cowboy), Steven Soderbergh (sex, lies and videotape), Jim Jarmusch (Stranger than Paradise, Mystery Train), Hal Hartley (The Unbelievable Truth), Michael Moore (Roger and Me), and in 1992, Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs.

The festival also played a significant role in bringing Asian and Latin American film to North American audiences. In 1982, the festival featured 18 Brazilian films, and in 1986, it staged a huge retrospective of Latin American cinema.

The focus on Asian film began in the late ’70s and intensified in the mid-’80s, with Overbey introducing Chen Kaige’s Yellow Earth – the first film from China to be shown in a major Western film festival – alongside the martial arts flicks of John Woo.

Asian film was front and centre again in 1993, with offerings such as Farewell my Concubine, The Scent of Green Papaya, The Wedding Banquet and The Joy Luck Club, which created festival buzz, and later, box-office receipts.

The festival has, of course, also played an unparalleled role in the development of Canadian cinema. In 1984, it showcased more than 200 Canadian films, and staged a David Cronenberg retrospective. The work of such established filmmakers as Denys Arcand, Claude Jutra, Norman Jewison, Jean Pierre Lefebvre, Don Shebib, Michael Snow and Joyce Wieland were featured, alongside young newcomers like Atom Egoyan, who was debuting his first film, Next of Kin.

Everything from experimental films to animation to feature dramas and documentaries had screenings, proving this country did have a filmmaking heritage.

Perspective Canada was established that year and so was the tradition of making the Opening Night Gala a Canadian film (or at least a film directed by a Canadian).

The next year, in 1985, Sandy Wilson’s My American Cousin opened Perspective Canada. It created not only a lot of buzz, but also a bidding war. It went on to make money commercially, proving that Canadian films could actually win at the box office.

Two years later, Patricia Rozema’s I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing opened to equal enthusiasm.

Since that time, such filmmakers as festival favorites Egoyan, Rozema, Bruce McDonald and Don McKellar have established themselves as bright, inventive talents. Every year, the festival’s powerful publicity machine makes media celebrities of new Canadian directors like John Greyson, Clement Virgo, Francois Girard and Jeremy Podeswa.

Along with the Canadian Film Centre, which Clarkson now runs, tiff is creating an atmosphere where creative filmmaking in this country is possible and even, on occasion, glamorous.

That leaves the parties. And what would the festival be without them? From a few, run mostly by themselves, the celebrations have grown exponentially over the years. They add a mystique that engages the media and the audience at each festival. Whether you love them or not, the parties are as much a part of the festival as is the deal-making and the screening of a new Iranian drama.

That’s the festival’s formula. It’s worked for 25 years and should be good for at least another decade or two. *

With files from Louise Leger