Bollywood/Hollywood, the latest feature by director Deepa Mehta, will open the 2002 Toronto International Film Festival’s Perspective Canada program, which is marked by healthy numbers of returning filmmakers, directorial debuts, East Coast productions and documentaries.

Bollywood/Hollywood combines elements of Indian and U.S. cinema in a musical comedy about an Indo-Canadian dot-com millionaire (Rahul Khanna) who hires an escort (Lisa Ray) to act as his Indian bride to appease his family. David Hamilton produced the film, reportedly budgeted around $2 million. The film is a departure for Mehta, coming on the heels of dramas Earth and Fire. When production on the third film of that trilogy, Water, ground to a halt in India, Mehta decided to return to Toronto and make the comedy. She insists the decision was neither an about-face following the sometimes-violent reception to her films in her Indian homeland nor a reaction to the global mood following 9/11.

‘It was a reaction to me personally,’ Mehta explains. ‘This is where my head and heart were. I wanted to do something for myself that would reconfirm the joy in living.’

Toronto’s Mongrel Media is distributing the film. Earlier this year, Mongrel president Hussain Amarshi said his company would commit to three to five Canadian features per year, and he has succeeded in placing four in Perspective Canada. Marion Bridge, a copro between Toronto’s Sienna Films and Halifax’s Idlewild Productions, is a family drama starring Molly Parker that marks the directorial debut of Wiebke von Carolsfeld, editor on features such as The Five Senses and Eisenstein.

Mongrel is also distributing the selected Past Perfect and The Wild Dogs, two of five films created for the seats 3a & 3c series coproduced by Halifax’s imX communications and the U.K.’s Axiom Films. The five films are linked by the theme of two characters that meet on an airplane.

Past Perfect is the helming debut of Nova Scotia’s Daniel MacIvor (also Marion Bridge’s screenwriter) and stars him and Rebecca Jenkins (South of Wawa) in a story about two pivotal days in the life of a couple. The Wild Dogs, directed by Thom Fitzgerald, who won TIFF1997’s People’s Choice Award for The Hanging Garden, concerns a pornographer, played by the director himself, who travels to Romania to scout models but is instead awakened to the social strife rampant there.

Perspective Canada programmer Stacey Donen says he was struck mostly by the high quality of submissions produced or coproduced in the Atlantic provinces, five of which are in Perspective Canada, up from two last year. The other East Coast films are Is the Crown at War with Us?, a New Brunswick documentary directed by Alanis Obomsawin and released through the National Film Board, and the road movie Yellowknife (Moncton’s Transmar Films and Winnipeg’s Buffalo Gal Pictures), directed by Rodrigue Jean (Full Blast).

The Perspective Canada lineup, consisting of 20 features culled from 156 submissions, includes multiple films produced or coproduced in each provincial region except the Prairies, which has only Yellowknife. The remaining breakdown: Ontario – 10; B.C. – five; Quebec – four. Seventeen Perspective Canada films will be making their world premieres.

Returning heroes

While TIFF2001 was nearly devoid of big-name Canadian directors, this year sees a return of several TIFF heroes, including Atom Egoyan, whose Ararat is the confirmed Opening Night Gala, and David Cronenberg, whose Spider is also a gala.

B.C. director Mina Shum, whose debut Double Happiness received a special jury citation at TIFF1994, hopes to regain that form with Long Life, Happiness and Prosperity from Shaftesbury Films and Massey Productions. Quebec director Robert Morin, who won the 1992 Toronto-City Award for Best Canadian Feature for Requiem pour un beau sans-coeur, returns with Le Neg’ (Cooperative de Production Videoscopique de Montreal/Christal Films).

Nine of this year’s Perspective Canada films are directors’ first features, but several of those are from filmmakers established in other areas.

Barbara Willis Sweete, partner at Toronto’s Rhombus Media and director of numerous arts specials, brings her first theatrical feature, Perfect Pie. B.C. director Keith Behrman, whose Canadian Film Centre comedy short Ernest won a special jury citation at TIFF2000, returns with his feature debut, Flower & Garnet, a drama produced by Screen Siren Pictures starring Callum Keith Rennie.

Donen notes that this year sees a larger-than-ever quotient of feature submissions shot on digital video. Those selected include the seats 3a & 3c films and first-time efforts The Baroness and the Pig by Quebec director Michael Mackenzie, Deadend.com by Toronto’s S. Wyeth Clarkson and Rub & Tug by Toronto’s Soo Lyu.

Rounding out the list of dramas are the directorial debuts Le Marais from Quebec’s Kim Nguyen and Punch by B.C.’s Guy Bennett, as well as Saint Monica, the second Perspective Canada selection from Toronto prodco Sienna Films. The copro with Vancouver’s Rave Films is written and directed by Terrance Odette (Heater).

Five docs

Five Perspective Canada features are documentaries: Is the Crown at War with Us?; Fix: The Story of an Addicted City by director Nettie Wild; Gambling, Gods and LSD by Peter Mettler; Tom by Mike Hoolboom; and The True Meaning of Pictures: Shelby Lee Adams’ Appalachia by Jennifer Baichwal.

Twenty-nine short films will be screened in the program, with an especially strong presence of documentaries and comedies. The animated films The Stone of Folly, directed by Jesse Rosensweet, and Flux, by Chris Hinton, which won recent awards at Cannes and Annecy, respectively, are included. The NFB is distributing the former and produced the latter.

For the 19th year, Citytv will present the $25,000 Toronto-City Award for Best Canadian Feature and, for the 6th year, the $15,000 Citytv Award for Best Canadian First Feature. The $10,000 Award for Best Canadian Short Film will also be presented.

Other TIFF2002 initiatives announced include a re-release of Patricia Rozema’s I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing, a screening of Gilles Carle’s 1972 feature La Vraie nature de Bernadette and a retrospective of the works of esteemed documentarian Allan King.

TIFF2002 runs Sept. 5-14.

-www.e.bell.ca/filmfest