Films and gaming are a “perfect meeting of the minds” – at least, that’s how TIFF’s Shane Smith sees it. And now that the TIFF finally has the Bell Lightbox as its permanent home, the fest’s director of programs says there’s now a space to explore just how well the two industries go hand-in-hand.

Among its most recent effort was hosting the Arcadian Renaissance, a video game exhibit at the Lightbox for Toronto’s annual all-night arts crawl Nuit Blanche this past weekend, featuring old-school arcade cabinets retrofitted with locally developed games. (No quarters necessary.)

“TIFF built and grew supporting the indie community and local filmmakers,” Smith tells Playback Daily. “There are definite parallels with the gaming community and we’re here to work with them.”

The Renaissance was organized by the Hand Eye Society (HES), a group of Toronto gamemakers and game enthusiasts, as the city is also known for its tight-knit, growing indie game developer community.

HES co-founder Jim Munroe says conversations with TIFF began in the summer, when TIFF’s gaming and new media consultant Nick Pagee saw the public response to the Society’s original arcade cabinet dubbed the Torontron. The HES also secured a number of sponsors for its Nuit Blanche exhibit, including TIFF and the OMDC.

Smith says that the fest group has already been taking steps in this direction for the last three to five years, having hosted game-related panels during TIFF, including this year’s panel ‘Get in the Game: The Worlds of Films and Gaming Collide.’ Titanic and Avatar producer Jon Landau shared the stage with Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner, Ubisoft Toronto MD Jade Raymond, and Mare Sheppard from Toronto indie dev metanet.

“The overlap is there. Filmmakers should be talking to indie developers about their multi-platform worlds, there are multiple ways for the two to work together,” he adds, noting that TIFF’s head of films Jesse Wente is also a game lover.

“Some people don’t realize how much we have in common,” says Munroe, who is both a filmmaker and an indie developer. “It’s exciting to go between mediums and makes sense for this to be happening.”

“We’re still figuring out where the future lies with this relationship, but this is a taste of how we’ll work together,” says Smith. “And gaming will be a part of the Bell Lightbox.”