Karen Bruce is the Toronto International Film Festival’s director of Canadian Initiatives. Each day of the festival, she shares her top programming picks and inside tips for getting the most out of the TIFF experience.

How was the first day after the weekend?
I got my voice back! I didn’t go to any parties last night, so everything – including my voice – is thanking me for that. I was fortunate enough that I know Fred Schepisi, the director of The Eye of the Storm, and we were having a glass of wine in the BlackBerry Lounge, then one of the actors in the film, Geoffrey Rush, walked in! I was also hosting an industry dinner, which was lovely and that was it for me.

The premiere of Cafe de flore happened last night and Vanessa Paradis was on the carpet looking ravishing. Scott Speedman was here for Edwin Boyd, and I wasn’t there for this, but I heard he was charming the pants off everyone. And yesterday’s two Short Cuts Canada programs were shown in the TIFF Bell Lightbox and they both had full houses!

We also had Telefilm’s Talent to Watch, and Deepa Mehta’s opening remarks were fantastic. She was very poetic and talked about how moved she was about Polley and about how Canadians should look at filmmaking in general.

What’s on tap for today?
Today we have our biggest program, Telefillm Canada’s Pitch This! at the TIFF Bell Lightbox at noon, open to anyone with a registered delegate pass. Six teams will pitch their feature film in front of a jury and a live audience and the winner will win $10,000 toward production. Also this afternoon at 2 p.m., Michael J. Werner from Fortissimo Films will be coming in as part of the Moguls series in the Filmmakers Lounge.

Tomorrow, there’s a session called State of The Industry: Theatrical release windows and VoD at 10 a.m., also in the Filmmakers Lounge. On that panel is John Fithian from the  National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO) and I presume they’ll be having a robust conversation about shrinking theatrical windows, so everyone should definitely check that out.

There’s also a Festival Music House going on at the Mod Club. You need an invite to go and it started yesterday, continuing until tomorrow. It’s been going on for a few years and it introduces L.A. music executives to Canadian music and up-and-coming artists to help promote their works in film.

What Canadian films should we look out for today?
Hard Core Logo is on tonight, playing back-to-back with Hard Core Logo II. It’s the year of Bruce [McDonald] for me: Paul McEwan’s book Bruce McDonald’s Hard Core Logo (co-published by TIFF and the University of Toronto) also came out and the monograph will be presented alongside the first film. Bruce also did a Master Class for us earlier in the fest. Hugh Dillon, who plays the lead in the film, will also be there. There’s another Goon screening at 9:30 at AMC, if anyone hasn’t seen it, it’s a fantastic film, I’d say that’s definitely going to be a fan favourite of the festival.

Now that we’re into the last half of the festival, how has the energy changed?
The industry starts to leave as of today and tomorrow, so we’ll start to see the streets not as jam-packed. But the energy is still great and if you pop into the TIFF Bell Lightbox, you can still feel it. Everyone’s still out and about. I assume they use the first part of the fest to meet the out-of-towners, and now they really focus on networking with more national folks.