Picture if you will – the sight of Piers Handling strutting around a stadium-size concert stage, hips shaking, tongue extended, belting out the lyrics to Start Me Up, while a craggy Keith Richards coughs up three-chord riffs on an open-G-tuned Telecaster.

Even now, on a hot summer morning eight months after she finished shooting it, Deepa Mehta shivers every time she thinks about The Republic of Love.

Paul Sorvino and Ginette Reno star in Mambo Italiano, which joins The Barbarian Invasions and The Republic of Love as Canadian gala presentations at TIFF 2003. The comedy, about a young man coming out of the closet to his immigrant Italian-Canadian family, is directed by Emile Gaudreault, produced by Cinemaginaire and distributed worldwide by Equinoxe Films. Equinoxe scored a big success with the Canadian release of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and is hoping for another sizable hit with Mambo. So far the film has made nearly $3 million at the Quebec box office, and is slated for a September 19 release on 150 screens in English Canada.

Montreal: Jacques Bensimon is approaching the midway point of his five-year mandate as National Film Board chair and government film commissioner.
‘At this point in time we are really going to have to tighten up our ship,’ says Bensimon. It’s not about fatigue setting in, but rather all about gaining a second wind, he adds.

Montreal: The National Film Board’s English Program has over 60 titles in production or slated for release this coming fall and winter.

‘It’s not a sequel in the usual sense of the word,’ says Montreal director of photography Guy Dufaux of The Barbarian Invasions (aka Les Invasions barbares), his latest collaboration with screenwriter/director Denys Arcand. The Cinemaginaire-produced feature will be the third Arcand film – all lensed by Dufaux – to serve as TIFF’s opening night gala.

Piers Handling is entering the busiest month on his calendar, and will soon face 10 days that would flatten most event organizers. But we’re talking about the Toronto International Film Festival, which is in many ways his baby. It is Handling’s 21st year with TIFF, and his ninth as the festival’s director. He’s seen it all by now, but with high expectations stemming from last year’s success and TIFF 2003 coming on the tail end of the SARS scare, Handling says he is feeling more than the usual pressure.

When the Alliance Atlantis feature Foolproof hits screens across this country on Oct. 3, stars Ryan Reynolds, David Suchet and Kristin Booth will be sharing the screen with several strategically placed Toyotas, bags of Frito Lay chips, Pizza Hut boxes and Krispy Kreme doughnuts, thanks to deals struck between those companies and the producers.

While Canadian filmmakers may be in the grips of festival fever, more sober domestic distributors with films at TIFF are busily laying the groundwork for commercial release dates later this year and next.

Montreal: Vivavision has raised over $6.7 million in institutional financing, an investment president and CEO Jean-Pierre Morin says is being used exclusively to fuel the company’s international expansion, although potential acquisitions are a possibility.

Montreal: Cinar Corp. majority shareholders Micheline Charest and Ron Weinberg have asked the Quebec Superior Court to remove Robert Despres as chairman and trustee of the former directors’ 63.3% multiple-voting stake. The court action follows a Quebec Securities Commission ruling last month against the unilateral termination of an April ’02 agreement between Charest, Weinberg and the QSC, which named Despres as trustee. The QSC says the agreement remains in force until a qualified replacement is named.

For many, TIFF is about partaking in a scintillating offering of international cinema. But to biz insiders, what is really most important at the fest is making new connections and picking up on the latest trends in the art and business of filmmaking. That said, all creative types, producers and distributors should find something of interest among this year’s programs at the Rogers Industry Centre.