With all the buzz around world premieres and gala events happening at the Toronto International Film Festival, it’s easy to forget there is also a pretty stellar shorts program in the mix. Consisting of work spanning all genres, the format is a great way to experience new, upcoming talent as well as to check up on a couple familiar faces too. And—new this year—24 hours after their Festival premiere, films will be available to screen at YouTube.com/TIFF until September 19.
The following is a collection of capsule reviews, scores and embedded shorts, where available, in screening block 2.
—Programme 2
A Grand Canal – 19 minutes
Writer/director Johnny Ma’s father was his hero. He was a man who spent months at a time away from home to support his family as well as a boss with dignity who respected his crew. The only thing Ma cared about upon his return was to hear the Liu Huan song he used to love to sing, his presence enough to forgive the absence before it. The melodramatic words of the pop song were a key to understanding the man’s plight and the one lasting memory young ten-year old Johnny held onto after he was gone.
The short film A Grand Canal serves as the goodbye he never received as a child—a way to honor his hero for the strength and character he possessed as well as to change the last silent moment they shared together into one of joyous celebration. So he shoots it all on a dark and grainy stock resembling footage taken in its 1990s setting and follows this new embodiment of his dad (Mei Song Shun) as he makes his final stand for his fellow boatmen desperate for a payday. It’s just unfortunate that the man who needs to sign their invoice is the notorious Boss Wang (Hong Sheng Wang) whom they respect and fear for what he’s capable of doing.
Ma takes us into his kitchen upon his father’s return and over to the wedding his mother (Xiao Min du) threw for Wang’s nephew. We watch the dynamic between their disparate poverty levels as Wang refuses any gifts on behalf of Ma’s father while understanding the tragic result that must come out of his pleading for a signature. It’s a bittersweet love letter to the man he hardly knew set to the melancholy sounds of Huan’s music—one that gives Ma’s ten-year old self a sense of closure he never could find otherwise. It’s a document of a generous man who did his best told by the son who idolized him, ensuring his loss would never be in vain.
A-
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Beasts in the Real World – 8 minutes
If mixed media is a conceptual aesthetic for conventional art collage, why can’t it also work in the context of film? Writer/director Sol Friedman is on a mission to prove it most certainly can by bending genres and styles in his humorous docu-scifi-drama Beasts in the Real World.
What begins as a simple yet fun conveyor-belt journey of a camera at a sushi restaurant passing by unsuspecting subjects quickly shifts towards comedic oddity after it hits the kitchen. Dirtied with water spots, the lens finds it troublesome to focus as it moves along towards one of two bickering chefs. The man picks it up off the belt and places it by his cutting board so we may glimpse a rare fleshy blob-like animal about to get the knife. Before the carnage, however, we’re transported into its mind to witness its impossible origin story amidst a film crew in the forest overtaken by a giant robot, yellow smiley-faced ghosts, and a literal army of junk food.
It’s a mad sequence morphing faux realism into computer effects-heavy artifice before going entirely into hand-drawn animation and back again. Friedman is definitely far from shy in his depiction of brutally violent exchanges between cartoonish figures and over-zealous chefs, never release his comedic edge despite the increasing darkness of frivolous murder and the feeding on its victim. The group of guys who placed the camera on the conveyor-belt for a laugh is in for a real treat when it’s returned to them because the footage is a surrealistically batty romp even without the helpless creature’s flashback that may or may not have somehow been filmed previously.
B
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Seasick – 3 minutes
With traditional Croatian song “Omili Mi” playing over Eva Cvijanovic’s pen and ink animation, Seasick proves to be a gorgeously subtle piece of imaginative wit that transports us to a transparent beach being visited by the pudgy little boy who serves as our star. Unable to remain still in the water and quickly tired of the crisp, clear views his goggles allow him to capture beneath the surface, his want to bask in the sunlight is finally satiated with a huge smile buried in the sand at the shore.
Cvijanovic adds a wonderful water-colored texture to the frame that adds another layer of depth to the thick and thin outlined figures drawn atop it with differing perspectives and focus. The blue of the water possesses a hazy atmosphere shifting to greener hues as the floating debris and swimming fish play tag with the boy desperately reaching out to catch whatever he can in with the joy of a lazy day devoid of worries. The softness of the colors juxtaposes nicely with the darkly drawn black line work until it all disappears so that the remaining white can explain the truth about our new friend’s longing for heat on his face and the warm, refreshing feel of water on his skin.
B
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Éclat du jour [Daybreak] – 11 minutes
Ah, the youth of suburbia wanting for nothing besides a release from the boredom of cookie cutter existences and the politeness of a middle class neighborhood still willing to let its children play outside unsupervised. People love to assume that violent hostility is a product of a violently hostile environment without comprehending how the warmth of safety can be just as destructive as its complete absence. Adolescence comes with a mixture of hormones that simply cannot be stifled by good manners; rebelliousness needs something to rebel against.
This is where Ian Lagarde’s intense look at a group of Montreal youths spending their day combating monotony with the only kind of excitement their age can produce comes in. Éclat du jour [Daybreak] may start off sweetly cute with a budding romance between Alexander Fitchev and Émilie Sénécal hiding tiny smiles and embarrassed airs while their chums dare them to kiss, but it doesn’t take long to experience the dangerous games they play when the adults are away. They yearn for the messiness—the black eyes, skinned knees, and punishments wrought by actions deserving of reprimand. And as Pantera blares out of a boombox, their freedom escalates into mass destruction.
This is the ritualistic escape of a collective youth caught in the malaise of living the same perfect day over and over again until teen years come providing sports, jobs, and the prospect of driver’s licenses and increased curfews. It just takes one’s break with convention to initiate the type of raucous “fun” everyone will partake in due to fears of exclusion. And being at an age when parents may still lie to themselves about their kids “not knowing any better”, the ones smart enough and confident enough to test those boundaries wield their power with carte blanche.
What Lagarde shows may not actually have happened outside the minds of this restless bunch, but it won’t be long before it does unless something drastically changes the landscape of suburban conformity. It’s no surprise that the “better” neighborhoods hold the most drugs and angst—they’re the ones populated by those desperately yearning to feel something beyond the asylum of normalcy. And the ones with the capital to do so.
A-
Noah – 17 minutes
Being graduates of Toronto’s Ryerson University, Walter Woodman and Patrick Cederberg’s Noah has become a great local talent makes good story after its selection into TIFF’s Short Cuts Canada Programme this year. Very much a product of their generation’s plugged-in existence, the short focuses on its titular character’s (Sam Kantor) Apple monitor for the duration. He signs on, opens Chrome to tab into porn and Facebook, and eventually engages in a familiarly odd Skype conversation with girlfriend Amy (Caitlin McConkey-Pirie) about their coming year apart in different cities. It’s a highly personal interaction held via the impersonal machinery of our digital age that quickly spirals out of control when a faulty internet connection ends their chat.
From here arrives an extremely accurate portrayal of what putting our entire lives on the internet has done to our psyches. With unlimited access to every morsel of information we could ever dream of owning, cultivating airs of superiority and privilege was a foregone conclusion. Privacy is extinct and any attempt at finding some is met with paranoia, anger, and jealousy as friends goad us into using all means necessary to expose the truths that are none of our business. As such, instead of giving Amy the benefit of the doubt until reconnecting, Noah proceeds to stalk her Facebook page, discover an “unhealthy” amount of commenting by a Dylan, and ultimately sign-in with her password to investigate further.
It snowballs in record time due to their circle of friends being online and privy to every digital maneuver in real time. Noah does an unconscionable thing, watches the fallout, and does so from the safety of his bedroom computer with videogames and amateur porn a click away to pass the time or distract. iTunes, YouTube, ChatRoulette, and more make an appearance as we witness the twenty-first century’s propensity for convenience, spying, and entitlement all at the detriment of those we supposedly hold dear to our hearts. A voice of reason enters days later (Nina Iordanova’s Lilly) and a stunning revelation sheds light on how self-destructive we have become.
This is romance for today’s youth—sprites on a monitor forever hiding our true selves from each other. We’ve taken this technological leap in communication and usurped its ability to open our world so that we may close ourselves off from it even more. Smart phones, tablets, laptops—they’re all constructed walls keeping us from baring our souls with the ones we love. We’ve become masters at controlling our own information and stealing that of others, transforming us into a scary bunch of power-hungry fools who deserve everything and owe nothing. Noah therefore proves an important work as it documents both this moment in history and our ultimate success in letting human morality and empathy dissolve into nothingness.
A
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Out – 9 minutes
There are many different lifestyles in this world, some more widely accepted than others. The issue of homosexuality is one that remains a hot button issue with both church and state, still recognized by many as a choice rather than a permanent way of life. So divisive a topic, the words “coming out” are almost always assumed to mean a person is going to tell friends and family that he or she is gay. So, when a movie is titled Out with a lead character (Dave Tompa’s Geoff) organizing a dinner to share an announcement with Mom (Rosemary Doyle), Dad (David Huband), and sister Karen (Paula Brancati), it’s not surprising that audiences would automatically think he’s about to say what they’ve already expected and accepted years before.
Jeremy Lalonde’s film takes an interesting turn instead, however, as the declaration Geoff makes with friend Kezia (Tommie-Amber Pirie) is that they are vampires. It’s a witty subversion of the psychologically crippling conversation many young men and women weigh having every day. This stigma that comes with admitting such a lifestyle is one no one can truly anticipate, especially when the vitriol and lack of understanding comes from someone you love. How do they react? How does the atmosphere in the room change? Where does their relationship go next? Gay, lesbian, vampire—being “out” is a life-changing ordeal whether it would in a perfect world or not.
Lalonde keenly includes the stereotypical indifference of a sibling unfazed by contemporary times, the cautiously accepting Dad attempting to retain a level of machismo over his empathy, and an over-zealous Mom going above and beyond the call of duty. Underneath the humor of this outlandishly supernatural situation, though, lies the truth that caring families will never change as a result of such revelations. They’ll love you for who you are no matter what. The real question is whether or not you’re ready to admit who you as someone worthy of such love. This is the actual struggle Tompa and Pirie’s performances sell, culminating in an obvious yet necessary punchline that brings us all back to reality.
B-
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Young Wonder – 6 minutes
Whoever said Link couldn’t take on the entirety of monsters and baddies within one’s collection of action figures? Why must it always be Ganon? What if you didn’t have a Ganon toy? I mean that’s what imaginations are for, right? To make the impossible possible no matter how big or small? So, if you’re camping in the woods and waiting for Mom to come back with food, why not wreak havoc on the rocky landscape with your hero of choice cutting through the rest?
Writer/director James Wilkes brings this concept to life in his short film Young Wonders by introducing us to an excitable youth’s vivid fantasies of a wasteland composed of dead or debilitated characters. Droids, heroes, villains, and even a TARDIS are seen in the lens-flared wasteland before Sebastian Kowdrysh is pitted against Darth Vader in an epic final battle. But just as the fight begins to escalate we’re brought back to reality as older brother Chris Ham arrives with news that Mom (Tracy Rowland) has returned. Not to ruin all the fun, though, their communal journey to the campsite transforms into a war with flying robots overhead and tentacled beasts on the ground.
Wilkes infuses a lot of high-tech effects to give the flights of fancy a place in his otherwise real world setting, going so far as allowing the kids to have laser weaponry and magical powers. Think last year’s Canadian feature I Declare War with a sci-fi bent of technologically advanced machinery and you’ll have an idea of what to expect. But if that comparison means nothing to you, simply bask in the glory of watching this little boy’s imagination come to life onscreen. Just remember, it’s not always about becoming a character from a TV show or movie. Sometimes we only need pretend we’re a different kid outside the confines of our room to have fun.
B
Short Cuts Canada Programme 2 played at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 8th & 9th.
