2017 TIFF Movies & the Business Lessons Learned

As many of you know, I go to TIFF every year and see 20 or so movies. This year, it seemed that the common theme in the movies that I saw was “change” – both actual physical change as well as social change. 

In business, change is a constant.  In my business, there are many external changes that I need to be aware of – changes to the laws, changes in technology, the way clients want to be communicated with and the products that are available.

Back to the movies.

Let’s start with “physical change”.  I saw the movie “Kodachrome”, a story about the relationship between a father and son. The father, a famous photographer who shoots only on film, approaches his son, a record producer, to take a road trip to Parsons, Kansas to develop his last rolls of Kodachrome film before the last developing lab closes.  FYI – this movie was shot on film (versus most are now shot digitally).  Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose or the English version of the proverb - the more things change, the more they stay the same.   Perhaps the best scene was towards the end of the movie, when all the photographers who gathered in Parsons, stand to applaud the dying famous photographer.

Contrast this with a film one of my friends saw – “High Fantasy” shot entirely on iPhones, supposedly by the actors in the movie. This movie is by the award-winning South African director, Jenna Bass.  Quite a contrast in technology between the “old” film video cameras and an iPhone.

And in the middle of these two movies was “Jane”, a biography of Jane Goodall that integrates incredible 50 year old National Geographic 16mm archival footage, shot by Hugo van Lawick, with new digital footage shot by Brett Morgen. This movie tells the story of Jane Goodall and the chimpanzees in Tanzania's Gombe Stream National Park. This film discusses the development of this project that started out studying chimpanzee behavior in the wild to help understand human behavior and now is involved in raising awareness, protecting and expanding the forests in Africa to protect the wildlife.  Their mission statement is “Protecting wildlife, empowering people.” www.janegoodall.ca I guess this movie was not just about the “physical changes” but also change in knowledge and society attitudes.

Many of the movies discussed social change.  I saw “Novitiate” A coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of Vatican II and the massive reforms to the Catholic Church that took place between 1962 and 1965. It was interesting to watch the members of the order adapt (or not) to these changes.  For those of you looking for a review of Vatican II, check out the Wikipedia article.  This movie documented what happens when social change is sudden and you need to adapt or give up your dream. 
Another movie that I saw that integrated social and technological change was “Silas”. This movie profiled the life of Liberian activist Silas Siakor, a tireless crusader against illegal logging and a symbol of resistance for a new generation against the backdrop of a corrupt, democratically elected government.  The technology?  A phone app – TIMBY ( www.timby.org/  ) that enables ordinary citizens to safely record and submit examples of illegal logging to a central group who can use this “proof” to force change.  This app is now being used in other parts of the world to record and report other illegal activities.

“Professor Marston & the Wonder Women” reveals how a trio of brilliant thinkers embraced an unconventional lifestyle (menage a trois) and gave birth to an icon of female power – Wonder Woman.  Their lifestyle, that was offside in the 1920’s has now become main stream (at least in the Western world), even if it is still not common place. The character of Wonder Woman has generated almost as much controversy as the lifestyle of Professor Marston. 

Social change (or not) was a primary theme in the movie “Sweet Country” an outback western inspired by real events in 1929. This is a story of personal conviction and settler justice set in the stark panoramas of Australia's Northern Territory. It discusses the different justice for Aboriginals and “white” men.  This is in stark contrast to the start of every film at TIFF this year that began with the TIFF person introducing the film starting by thanking the local tribes for “hosting TIFF on their lands”.

The changes in my business have been steady. I now routinely complete life insurance applications online while talking to my clients by telephone or “Skype”. I have access to a much broader product offering than when I started in the business in 2001. I also conduct my business very differently with a lot more online processes and fewer face to face and snail mail exchanges than ever before.
So how do you incorporate “change” in your life and business?  Even carrying around a Smart Phone changes much of what we do on a daily basis.  If you want to chat about change (or any other subject), give me a call or send me an email.


TIFF 2017 Full List of Award Winners
TIFF Full List of all PAST Award Winners

Full List of my 2017 TIFF Movies (in alphabetical order)

1.       Azmaish: A Journey through the Subcontinent - Pakistani director Sabiha Sumar and Indian actor Kalki Koechlin take an inspiring and stunning transnational journey through India and Pakistan, uncovering the common humanity beyond the divisive political rhetoric.

2.       The Captain - Director Robert Schwentke (The Time Traveler’s Wife, RED, Insurgent) returned to his native Germany to make this stunning black-and-white war movie, which follows a young German deserter as he tries to survive in the deadly final days of the Third Reich.

3.       A Ciamra - Jonas Carpignano’s coming-of-age story about a 14-year-old boy in a Romani community in southern Italy who is eager to prove he can be a man and is thrust into adulthood when his brother goes missing.

4.       Darkest Hour - Gary Oldman steps into the imposing persona of Winston Churchill in this period drama from director Joe Wright (Pride and Prejudice, Atonement), set in the early years of World War II.

5.       The Death of Stalin - Armando Iannucci (Veep) directs Jeffrey Tambor, Steve Buscemi, and Andrea Riseborough in this acerbic send-up of the Soviet dictator and the bootlick Ministers who vie for power after his sudden demise

6.       Downsizing - Matt Damon headlines a cast that includes Kristen Wiig, Christoph Waltz, Hong Chau, Laura Dern, Jason Sudeikis, Alec Baldwin, and Neil Patrick Harris in Alexander Payne’s sci-fi social satire about a man who chooses to shrink himself (literally) to simplify his life.

7.       Hochelaga, Terre des Ames - Mohawk archaeologist Baptiste Asigny engages in a search for his ancestors following a tragic terrain slump in the Percival Molson Stadium, in François Girard’s multifaceted portrait of Montreal’s rich history.

8.       Jane - Academy Award–nominated director Brett Morgen (On the Ropes) reconstitutes 50-year-old National Geographic footage into a poetic look at primatologist Jane Goodall, set to a magnificent score by Philip Glass.

9.       Kodachrome - Jason Sudeikis, Elizabeth Olsen, and Ed Harris star in this touching road movie that doubles as an elegy for analog in the digital age.

10.   Looking for Oum Kulthum - Shirin Neshat’s movie-within-a-movie about an ambitious Persian director’s attempts to film the life and legacy of legendary Egyptian singer Oum Kulthum.

11.   Professor Marston & the Wonder Women - Luke Evans (High-Rise, Beauty and the Beast), Rebecca Hall (Christine), and Bella Heathcote (Fifty Shades Darker) star in this biopic of William Moulton Marston, the American psychologist who put his progressive ideals about female liberation into practice by creating the DC superhero Wonder Woman and living in an "extended relationship" with his wife and another woman.

12.   Novitiate - Oscar winner Melissa Leo (The Fighter) oversees a bevy of up-and-coming female actors in this drama about aspiring nuns at an isolated Catholic school in 1964, who are forced to re-examine their faith and their calling in light of the liberal reforms of Vatican II.

13.   Number One - In this whip-smart drama about corporate sexism, top French star Emmanuelle Devos plays a high-ranking female executive who is forced to consider her options and marshal her forces when she realizes that the glass ceiling is fast approaching.

14.   Short Cuts – A number of short movies

15.   Silas - Anjali Nayar and Hawa Essuman profile the life of Liberian activist Silas Siakor, a tireless crusader against illegal logging and a symbol of resistance for a new generation.

16.   The Square - Swedish provocateur Ruben Östlund (Force Majeure) took home the Palme d’Or at Cannes for this no-holds-barred satire of the postmodern art world, about a self-important curator whose attempts to mount an ambitious exhibition go hilariously awry.

17.   Sweet Country - Accused of murder, an Aboriginal stockman and his wife try to stay ahead of a fervent posse in the harsh outback of the Northern Territory, in this period drama from acclaimed Australian filmmaker Warwick Thornton (Samson & Delilah).

18.   The Third Murder  - Festival favourite Hirokazu Kore-eda (Still Walking, Nobody Knows) takes a fascinating left turn with this intricate murder mystery, about a defense attorney who believes that his client — the self-confessed killer of a wealthy industrialist — is the fall guy for a sinister conspiracy.

19.   Unicorn Store - Brie Larson stars in her directorial debut about a dreamer reluctant to abandon her childish wonder who is offered the most magical gift she can imagine, with Samuel L. Jackson, Joan Cusack, and Bradley Whitford.

20.   Victoria & Abdul - Acclaimed British auteur Stephen Frears reunites with his Philomena star, Academy Award winner Judi Dench, in this charming dramedy chronicling the friendship between Queen Victoria and a decades-younger Indian clerk named Abdul Karim.

Books educate, movies inspire, people cause change.  This was the take-home message from a number of the Q & As with the directors from the movies I saw at TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) this year.

TIFF started as a small “Festival of Festivals” in Toronto in 1976 collecting the films from other film festivals around the world and showing them to eager audiences in Toronto.¹ That first year, 35,000 enthusiasts watched 127 films from 30 countries.  Today TIFF shows around 400 movies (most 3 times) to over 400,000 people over the course of 10 days in September. Many of these movies are International or North American Premiers.  In addition, to the public screenings, there are screenings for the press and industry insiders.

I have been going to TIFF and seeing around 20 movies each year since 2007.  For 4 or 5 years before that, I went to 2 or 3 movies each year.  I’ve been fortunate that each year I see a couple of great movies that often don’t play for years (if ever).

Several of the movies I saw promote the values of transforming the way people see the world and the way that we interact. 

Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble will be released in the spring of 2016.  Yo-Yo Ma does not see himself as a musician, but as an agent of change. The Silk Road Ensemble's aspiration is to "create unexpected connections".  In the movie, we hear the magnificent results of blending musical cultures; If you’re into music or exploring the variations in culture, this movie is for you.

I saw two environmental movies – Return of the Atom and This Changes Everything.  Return of the Atom explored the issue of nuclear energy from multiple perspectives (scientific, safety, pro and con opinions) and encouraged the viewer to draw their own opinion.  This Changes Everything (based on the book by Naomi Klein) encourages people to take action to change the world.   No matter your opinion on the environment (or your business), it is important to continuously educate yourself and be true to yourself.  This was also the theme of Michael Moore’s new movie – Where to Invade Next. Michael Moore travels the world looking at what he refers to “American solutions” being used around the world for American problems.

There’s always a way to get to your goal.  You may be a movie director in Iran who has been banned from making movies, so you drive around Tehran in a cab recording everyday life as Jafar Panhai did in his movie Taxi.  You could also live in a small village in Tibet and decide to go on a “bowing” pilgrimage (laying your bodies flat on the ground after every few steps) along the 2000 kilometre road to Lhassa in Paths of the Soul (a fictionalized true story). Or a 70 year old man who has never left his village, driving 3000 miles to Darwin, Australia to participate in assisted suicide in Last Cab to Darwin.  These movies depict human perseverance in a positive light and reaffirm your belief in other people and in the helping relationships that we all develop though our lives.

I tell people that going to TIFF isn’t a vacation.  I consider that seeing movies is a way to get a fresh perspective on my life and my business (especially when you see 20 films in a 10 day period).  If you missed TIFF and don’t want to wait until next September, Toronto is very fortunate to have many film festivals throughout the year - https://www.facebook.com/TorontoFilmFestivals  or http://www.blogto.com/toronto/the_best_film_festivals_in_toronto/

Check out the full list of movies that I saw (with short summaries).  The ones that I recommend are marked with an “*”. If there are 2 “*” it is a highly recommend and I think that you should see it when it plays near you. 

¹ Check this link for the history of TIFF - http://tiff.net/explore/history and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto_International_Film_Festival

Alphabetical List of 2015 TIFF Movies I Saw

ARABIAN NIGHTS TRILOGY – This art trilogy, won many awards. 

BABA JOON - Chronicling the burgeoning conflict between father and son in a hard-working Iranian-Israeli family.

*CROMO – an Environmental / Thriller TV series that will be airing in Argentina.        

*JAFAR PANAHI'S TAXI – Jafar Panahi is an Iranian filmmaker who is banned from making movies, so I guess this isn’t a movie.  It shows a side of Iranian life that is the same as everywhere else in the world.

*JOURNEY OF A THOUSAND MILES: PEACEKEEPERS – a documentary about female Peacekeepers from Bangladesh that are sent to Haiti for a year.

**LAST CAB TO DARWIN – Assisted suicide was briefly available in Australia. This is the moving story of one man’s journey.

*LEN AND COMPANY – The story of how we are influenced and changed by the people around us

*LOOKING FOR GRACE – An Australian film, about parents looking for their teenage daughter

*MAGGIE'S PLAN – a chick flick about a women who needs to control everything     

**MUSIC OF STRANGERS: YO-YO MA AND THE SILK ROAD – This ensemble is the result of a workshop at Tanglewood and is a microcosm of the world.  If you’re into music, the blending of cultures or how blending different points of view can be much better than its parts.  This will be released Spring 2016

*PATHS OF THE SOUL – a documentary about members from a Tibetan village who go on a pilgrimage    

PROMISED LAND -  A Chinese film discussing the movement of the young people to the big cities       

*P.S. JERUSALEM – This is an autobiography of Danae Elon (daughter of Amos Elon) on her return to live in Jerusalem with her family after an absence of 20 years. They are currently living in Montreal.

*RETURN OF THE ATOM - A documentary showing all the viewpoints of the construction of a nuclear power plant on the remote Finnish island of Olkiluoto.

SONG OF SONGS - The film recreates the idyllic village life of a Hasidic community in a turn-of-the-century Ukrainian shtetl.  

SHORT CUTS PROGRAMME 10   

Quiet Zone

Clouds of Autumn

Nulla Nulla

Hide & Seek

Tuesday

Oslo’s Rose

A Tale of Love, Madness and Death

*THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING - Directed by Avi Lewis and based on Naomi Klein's bestselling book of the same name, This Changes Everything is an urgent dispatch on climate change that eschews the abstract and rhetorical in favour of the personal and immediate. Can be seen everywhere – check their website

WAVELENGTHS 1 - FIRE IN THE BRAIN

3D Movie

Fugue

Prima Materia

A Fire in My Brain that Separates Us

Something Horizontal

The Exquisite Corpus

**WHERE TO INVADE NEXT –Michael Moore’s latest movie. He travels the world (mostly Europe) to find solutions to the problems in the USA (e.g. gourmet school lunches in France, 8 weeks of vacation in Italy, free college education [including for Americans] in Slovenia, etc.}

*WHITE KNIGHTS – The story of an NGO trying to rescue 300 children from the civil war in Chad. Or are they?  You get to write the ending.

 

Toronto International Film Festival 2014

Another year of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) has come to an end and it’s time for me to let you know what movies to watch out for.  This year, I only saw 18 movies (over 7 days). Only one was a Hollywood movie – Learning to Drive, staring Patricia Clarkson and Ben Kingsley.  It is a chick flick and was enjoyable. The plot summary - After her husband leaves her, a Manhattan writer (Patricia Clarkson) finds solace in her biweekly lessons with a Sikh driving instructor (Ben Kingsley), in this adaptation of Katha Pollitt’s 2002 essay for The New Yorker.  

I always am asked which movie did I like the best.  Of the 18, I saw, there were only 2 that I didn’t think were TIFF quality and both were perfectly good “Made for TV” movies.  (Much better than the year I saw Mother and Son which was so bad, you can’t find it on Google.

Amongst my favourites were the following:

The Dead Lands

In this dazzling action epic set in pre-colonial New Zealand, the young son of a murdered tribal chieftain seeks vengeance on his family’s killers by learning the ancient Maori martial arts from a legendary warrior. This film is in Maori, shows how the 16 year old chieftain’s son grows up and develops the ability to make independent decisions that go against tribal customs.

Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet

The Prophet, by Lebanese author Kahlil Gibran, is among the most popular volumes of poetry ever written, having inspired millions of readers in over forty languages since its publication in 1923. Director Roger Allers (The Lion King) assembled an array of internationally acclaimed animators to realize episodes from the classic text by the renowned Lebanese poet, which are woven into the tale of a mischievous young girl (voiced by Beasts of the Southern Wild’s Quvenzhané Wallis) who attempts to free an imprisoned poet (Liam Neeson). This animation in this movie was incredible and it prompted me to re-read the poetry.

 
X + Y

If you were a nerd or know one, this movie is for you. A socially awkward teenage math prodigy (Asa Butterfield, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, Hugo) finds new confidence and new friendships when he lands a spot on the British squad at the International Mathematics Olympiad, in this warm and inspirational drama co-starring Sally Hawkins, Rafe Spall and Eddie Marsan.

Whiplash

If you’re into Jazz or drumming, you will enjoy this movie, which was filmed in 19 days.  An ambitious young drummer (Miles Teller) at a prestigious music academy clashes with a hard-driving instructor (J.K. Simmons) in this sizzling drama.  Miles Teller does all his own drumming.  By the end of the movie, I was exhausted, much like the young drummer at the end of   his incredible playing

Seymour, An Introduction

Ethan Hawke directs this intimate documentary portrait of classical pianist, composer, author, teacher and sage Seymour Bernstein. The teaching style of Mr. Bernstein is in stark contrast to that of the Instructor in Whiplash, that there is no comparison.  The movie is worth seeing, just for the classical piano playing.

 

List of the Movies I saw:

·       The Lesson

·       The Dead Lands

·       The Crow’s Egg

·       Kahil Gibran’s The Prophet

·       Who Am I – No system is safe

·       X + Y

·       Kill me three times

·       1001 Grams

·       Red Rose

·       Whiplash

·       Theeb

·       Mr Turner

·       The Look of Silence

·       Run

·       Learning to drive

·       International Shorts

·       Li’l Quinquin

·       Seymour, An introduction

I received comments (by email) from a number of people in response to this blog.  I thought that I would add them below:

1)

My favourite movie was definitely Second Chance, directed by Susanne Bier, Oscar winning director of After the Wedding and A Better World.

It's a story about a detective and his wife who have a newborn baby.  So do the junkie couple that he has arrested in the past and that he visits to find their baby neglected and lying in filth.  The detective's baby suddenly dies one night of SIDS and in the horror of the moment he races over to the junkie couple's apt and switches the babies, assuming that their child will die anyway and he can give their child a "second chance."  All these assumptions play out differently than anyone could imagine.

Runner up for me was Pride - wonderful true story.  It's already playing in theatres now, so if you have a chance to see it you'll really enjoy it.

 

 2)

Thanks for the summary of these movies.  We go to movies, perhaps twice a month.  We just saw "my old lady" with a wonderful cast.  Kevin Kline, Maggie Smith, and Kristen Scott Thomas (?) spelling.  So far this year I haven't seen anything that spoke to me since, "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen" which is the best movie I have seen in years.  It was funny and poignant and not the least predictable.  That was a last year's movie.  I love to watch TCM movies, which are such fun.  I don't know if you get that channel, but it is amazing if one likes older movies.

 

3)

The one we saw and did not like was The Riot Club. The acting and production was good but both of us left wondering, why make this movie?