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.
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