With a little more than six months to go, TIFF today announced some key changes for the 2017 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival.
As expected, Peter Kuplowsky will be taking over the Midnight Madness program from the departing Colin Geddes Kuplowsky had worked as Geddes programming assistant for several years. And critic and writer (and former NOW contributor) Kiva Reardon officially joined the team as programmer for Africa and the Middle East.
And, as the Hollywood Reporter revealed this morning, the festival will be downsizing, with TIFF’s artistic director (and former NOW staffer) Cameron Bailey promising “tighter curation” and a plan to reduce the lineup by about 20 per cent.
It looks like the cuts begin with the termination of the Vanguard and City To City programs, which don’t appear in the 2017 structure TIFF announced today. And according to another interview with Bailey in today’s Globe And Mail, TIFF’s also shifting itself all the way downtown, abandoning the Hot Docs Cinema and the Isabel Bader Theatre as festival venues.
A smaller, more manageable festival is an undeniably good thing, but this strategy doesn’t really address a key complaint about TIFF, which is that the festival has become obsessed with chasing red carpets and launching Oscar contenders.
The festival even led off today’s press release by listing all of the Oscar contenders that screened at TIFF last year – including Hidden Figures, which didn’t actually screen at TIFF last year. (There was an exclusive event during the festival for TIFF members in which some footage was screened, the actors sat for a Q&A and Pharrell Williams gave a concert on King Street. Not quite the same thing.)
All of this has resulted in a lot of speculative discussion, which is probably what TIFF had in mind: four days before the Academy Awards, we’re talking about a fall film festival and its importance to the city and to cinema culture.
I’m just hoping September’s festival bears out the promise of a slimmer, more audience-friendly event – and that no one has to sit through another dud like The Secret Scripture just because it made for a good red carpet.
Seriously, TIFF. I’m still pissed about that one.
normw@nowtoronto.com | @normwilner
