There are a dozen movies opening in Toronto this weekend, but obviously that isn’t enough for you people. So let’s take a quick look at some of the other stuff that’s happening on our screens.
Nuit Blanche takes over the TIFF Bell Lightbox on Saturday night with four different programs. There’s a concert by the Royal Canadian Chiptunes Orchestra and an interactive moviemaking event called Movie Studio Playhouse, but if you just want to sit and watch something cinematic, Dziga Vertov’s seminal Man With A Movie Camera will be shown with a live digital score by Darren Copeland, and Shawn Hitchins presents an 80s edition of Singing In The Dark, with sing-along screenings of Flashdance, Fame and Dirty Dancing. Details are here, and may God have mercy on your soul if you choose to sing along with Flashdance.
Over at the Carlton Cinema, the fifth Brazilian Film And TV Festival Of Toronto – which its organizers call BRAFFTV, even though that conjures up images of nonstop Scrubs screenings – gets underway in earnest tonight (Friday) after yesterday’s opening gala at the Lightbox.
Ten features and 18 shorter works will be screened over the weekend, including Toniko Melo’s VIPs (Sunday, 4:45 pm), a sort of small-scale South American spin on Catch Me If You Can. There’s also a workshop on Intercultural Mobile Film tonight at 7:30pm at Hart House, and a satellite festival, Pink Latino, next weekend at the Carlton. Full details can be found at the festival’s website.
Back to the Lightbox now, where TIFF Cinematheque is launching a comprehensive Nicholas Ray retrospective under its ongoing Hollywood Classics series. The Cinema Is Nicholas Ray will screen Ray’s emotionally volatile, visually striking melodramas Sunday afternoons and Tuesday evenings from October through December, starting this weekend with his first feature, the pulp-noir They Live By Night. We’ll be discussing this series in the weeks to come, but keep an eye out on the weekend before Halloween, when TIFF is bringing in Ray’s widow Susan to introduce restored prints of Ray’s desert war drama Bitter Victory and his experimental film We Can’t Go Home Again and present her own documentary, Don’t Expect Too Much. You might want to get tickets for those now.
Finally, there’s the return of Hot Docs’ Doc Soup for another season of monthly documentary premieres.
Hot Docs had hoped to launch the 2011-12 season at the refurbished Bloor Cinema, but the venue isn’t ready, so this Wednesday’s kickoff – Gemma Atwal’s Marathon Boy, about the complicated relationship between a pre-teen long-distance runner and his coach, whose vision of turning the kid into a political icon for all of India does not work out precisely as he hopes – will be held at the Lightbox. The 6:45 pm screening is sold out, but tickets are still available for the 9:15 pm show.
