TIFF 2009: The City to City Kerfuffle
Cinema Studies professor Bart Testa comments on the 2009 TIFF program "City to City".
TIFF
It was the week before the start of the Toronto International Film Festival (lately calling itself TIFF for short). This also meant the beginning of the new school year and the usual flurry of final preparations. My colleague Rob King mentioned an email from Kate Laurie Van De Ven about a controversy brewing around the new TIFF program, “City to City.” Kate is a graduate school classmate and friend of Rob’s. I knew her because she enthusiastically looked after interns from our MA program in Cinema Studies, and I had done one of her “Talk Film” breakfast club screenings in 2008. The idea of the City to City series was to match up Toronto and other “cinematic cities” through programming films. Kate’s co-programmer, Cameron Bailey, even speculates that going city-by-city might be a better selection principle than the more conventional one, choosing movies by nationality, which has worked well for the festival for years. TIFF 2009 was also launching a book on Toronto as such a cinematic city, Toronto on Film, a project long developed by critics Geoff Pevere and Tom McSorley. It seemed opportune to launch the City to City series now. Unfortunately, as it turned out, the choice of the city was Tel Aviv. This selection caught the attention of some who saw the TIFF program as an extension of the Israeli government’s new public relations initiative, actually (and ridiculously) called “Brand Israel.” It is meant to burnish the country’s image abroad following two wars with ambiguous outcomes, and rising sympathy for the Palestinian cause.
Artist and filmmaker, York University film instructor and UofT Ph.D. candidate – and more notably known as frequent flyer around TIFF’s edgier programs for years -- John Grayson led the charge against TIFF’s Tel Aviv program. He withdrew his short “Uncovered” and launched the attack against TIFF. He was accompanied by Naomi Klein (of No Logo fame) and their “Toronto Declaration” petition against the City to City series quickly drew signatures from many film people and intellectuals (Judith Butler, Slavoj Zizek) plus a few celebrities (director Ken Loach and actress Jane Fonda). That became the lead story on TIFF 2009 internationally as the festival swung into opening week-end. (For the petition text and follow ups, see. http://australiansforpalestine.com/tiff-news-toronto-declaration-no-celebration-of-occupation-2sep0 and http://torontodeclaration.blogspot.com/).
As one can imagine, this shook up the folks over at TIFF. The Toronto Film Festival Group is an organization that has grown more corporate, bland and entrenched every year. It is now trying hard to close the substantial funding gap between what it has raised and what it needs to open and run its new King Street head quarters, The Bell Lightbox. The facility is being built under a skyhigh condo on a parcel of high-stakes real estate donated by the Canadian-in-Hollywood director Ivan Reitman and his family. Political controversy was not anticipated to be on TIFF’s agenda this year.
It was Kate’s first festival program ever and here she was, an almost-Ph.D in cinema herself facing the condemnation of her international colleagues. Fortunately, Cameron Bailey, former freelance film critic (at Now, a lot of TV too) and now very highly placed as Co-Director of TIFF is a cool customer not easily shook, Bailey offered a rigorous icily reasoned defense of the City to City project. (See http://showhype.com/story/toronto_international_film_festival_cameron_bailey/)
The Toronto film festival is not new to controversy but in the past the challenges came against individual films and usually came from those (like the Ontario Censor Board) who objected to something sexual, less often something political. The festival tested censors’ limits in its early years but, for decades now, the media news was all puff pieces about which stars were attending, who looks promising as a hot new director, and all the rest of the folderol about fest parties and red carpets that makes up the buff around TIFF. Part of the hype is the ritual cascade of asides about how TIFF was a “people’s festival,” which at this point is still perhaps true (theatres are packed to the last screening by regular filmgoers putting down real money for movies that never would otherwise grace Toronto screens), but that demotic side of TIFF has long been paved over by the fleets of stretch limousines. TIFF simply assumes reams of sweet press- and gets it. TIFF also assumes that the outfit is always on the side of the angels, that it reflects more or less perfectly the cosmopolitan disposition of the bien pensant international film culture’s group mind.
Once the controversy busted out, it at first raised potentially uncomfortable questions that one can raise about any large film festival -- about government, or corporate, sponsorships of film series at TIFF and how they originate and come to be tasked, what trade-offs are involved, and so on. However, these were left behind once the rhetoric started to fly and lines drawn between well rehearsed parties, those on the left claiming that Israel was now an “apartheid society,” and, on the right, Jewish organizations who came to Israel’s defense in familiar ways. They had each their voices in the newspapers – for example, with Naomi Klein trading op ed pieces with film producer Robert Lantos in the Globe and Mail. (For Klein, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/we-dont-feel-like-celebrating-with-israel-this-year/article1278582/; for Lantos, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/theres-justice-and-then-theres-propaganda/article1281264/). Eventually, on the Monday after the opening week-end, the “Toronto Declaration” group and supporters held a large rally at Ryerson University hosted by Judy Rebnick, a professor there. Two days later, Atom Egoyan came out in defense of TIFF at the Globe. (www.theglobeandmail.com/news/.../sept...letters.../article1290419/).
The net effect on the series? Well, ticket sales went very well and the Tel Aviv series, which could have languished as an obscure sidebar, sold out. The Tel Aviv program was in fact buried past the opening week-end in the weekday schedule well before it became controversial. It almost certainly benefited from the debate.
There were nine films, four of them brand new in 2009 by young directors (Bena, Kirot, Phobidilia, Kalat Hayam), one from 2006, The Bubble, the final three older perspective-setting features, Life According to Agfa, The Big Dig, Big Eyes. There were also two compilation documentaries on the history of Israeli cinema. The main films were all set in Tel Aviv or neighboring Jaffa and were intentionally city film, and a bit different from most Israeli movies. Tel Aviv is Israel’s modern city, its “life style” city, with some sense about it that one can escape the vexed politics of the region. While these were interesting films, and skillfully handled, and did convey a sense of Tel Aviv and one that is not without tensions and ironies, one would not, after seeing these films expect from Tel Aviv a major breakout director anytime soon, as one does still looking to Seoul, or (again) Taipei or Lagos. However, it is in such a middle range of competent films that the sprawling TIFF can be unusually informative – in the way the two big film festivals in New York – which tend to reach for major films -- or the smaller ones, like Vancouver’s, are not, focused on obscure and, one hopes, arresting films. The Tel Aviv program was buried in the weekday schedule, well before it became controversial, and it probably benefited from the debate.
It was now Thursday, September 11 and I was back in the office, having already seen two TIFF films and launched my biggest course and was preparing myself for a large infusion of films (after a summer-long diet of DVDs and action pictures) when my own email from Kate Lawrie arrived. She was asking me to be on the Tel Aviv panel discussion the following Tuesday. My qualification was that I teach a course at Innis called “The Cinematic City” and so know about the subject. That is true but I do not know much about Israeli films, much less about Tel Aviv and its films. Also, I had agreed to do a panel in another program, “Dialogues: Talking with Pictures,” with Irish director Neil Jordan (the film he chose to talk with was Fellini’s The White Sheik). It was on the same day as the Tel Aviv session. I also had the excuse that I had classes during the panel, and that time was short to get someone to cover them. Still, it did not take thirty seconds to imagine that Kate’s phone list was not long (“cinematic city” has become a fashionable topic, but not many actually teach it) and those on it might be a bit leery. Once the charge of this TIFF program being used for propaganda purposes was made, it might stick. There really is a “Brand Israel” campaign and all that upsets most academics. I did not see anyone in the academy jumping to defend TIFF, and then, too, the panel itself could get unpleasant…so I could imagine reasons for some reluctance out there. My own reluctance was more banal. It had to do with the prospect of watching DVD “screeners” and doing some furious reading and making notes, instead of gorging myself on TIFF movies, or else I’d be watch them after and then deep in the night.
Well, a quick call covered the classes and I learned there had been some discussions around the College about the TIFF kafuffle. I had just reviewed a book on Jordan and knew Fellini well. Having lost my excuses and steeling myself to some extra preparation, I called Kate inside ten minutes and was on my bike within the hour to retrieve those DVD screeners. I stayed up late a few nights – double-billing these Tel Aviv films, pawing through articles on the Internet – and was reasonably well prepared. I was glad of the due diligence was since the filmmakers were so young – in their early thirties -- and enthusiastic and smart. They seemed to make their films with considered savvy and intent, and without any of the whine tyro directors can affect. There were also two older men, film producers, who had that avuncular cineaste thing about them. Non-Hollywood producers develop this because they in fact spend a fair bit of time among intellectuals and talk their own version of film criticism. They spent as much time disagreeing with one another on the panel as they did with us. Once Kate, Cameron and I moved past our semi-academic preliminaries on the idea of cinematic cities and got right down into the films, a lively two hours ran by swiftly. There were no incidents and no unpleasantness at the panel. I did not expect anything exciting would occur anyway. On the other hand, there was also very little in the way of audience. I suspect that in being all-shook-up about the controversy, TIFF neglected to advertise or promote it much.
Bart Testa
Cinema Studies