I got a call today from a friend of mine who told me about an upcoming event at the Revue Cinema in Toronto where he is on the board of directors… I have a lot of respect for the folks running the Revue, as they are really encouraging local independent filmmakers with their Drop Your Shorts series of screenings and, now, hosting the Zombie Short Film Festival on October 30th.
From the festival FAQ:
What are the criteria for submissions?
Your film must be shorter than 25 minutes long. It also has to involve zombies in some way.
I have a terrific zombie film, but it’s longer than 25 minutes. Can I enter it anyway?
Sorry…but we need to be firm on the running time, in order to accommodate the viewing needs of our jury and the logistics of the official screening. You are welcome, however, to split the film into shorter segments and enter them as separate submissions, if you wish.
What format should my submission be?
Please submit a DVD in NTSC format, so that it will be playable on a North American DVD player.
When is the submission deadline?
Midnight. October 1, 2009.
Submissions can be from anywhere (not just Canada).
…I’ll bet my friend Craig wishes he’d gone ahead with that zombie-LDS missionary film he’s been pondering for years. Perfect venue for it.
Toronto Star film critic Pete Howell takes an annual pre-festival poll of film critics, industry folks, festival programmers, bloggers, and buffs to get a feeling about which films are the most highly anticipated at the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival. He limits you to 3 films, and your justifications are limited to a single sentence for each.
This year’s fest starts today and runs to the 19th, and I’m heading to town from tomorrow ’til the 14th. Normally, my visit to the festival is planned around the films I wanna see. This year, however, my visit to the festival is planned around a concert I wanna see.
When Pete asked me for my 3 films, though, I chose them without regard to whether or not I would actually be able to see them at the festival. That was beside the point. The point was to choose 3 films I was really keen to see. Which I did. But, as it happens, I won’t be able to see any of ‘em while I’m there. Argh!!
A Town Called Panic
This puppetoon plays as part of the Midnight Madness programme. It is based on a Belgian tv show of the same name, created by Vincent Patar and Stéphane Aubier. As a kid, I was much more apt to pull the cowboys and indians and horses out of the toy box than the Barbies, so it really does look like my childhood toys got together to put on a show. It is stop-motion animation that is charming in its crudeness (I’ll post a couple eps of the show here so you can check it out yourself). In fact, it is, perhaps, that very “backwardness” of the look of it that makes it so appealing to me. Well, that and the absurdity of it.
Life During Wartime
Writer/Director Todd Solondz has made some films I love and when he describes this as being somewhat related to two of my favourites (Welcome to the Dollhouse and Happiness), I am curious to see what he does with the characters that recur. Darkly humourous (what some more gentle souls might call scabrous) satire is Solondz’s gift… the screenplays are so smart, the narrative structures so interesting, the honesty so startling.
My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done
Well, you already know how I feel about Werner Herzog… He actually has two films appearing in this year’s festival. One of them makes me a little nervous–something called Bad Lieutenant, which may or may not have anything to do with Abel Ferrara’s film of the same title (it certainly appears to be related), starring the frequently execrable Nic Cage. It could be great or it could be horrendous. I can’t quite picture it being anywhere in between…
But Pete would only let us pick three films, remember, so I reached for the other new Herzog instead. I hadn’t even heard of it before it was announced for TIFF.
It is based on a true story (which will certainly not stop Herzog from inventing most of the story–on a search for the ecstatic truth, the real truth is just a starting point for him) about an actor who takes a role much too seriously.
David Lynch is the producer. Lynch and Herzog: now, there’s a match made in either heaven or hell, depending on your P.O.V.
