Toronto Arts Thread

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I don't know if there is any interest in this, but I thought I'd start a new thread for posting articles, and for discussion of the local arts/culture scene. These are exciting times in our city for cultural institutions and I thought maybe we could keep track of some of the events!
I'll start with an online article from today's Globe and Mail. Link:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts




Hot Docs marks 15th year with biggest event ever

JENNIE PUNTER

From Friday's Globe and Mail

April 18, 2008 at 5:06 AM EDT

The hair was flinging (Anvil!), the sky was falling (Air India 182) and insects that look like Isabella Rossellini were swinging (the Green Porno shorts) last night, as the 15th-annual Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Film Festival launched for what could be the biggest, most enthusiastic and luckiest doc audience in the world.

The festival - the largest of its kind in North America, as it likes to remind us - includes a full-service market that kicks into gear today. It expects a record 80,000 public admissions and thousands of industry delegates this year. And it has chosen to celebrate its somewhat notable birthday not by throwing a big insider shindig but by giving the people more hot docs: The festival presents 170 films, up from 130 last year, at 253 screenings, up from 203. That's a lot of docs.

To help patrons decide, the festival's printed and online schedule groups films into a wide array of subject areas - from films on the arts (including a fabulous program called Next: Artists and the Artistic Process) to those tackling war and conflict (buzz films like Betrayal and Virtual JFK) and everything in between.

Hot Docs is the place to catch freshly minted Canadian work - 32 films, including 14 world premieres - and the hottest docs from such notable festivals as Sundance and IDFA, along with premieres of international works that have only screened in their home countries. It's a perfect mix for this multicultural town.

The Globe and Mail

Genie-winning Jennifer Baichwal (Manufactured Landscapes) gets a five-film retrospective this year, while veteran cinematographer and filmmaker Richard Leacock (Monterey Pop) receives the fest's Outstanding Achievement award and a seven-film retrospective.

Of particular interest this year are two eye-opening country-focused programs: Made in Mexico and Spotlight on Iran. Earlier this week, it was reported that several Iranian filmmakers were having difficulty obtaining travel visas to attend the festival. If successful, they will participate in Iran to You (April 24, 4 p.m.), one of four free Hot Docs panel talks at Innis Town Hall.


Hot Docs tickets are available at the box office, 87 Avenue Rd. (Hazelton Lanes, upper level); 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. during the festival, by phone (416-367-5150) or online (http://www.hotdocs.ca); $10 (screenings before 6 p.m.), $12 (after 6 p.m.), $5 (after 11 p.m.), seniors/students free before 6 p.m. Same day/rush tickets are available at venues.




also from the Globe and Mail. Link:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...Entertainment/


Luminato extends CEO contract by three years

MICHAEL POSNER

From Friday's Globe and Mail

April 18, 2008 at 5:17 AM EDT

Toronto — Luminato, Toronto's festival of arts and creativity, is thinking long-term. It has agreed to extend chief executive officer Janice Price's contract for three more years - through the 2011 festival.

A Canadian, Price had spent a decade working in arts administration in the United States. She's nearing the end of a two-year contract.

Price has also commissioned two ambitious works for future Luminatos. The first is The Africa Trilogy, a theatrical project based on former UN special envoy for HIV/AIDS Stephen Lewis's Massey Lectures, and spearheaded by Toronto director Ross Manson, of Volcano. The plays, by Binyavanga Wainaina of Kenya, Roland Schimmelpfennig of Germany, Christina Anderson of the U.S., Josette Bushell-Mingo of Britain and Liesl Tommy of South Africa, are expected to be ready for the 2010 Luminato.

Lip Synch, the second project, a collaboration of Quebec theatre artist Robert Lepage's Ex Machina company and Britain's Théâtre Sans Frontières, is said to involve 27 performers, designers and technicians from Quebec, Spain, Germany, Canada and Britain.

This year's Luminato runs June 6 to 15.

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From yesterday's Toronto Star. link:
http://www.thestar.com/article/415325

Price is right to keep Luminato arts fest shining


Signing CEO Janice Price for three more years means fest can plan more ambitious projects
Apr 17, 2008 04:30 AM
Martin Knelman

The board of Luminato, Toronto's festival of arts and creativity, has signed Janice Price, its visionary and energetic leader, to a three-year extension of her contract as CEO.

That means Price will be at the helm for a minimum of the first five Luminato festivals, starting with its debut last year and lasting through the 2011 edition.

The deal, engineered by Luminato co-founders David Pecaut and Tony Gagliano, was approved and applauded at a lunch-hour board meeting at Harbourfront Centre. And it's clearly great news for Toronto.

With an eye to the future, Price revealed Luminato is already involved in co-commissioning two hugely ambitious undertakings for coming festivals:

Lip Synch, a nine-hour theatre-and-music epic, the latest breakthrough from Robert Lepage, that genius of Quebec theatre, who invited Price to attend a workshop at Ex Machina, his company's Quebec City base, last month.

Her response: "It's just amazing, with the stories of eight or nine key characters from all over the world intersecting the way they might in a Robert Altman movie."

The Africa Trilogy, a globe-hopping theatrical look at Africa's relationship with the West, inspired by a series of Massey Lectures on that subject delivered by Stephen Lewis. This is a multinational co-production that involves the Dora-winning Toronto company Volcano.

"We're thrilled to have this extension," says Pecaut, who lured Price, a Torontonian, back in 2006 with the help of executive search consultant Daniel Weinzweig.

At that time, Price – who had spent 10 years in the U.S. in top arts administration jobs at Lincoln Center in New York and the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia – was signed to a two-year contract, due to expire this summer.

As Price and Pecaut made clear yesterday, the combination of Price's extension and a long-term funding windfall from the Ontario government give Luminato a tremendous opportunity to make its mark collaborating with artistic organizations all over – whether they're in Toronto, the rest of Canada or other countries – on the kind of ambitious projects that have to be planned years in advance.

"Knowing that I will be here for the next five years and having the long-term funding support we have received adds up to a major intersection of stability," Price said. "It means we can form partnerships and do strategic planning for new work that might take three or four years before we can actually have it in the Luminato program."

For Price, who sees Luminato as a great, expanding arts centre without walls, there is a huge difference between presenting a show that has already been produced elsewhere and being a key part of its creation.

"It changes the whole dynamic when we are involved in commissioning work," she says.

Cases in point from last year's Luminato festival: Not the Messiah, a spoof that involved the collaboration of British comedy genius Eric Idle and his cousin, TSO maestro Peter Oundjian, went on to tour Australia and will also tour the U.S. after being commissioned for Luminato and having its world premiere at Roy Thomson Hall.

And Norman, about the great National Film Board animation creator Norman McLaren, went on a 12-city tour to places including Hong Kong and Mexico City after being co-commissioned by Luminato and the National Arts Centre.

"If you look at an arts event as a product," says Price, "then you see there is a manufacturing pipeline that makes it possible. We can play a key part in that process."

In other words, Luminato can cause a work of art to be created – and then share the payoff with Toronto audiences.

Tickets for this year's Luminato go on sale this week, and the brochure, which boasts 80 per cent free events, will be widely distributed. The festival, opening on June 6, runs through June 15.

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Also from the Toronto Star. link:
http://www.thestar.com/article/414902

THEATRE

The show must go on

Ben Elton says with 24 top 10 Queen hits not heard in the first show "it would be foolish not to" pen a 'We Will Rock You' sequel.



Get ready for a sequel to We Will Rock You, and it may start here
Apr 16, 2008 04:30 AM
Richard Ouzounian
theatre critic

Hey Toronto, get ready to rock again.

In an exclusive interview yesterday, show writer-director Ben Elton told the Star that not only is a We Will Rock You sequel planned, but there is a very good chance it could start in Toronto.

"We love this city so much," said Elton, "not just the talent of its actors but the generosity of its audiences. It's a lovely thought to start it all over again here, isn't it?"

Although the concept of a follow-up to the Queen musical had been something "we'd always sort of fancied" according to Elton, the rabbit was let out of the hat by Queen guitarist and songwriter Brian May on Monday when in the course of getting an honourary degree from Exeter University, he revealed that a follow-up to the story of Galileo and Scaramouche was closer than anyone had thought.

"It would be foolish not to do it," said Elton on the phone from Liverpool where his next Mirvish show, The Boys in the Photograph, was having a workshop production.

"Not only do most audiences have a real and genuine affection for the characters," reasoned Elton, "but there's also 24 top 10 chart singles we didn't get a chance to use in We Will Rock You."

Elton said that what held the creators back for so long was the incredible popularity of the original We Will Rock You.

"Why do something new," he asked, "when the original is still performing so well?" And in fact, the show is still selling out in London as it has ever since its opening in 2002. It continues in Toronto at the Canon Theatre until May 11.

But the fascination of taking his characters that extra step further finally proved irresistible to Elton and "six months ago, I dove right in and spent a few months on it."

He showed his new version to May and Queen drummer Roger Taylor, who pronounced themselves "thrilled with it."

Elton said his sequel follows the same scenario that "we all know happens to rock stars: they achieve their dreams and then they screw up."

The character Galileo, having become "the first rock star of the new millennium" in We Will Rock You, is ripe for the downward slide to destruction.

"He was a little bit of a dick already in the first part," said Elton, "but because of his youth and innocence, he was a lovable one."

In the sequel, however, "he does the journey Elvis does and gets into some really awful things."

The faithful Scaramouche stands behind her man and "tries to rid him of some of his more awful pretensions," according to Elton.

He sees their relationship as not unlike that between "a lead guitarist and a singer, where one is always trying to keep the other in line with a combination of sheer force and dry wit."

Elton, aware that he'd probably revealed too much already, did volunteer that "the forces of the Killer Queen are recruiting again and the Bohemians have to figure out what to do about it."

But how soon will this new show launch?

"We can't do it in England," insisted Elton, "not while the first one is still selling out. We're victims of our own success."

That's why a Toronto production looms as an increasingly attractive possibility, especially in a city that Elton finds "so congenial to work in" and with a producing team like the Mirvishes, whom he finds "Grade A all the way down the line."

And the title? As Elton said, "If you dip into Queen's greatest hits, you'd hardly find a better one than `The Show Must Go On.'"

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From the Globe and Mail. link:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...y=8&iaction=Go

ROYAL ONTARIO MUSEUM LIFTS THE VEIL FROM ITS LONG-HIDDEN TEXTILES


KATE TAYLOR

April 16, 2008

Toronto -- Chinese silk, Persian couture, Ontario quilts and ancient Peruvian embroidery finally get their own home at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum as the Patricia Harris Gallery of Textiles & Costume opens to the public today.

The 6,000-square-foot space on the fourth level of the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal is the final permanent gallery to open in the ROM's new Bloor Street West extension. It represents the first time in almost 30 years that the ROM has had a permanent gallery of textiles, although individual pieces have always been on display in galleries devoted to specific cultures.

Patricia Harris was the first woman to serve on the ROM's board of trustees (in the 1970s) and remains an active museum volunteer with a passion for textiles. The new gallery is named for her in recognition of a donation from her and her husband, retired financial-services executive William Harris.

Highlights of the collection include a 2,000-year-old embroidered Peruvian mantle, a prize-winning Ontario floral quilt from 1872, a late-19th-century blue silk robe worn by a Chinese empress, and a delicate evening dress sewn from a piece of gold and silver Egyptian silk in England in 1801. Most of the artifacts will be rotated every six months because textiles are too fragile to expose to light for prolonged periods.



and also from the Globe: link
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...Entertainment/


ROM meets rag trade
Royal Ontario Museum lifts the veil from its long-hidden textiles

KATE TAYLOR

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail


April 16, 2008 at 5:42 AM EDT

Toronto — Chinese silk, Persian couture, Ontario quilts and ancient Peruvian embroidery finally get their own home at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum as the Patricia Harris Gallery of Textiles & Costume opens to the public today.

The 6,000-square-foot space on the fourth level of the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal is the final permanent gallery to open in the ROM's new Bloor Street West extension. It represents the first time in almost 30 years that the ROM has had a permanent gallery of textiles, although individual pieces have always been on display in galleries devoted to specific cultures.

Patricia Harris was the first woman to serve on the ROM's board of trustees (in the 1970s) and remains an active museum volunteer with a passion for textiles. The new gallery is named for her in recognition of a donation from her and her husband, retired financial-services executive William Harris.

Highlights of the collection include a 2,000-year-old embroidered Peruvian mantle, a prize-winning Ontario floral quilt from 1872, a late-19th-century blue silk robe worn by a Chinese empress, and a delicate evening dress sewn from a piece of gold and silver Egyptian silk in England in 1801. Most of the artifacts will be rotated every six months because textiles are too fragile to expose to light for prolonged periods.

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From the Toronto Star. link:
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment...article/414504

Bringing Broadway back to T.O.

An exclusive stage deal means big shows return to Toronto Centre for the Arts in North York
Apr 15, 2008 04:30 AM
Richard Ouzounian
theatre critic

After more than 10 years, the words Broadway North will have a new meaning for Toronto.

Yesterday, Dancap Productions and the Toronto Centre for the Arts announced they had reached an exclusive agreement for the use of the 1,800-seat Main Stage in the facility near Yonge and Sheppard.

Originally built in 1993 by Garth Drabinsky and his Livent empire for the presentation of large-scale Broadway musicals, the facility was home to shows such as Showboat, Ragtime, Sunset Boulevard and Fosse. But no legitimate musicals have played there since the dissolution of Livent in 1999.

The two smaller spaces, the George Weston Recital Hall and the Studio, will continue to be used by other groups.

Even in the major space – mainly used over the past decade for industrial shows, graduations and fundraising concerts – Dancap president Aubrey Dan told the Star "there are very few clients who are going to be affected and we have worked hard with the TCA to accommodate them."

Dan guessed only a couple of clients had one-night bookings they haven't been able to resolve.

Dan has had his eye on the property for some time and has been negotiating for nearly three years.

When asked what turned the tide in his favour, he said, "the ability to prove that Dancap is here to stay."

To date, the organization has only presented three shows, at the Elgin/Winter Garden complex (The Drowsy Chaperone, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and Three Mo' Divas).

Dancap was not at liberty to reveal attendance figures because of deals with the originating producers, but industry observers indicated attendance was thin, especially for Spelling Bee.

But Dan has reason for confidence with the next shows on his list: a critically acclaimed national tour of My Fair Lady, produced by Cameron Mackintosh, starts performances May 8, and the current hit of hits, Jersey Boys, reaches here Aug. 21 after breaking box office records in every city it's played across North America.

Dan also plans to introduce a dining scheme to lure patrons to North York.

His motto is simple: "If you re-energize and bring quality back, people will show up to enjoy it."

[babel]

Unfortunately I missed Luminato last year. This time I've booked to see A Midsummer Night's Dream, Black Watch, a couple of the Mark Morris Dance Group performances, and Fiddle and the Drum. Nice to have so many international performing arts companies in town at the same time, to entertain the locals and draw visitors here.

The long-term, stable funding ought to position Luminato on the circuit that includes similar events in other major cities, and draw cultural tourists here each summer. If all goes well it'll be on a par with the Film Festival as a major draw, eventually.

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It could quite easily become the biggest arts festival in North America at the rate it is growing.

[Rapid]

I'm supposed to volunteer at Hot Docs next week, but with exams, I might have to give up my ushering position .

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From yesterday's Globe. I loved the photo of the drag queens the best! link:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...ising+ambition



SOCIETY: AGO'S MASSIVE PARTY

Naked fundraising ambition

Deirdre Kelly mingled with art scenesters at the glammed-up Art Gallery of Ontario. Photography by Janice Pinto

DEIRDRE KELLY

April 19, 2008

Emphasizing the "art" in "party," a gang of graffiti artists turned the Art Gallery of Ontario's fourth annual fundraiser, Massive Party, into a mosh pit of creative energies.

The theme being Vanities and Vandals, the paint-wielding young Turks roamed the silk-curtain corridors of Muzik, the chic CNE venue where the party took place last week, tossing colour and jostling sensibilities. At one point, when the music seemed too loud and the room was teeming, AGO director Matthew Teitelbaum asked, "Where are my pyjamas?" (a reference, perhaps, to the effort involved in netting a new and younger generation of fundraisers).

Well, the jammies weren't on the artists performing in Jessika Joy's erotic satire, Mommy Says, Eat the Orange. They were starkers. The bankers, accountants and lawyers who pressed in close for a good look confirmed that much. Long live naked self-expression. The capacity crowd of 1,500 had paid $150 a ticket to watch not only the graf artists and starkers satirists, but also the members of the Female Fighting Federation duking it out beneath the chandeliers. The Great Bob Scott marching band showed up to further rev up the scenesters.

Drinking specialty cocktails like Prima Donna and Cherry Bomb, partygoers helped to raise $125,000 in support of AGO exhibition and education programs.

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From the Globe and Mail/ link:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...the+sixth+time




FILM: FESTIVALS

Egoyan makes Cannes cut for the sixth time

The Canadian director's new movie, Adoration, will compete next month for the Palme d'Or along side films by Clint Eastwood and Steven Soderbergh. 'It's always a little overwhelming when you look at the competition,' he tells Gayle MacDonald

GAYLE MACDONALD

Agence France-Presse

April 24, 2008

Atom Egoyan's new film, Adoration, was named yesterday one of the 19 finalists that will be in competition next month for the prestigious Palme d'Or Award at the 61st annual Festival de Cannes.

The film's inclusion in Official Selection marks the sixth time that a feature film from the Victoria-raised, Toronto-based director's work has made the cut.

Reached yesterday, Egoyan said it was "an honour" to be included, adding "this is not something I take for granted.

"Especially with this movie. It's a more intimate film. It's very much rooted in this culture and I'm so proud to represent the country at this level."
Print Edition - Section Front

Section R Front Enlarge Image
The Globe and Mail

The previous Egoyan titles in the running for the Palme d'Or include Exotica (1994), The Sweet Hereafter (1997), Felicia's Journey (1999) and Where the Truth Lies (2005). Ararat, his 2002 film about the Armenian genocide, was an Official Selection in Cannes as well.

The 19-strong competition lineup includes projects from veteran directors including Clint Eastwood's Changeling, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's Le Silence de Lorna, Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas's Linha de Passe, Wim Wenders's The Palermo Shooting, and Steven Soderbergh's four-hour biopic, Che, about Sixties revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara.

"It's always a little overwhelming when you look at the competition," Egoyan noted of his fellow filmmakers. "Having been on the jury there as well, however, it begins to make more sense once you're in the middle of it. From the outside, it seems a little crazy to just throw all these movies together, but they are selected quite carefully. There's an internal logic that you don't really get until you're actually there."

The Cannes' committee only screened Adoration this past weekend. Egoyan and his colleagues found out they would be vying for the Palme d'Or a few days ago.

Yesterday, Adoration's co-producers Simone Urdl and Jennifer Weiss said they were "thrilled" to get the news. "We certainly hoped it would happen," said the co-founders of Toronto's Film Farm, "and Cannes was the place we wanted the film to go. But because we were so late submitting it - and because there seems to be a lot of great films out there right now - we still weren't sure."

Urdl, who started as Egoyan's production assistant in 1991, added "I don't think you can ever take these things for granted. People assume - because it's Atom and he has such a long history [with Cannes] - that he'll get in. But that's not the case.

"Adoration is quite different than his last couple of films. And the head of the Cannes festival had changed. So we truly weren't sure, and to get in, was really exciting news."

Weiss says Adoration - a film shot in Toronto last fall for about $5.5-million - was a nice change of pace for Egoyan. "For him, going back to this budget and scale was liberating. There's simply not the same pressure to make a big, splashy film with big stars. So we have an ensemble cast, and the discovery of a new actor (Devon Bostick) who is only now 16 and plays the lead. All those elements, meant Atom got to have fun. It's an extremely personal film for him, without external pressure."

Adoration focuses on one young man's fascination with the possibility he's the spawn of two historical figures - and how his personal obsession is both enabled, and threatened, by technology.

The film also stars Scott Speedman, Rachel Blanchard, Kenneth Welsh, and Arsinée Khanjian (Egoyan's wife).

The director says his screenplay grew out of a true-life story he'd heard 20 years ago about a young man who convinced his pregnant Irish girlfriend to board a flight, carrying a bomb that she didn't know had been planted on her. "This story - or a version of it - is read in the main character's high school and it triggers his imagination," Egoyan explains.

The film is executive produced by Robert Lantos's Serendipity Point Films, and will be distributed by his company Maximum Film.

"This is the seventh time I've gone to Cannes in competition," Lantos said yesterday. ". ... Maybe this time, we'll be seven times lucky and get the Palme d'Or."

*****

The competition

The 19 films competing for the 2008 Palme d'or

(a 20th film, from France, is still to be announced):

Uc Maymun (Three Monkeys)

by Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Turkey)

Le Silence de Lorna (The Silence of Lorna)

by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (Belgium)

Un Conte de Noël (A Christmas Tale)

by Arnaud Desplechin (France)

Changeling

by Clint Eastwood (U.S.)

Adoration

by Atom Egoyan (Canada)

Waltz with Bashir

by Ari Folman (Israel)

La Frontière de l'aube (The Frontier of Dawn)

by Philippe Garrel (France)

Gomorra

by Matteo Garrone (Italy)

24 City

by Jia Zhangke (China)

Synecdoche, New York

by Charlie Kaufman (U.S.)

My Magic

by Eric Khoo (Singapore)

La Mujer Sin Cabeza (Woman Without a Head)

by Lucretia Martel (Argentina)

Serbis

by Brillante Mendoza (Philippines)

Delta

by Kornel Mundruczo (Hungary)

Linha de Passe (Line of Passage)

by Walter Salles, Daniela Thomas (Brazil)

Che

by Steven Soderbergh (U.S.)

Il Divo

by Paolo Sorrentino (Italy)

Leonera

by Pablo Trapero (Argentina)

The Palermo Shooting

by Wim Wenders (Germany)

Agence France-Presse

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Same topic, from the National Post. link:
http://www.nationalpost.com/rss/story.html?id=466716

Atom Egoyan joins Hollywood heavyweights in Cannes

Jay Stone, Canwest News Servicee Published: Wednesday, April 23, 2008


Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will have its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival this year.Studio handoutSteven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will have its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival this year.

Canadian film director Atom Egoyan will join the cream of world cinema -- including Hollywood heavyweights Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen and Clint Eastwood -- at this year's Cannes film festival, organizers announced at a press conference Wednesday.

Egoyan's new movie Adoration, the story of a teenager who creates an Internet identity and pretends to be part of a terrorist plot, will be in competition at Cannes. It goes up against 18 other films, including Eastwood's Changeling, with Angelina Jolie as a woman whose son is kidnapped and who thinks she is given a different boy when he is returned; Steven Soderbergh's Che, with Benicio del Toro as guerrilla leader Che Guevara; and a new film from surrealist icon Charlie Kaufman, Synecdoche, New York, with Philip Seymour Hoffman as a theatre director who creates a replica of New York City inside a warehouse.

The biggest celebrity news from the Croisette is the long rumoured premiere of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which will show in Cannes a few days before its May 22 opening. The stars, including Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett and Shia LaBeouf, are expected to attend.

It's showing out of competition, one of several big-name Hollywood movies that are coming to Cannes this year as part of their pre-release marketing campaign, a trend that has become more common in Cannes despite its reputation as a high-art festival: The Da Vinci Code also had an out-of-competition premiere there two years ago.

Also screening this year is Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Woody Allen's new movie with Scarlett Johansson, Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem, a comedy about a Spanish painter's relationship with two American tourists.

There will also be a special screening of Kung Fu Panda, an animated film with the voices of Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, Lucy Liu and Dustin Hoffman, all of whom are expected to attend. Premiering animated movies has become another Cannes tradition: Black and Jolie were there in 2004 for Shark Tale, and Jerry Seinfeld dressed up in a bee suit last year to promote Bee Movie.

Adoration marks Egoyan's return to Cannes after his poorly received mystery Where The Truth Lies in 2005, although he did contribute to last year's compilation movie To Each His Own Cinema. The Toronto-based director has had a glorious history in Cannes, including the International Critics Prize for Exotica in 1994 and for The Sweet Hereafter in 1997. Two of his earlier movies, Speaking Parts and The Adjuster, also showed at Cannes and Egoyan himself served on the jury in 1996.

He said he was thrilled by the honour of going back to Cannes, and credited the Canadian system of making movies.

"If you have a modest amount of money and a clear vision, you can have extraordinary opportunities," he said in an interview shortly after hearing the news. He said he learned from producing the Sarah Polley film Away From Her that there is room for such "a human, simple story."

Adoration is partly about the inclusiveness of new technologies, which is a departure from the theme of alienation in previous Egoyan films. He said he got the idea when he spoke to students at Harbord Collegiate Institute in Toronto, part of the Reel Canada program that sends Canadian movies to high schools. He learned how they used the Internet, and some of the students were so extraordinary in a mock videoconference he held that they got parts in the film.

The list of films in competition has been pared down this year to 20 films from 22 last year and along with such past winners as the Dardenne brothers from Belgium and Wim Wenders, it includes many lesser-known directors. Eight of them have never been in competition before, including Israeli director Ari Folman whose Waltz With Bashir is the first animated documentary ever selected. It tells the story of the 1982 massacre of Palestinians by Christian militias in Lebanon.

This year's feature film jury is headed by Sean Penn, and includes actress Natalie Portman and Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron. Other well-known names to take part in the festival are Quentin Tarantino, who will give a cinema masterclass.

Cannes runs from May 14 to 25.

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From today's online Globe and Mail. link:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...rtainment/home


A unique hybrid born of East-West fusion

PAULA CITRON

From Friday's Globe and Mail

April 25, 2008 at 4:41 AM EDT

May is Asian Heritage Month, and one of the enduring success stories in Asian-Canadian arts is the annual CanAsian Dance Festival, which opens at Harbourfront on Thursday. This 10th-anniversary celebration offers three different programs of five dance works rooted in South Asian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Indonesian cultures.

Artistic director Denise Fujiwara says it reflects the inclusive spirit of the event, which draws in performers from Canada and abroad, non-Asians working in Asian dance forms, and traditional dance as well as cutting-edge hybrids. "The scope of the festival is very broad," she says. "Asia is found in the work, not necessarily in the creators."

The anniversary event's programming is mostly a tribute to favourite performers or past works. South Asian traditional dance is represented by two pieces. The immensely talented Patnaik siblings - brother Devraj and sister Ellora - perform the world premiere of Kedar Pallavi in traditional odissi style, considered the most lyrical of the Indian classical dance forms. The bharatanatyam work UMA has an unusual twist: Hari Krishnan, as a female impersonator in the stri-vesham tradition, brings to life the erotic temple dances of the South Indian devadasi or courtesans.

Peter Chin presents his reworked hybrid and multidisciplinary Indonesian- influenced Mind's Hammer to the live music of the Evergreen Club Contemporary Gamelan. (A gamelan is an Indonesian gong instrument.) Soojung Kwon also uses live musicians on traditional Korean instruments for the world premiere of her classically inspired shamanistic Choonengmu.
Denise Fujiwara in the butoh-inspired Sumida River, based on a 15th-century Japanese Noh play. SANDRA ZEA
Enlarge Image

Denise Fujiwara in the butoh-inspired Sumida River, based on a 15th-century Japanese Noh play. (SANDRA ZEA)
The Globe and Mail

The new kid on the block is Vancouver's Wen Wei, one of the hottest choreographers in the country. His One Man's is a cunning fusion of Chinese traditional dance, ballet, film, music and storytelling. To Fujiwara's delight, her colleagues on the CanAsian programming committee invited the choreographer to present her much-toured Sumida River, a butoh-inspired dance based on a 15th-century Japanese Noh play. This will be the last performance in Toronto of Fujiwara's famed solo before she retires the piece.

The Asian dance forms tend to share the same learning aesthetic, Fuijwara says. "The dancers and choreographers who appear in the festival find a fellowship with others interested in Asian dance forms, particularly [in] the practice of working with gurus as the culture of training," she explains.

The festival grew out of the demise of the multidisciplinary Asian Heritage Month Festival. Fujiwara and Allen Kaeja were on the committee that curated the festival's dance component, and when the larger event fell apart in 1997, they decided to still mount a dance show at the Winchester Street Theatre on the tiny $5,000 budget they had raised. For the next few years, the volunteer board printed and sold their own tickets and put up their own posters.

The growth of the festival can be tracked by the movement through theatres, from the Winchester to the Betty Oliphant, and finally Harbourfront's Enwave Theatre in 2005. In 2001, CanAsian got a Trillium Grant for a part-time administrator. Fast-forward a decade and CanAsian's budget is now $200,000 funded by every level of government and non-profit foundations. Since 2003, the festival has also had a full-time administrator.

It has also found a growing audience. Chin feels that the Asian dance experience in Toronto is distinct from that of Montreal and Vancouver; the Asian-Western fusion forms have given the scene "a certain cachet," he says, "because they have had a longer tradition here. The dance forms and their hybrids are considered as mainstream, and have, over the years, produced a coterie of mature artists and a more discerning and knowledgeable audience." Chin cites as proof the fact that original works premiered at CanAsian have garnered 10 Dora Mavor Moore Award nominations.

Krishnan sees the festival as redefining Canadian dance. "This festival is one of the few events in the country totally dedicated to empowering non-Western dance. The word 'ethnic' drives me crazy because it implies marginalization. This festival celebrates excellence. CanAsian dance is taking its place alongside ballet and modern as a visible and viable part of the Canadian dance landscape."

CanAsian Dance Festival runs at the Enwave Theatre May 1 to 3. Visit canasiandancefestival.com for details.

[babel]

A friend's taking me to Idomeneo at the Elgin tomorrow night. It got three great reviews today in the media - rarely does something please all the critics at the same time like this.

[Taller, Better]

Sounds absolutely lovely! Let us know what you think of it!


(nice to have someone else in this lonely thread!!! )

[Taller, Better]

A second local film to be in this year's Cannes festival!! What a banner year for our film people. Link to the Globe and mail website:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...to+open+Cannes

Canadian-made film Blindness to open Cannes

GAYLE MACDONALD

April 29, 2008

The Canadian-made feature film Blindness will have its world premiere on May 14 as the opening-night gala film of the 61st Cannes Film Festival.

The news, which will be announced today, marks the first time in 28 years that a Canadian movie has been chosen for this prestigious slot that kicks off the glamorous 12-day festival in the south of France.

Niv Fichman, co-founder of Toronto's Rhombus Media, led the charge to get the Canada-Japan-Brazil co-production off the ground.

The $25-million-plus Blindness, directed by Oscar-nominated director Fernando Meirelles (City of God), tells the fierce and fantastical story of a pandemic of blindness that eviscerates society.

Shot in Toronto, Uruguay and Meirelles's hometown of Sao Paulo, Brazil, it features an international roster of stars, including Hollywood A-listers Mark Ruffalo, Julianne Moore and Danny Glover; Mexico's Gael Garcia Bernal; Japan's Yusuke Iseya and Yoshino Kimura; Brazil's Alice Braga; and Canadians Sandra Oh, Maury Chaykin, Martha Burns and Don McKellar (who wrote the script based on the novel by Portuguese Nobel Prize-winning author Jose Saramago).

Rhombus's co-producers include Japan's Bee Vine Pictures and Brazil's 02 Filmes. Fichman did not return calls yesterday.

The last - and only - time that a Canadian movie opened Cannes was in 1980, with Quebec director Gilles Carle's Fantastica, starring Carole Laure. In his inimitable style, the late Globe arts writer Jay Scott described Carle's film "as a cabaret-style ecological musical with appropriately nonsensical dialogue."

Two films from Quebec's Oscar-winning director Denys Arcand have closed Cannes - Stardom in 2001 and last year's Days of Darkness.

Cannes officials announced last week that Canadian Atom Egoyan's new film, Adoration, made the cut as a finalist in competition at Cannes.

Among other films in competition are Clint Eastwood's Changeling, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's Le Silence de Lorna, Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas's Linha de Passe, Wim Wenders's The Palermo Shooting and Steven Soderbergh's four-hour biopic Che, about Sixties revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara. It is the sixth time that Egoyan's films have been included in official selection at the seaside-resort festival.

His previous titles in the running for the Palme d'Or include Exotica (1994), The Sweet Hereafter (1997), Felicia's Journey (1999) and Where the Truth Lies (2005). Ararat, his 2002 film about the Armenian genocide, was an Official Selection in Cannes as well.Blindness has been seven years in the making. It started as a germ of an idea with McKellar, who pitched Fichman the notion of adapting the 1995 novel into a movie while the two were attending a film festival in Buenos Aires.

This was where McKellar's film Last Night - about the final night on Earth before all mankind is killed - was screening.

In a previous interview with The Globe, Fichman remembered feeling less than enthusiastic about McKellar's idea. He had not read Blindness and said to his friend, "Are you sure? You don't want to be known as that apocalypse guy."

Then Fichman read the novel - and read it again - and became "infatuated" with the project. The producer then began the arduous process of trying to get the film rights to Saragamo's novel. The agent of the 1998 Nobel laureate shooed him away. (Ironically, he had previously turned down Meirelles.) But Fichman persevered. Then, on July 20, 1999, he and McKellar got the call they had been waiting for. The author himself invited them to his Canary Islands home.

"On the afternoon of the second day, out of the blue, Saramago said, 'I've decided I think I want to give you guys the rights,' " Fichman recalled. "It didn't click, because he said it in Portuguese. I asked his agent, who was translating, to repeat it again. Then he told us he didn't want to have anything to do with the film. He wanted no control over it."

Soon after, McKellar began work on his adaptation - based on a novel written in sentences up to a page long, with scant punctuation. It took the Toronto actor/writer/director six years to complete.



From the Toronto Star:
http://www.thestar.com/article/419392


'Blindness' set to open Cannes


Toronto's Niv Fichman produced epic about city besieged by mass plague
Apr 29, 2008 04:30 AM
Martin Knelman
Entertainment Columnist

The Cannes Film Festival has selected Blindness, produced by Toronto's Niv Fichman, for its coveted opening night slot on May 14, the Toronto Star has learned.

This dark $25 million epic – about an unnamed city struck by a unique plague in which 90 per cent of the population go blind – is a three-way co-production involving Brazil and Japan as well as Canada.

It took Fichman and his company, Rhombus Media, nine years to get the movie made.

Based on the 1995 Nobel Prize-winning novel by Portuguese writer Jose Saramago and directed by Brazilian filmmaker Fernando Meirelles (City of God), the movie has American stars Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo. But it also has juicy roles for several noted Canadians, including Sandra Oh, Susan Coyne, Martha Burns, Murray Chaykin and Don McKellar.

Much of the film was shot in Toronto last summer before production moved to Brazil in October.

Miramax, the prestigious boutique distributor, paid $5 million for U.S. rights in a deal Fichman negotiated at last year's Toronto International Film Festival.

In Canada, Blindness will be released by Alliance Films.

McKellar, who later wrote the screenplay, persuaded Fichman to pursue the film rights – which they secured by flying to the Canary Islands to meet the author.

He agreed, on condition that the country in which the horrifying story unfolds could not be identified in the film.

Some of the victims, quarantined in an asylum for the insane, band together and fight for their human rights.

The buzz among insiders who have previewed the film has been unusually strong.

In fact, expectations were so high that there was great consternation in some quarters last week when Blindness was conspicuously missing from a list of movies that would be competing for the Palme d'Or. Atom Egoyan's Adoration was the one Canadian movie on that list.

Now it turns out Blindness was left off that list because the opening night selection traditionally gets its own announcement.

There still has not been any official word from festival headquarters in Paris, but yesterday the word spread in Toronto that the film's producers have been given the good news by Cannes officials.

Sources say Blindness will be in the race for prizes – which is unusual for opening-night movies. Fichman, currently in Brazil, was unavailable for comment.

[Taller, Better]

From the Toronto Star. Link:
http://www.thestar.com/article/419763

ARTS COUNCIL
TheStar.com | entertainment | Ontario opens its cultural wallet

Ontario opens its cultural wallet


$5 million extra funding for artists and groups in each of next 4 years
Apr 30, 2008 04:30 AM
Martin Knelman
entertainment columnist

Last night in Kingston, Ont., Culture Minister Aileen Carroll delivered some great news for artists and culture industry workers across the province.

Premier Dalton McGuinty's government is providing extra funding for the Ontario Arts Council over the next four years: $5 million a year, for a total of $20 million.

That means that for its 2009-2010 operations, the provincial arts council will have almost $60 million to distribute to hundreds of individual artists and cultural organizations – the most money it has ever been allocated.

It's a signal that Queen's Park is interested in all parts of the creative community, not just the flashy players such as the Royal Ontario Museum, the Art Gallery of Ontario and Luminato, which got a $75 million bonanza earlier this month.

The extra OAC funding announced last night is part of $63 million set aside for culture over four years in Finance Minister Dwight Duncan's March budget.

"The provincial budget identified Ontario's creative industry as one of the three key sectors expected to grow fastest," Carroll noted.

Indeed, in proportion to the general population, Ontario has the third largest group of employees in the creative field in North America, after California and New York.

"Since taking office in 2003, our government has increased the OAC budget by 140 per cent," Carroll crowed in a phone interview.

The statistics verify Carroll's claim.

In the late 1980s, the OAC had a budget of close to $30 million. Under Bob Rae's NDP government of the early 1990s, that climbed to more than $42 million.

But the election of the Mike Harris Conservatives in 1995 resulted in devastating cuts. Over the next seven years, the OAC budget was reduced to less than $25 million, which means that, adjusted for inflation, the budget was almost cut in half.

In McGuinty's first term as premier, OAC funding jumped to just under $40 million. For 2007-2008, it went up to $45,487,400.

As a result of yesterday's announcement, the OAC budget will reach $54,937,000 for 2008-2009 before levelling off at $59,937,400 for the three following years.

[Rapid]

Anybody go to the ROM lately?

I'm a huge history nut, and used to work for the museum in a crappy marketing job (just went for free membership bonus ).

I'm personally finding tremendous interest in the Darwin exhibit. Also, upon hearing that they have the biggest Chinese collection outside of China, I'm gonna have to study tons of Chinese history because I've got a huge oppertunity to apply my studies at the museum's collection. I'll feel like a fool if I pass it by.

[Taller, Better]

I enjoyed the Darwin exhibit.. it had a great deal of his personal memorabilia, and lots of his letters/ writings/ notes, etc. The only gallery I have not seen now is the South American/ African, and I am saving that for a rainy day! (one that I am not working on, that is.... ).

[Gerrad]

There's an article in this month's Departures Magazine about Toronto's booming cultural scene.

BTW, I saw Holy F*ck at Coachella last week and they were really good.

[Taller, Better]

Originally Posted by Gerrad

There's an article in this month's Departures Magazine about Toronto's booming cultural scene.

BTW, I saw Holy F*ck at Coachella last week and they were really good.

Hmmmm... they won't let the regular hoi-polloi of the world view their
Departures site unless you have either a Platinum or Centurian card, or
a signed note from God.