Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF)

[caption id="attachment_23758" align="aligncenter" width="1200"] Mrs. Fang[/caption] The Toronto International Film Festival’s 17th edition of Wavelengths — its uncompromising, carefully curated, avant-garde showcase — will feature 40 films, which unite internationally celebrated and emerging artists with some of today’s most important, influential and risk-taking filmmakers. Wavelengths is comprised of four programs of experimental short films and videos, three resonant pairings, and nine stand-alone features — each displaying its own radical approach to the art of cinema. Some of the highlights include Véréna Paravel and Lucien CastaingTaylor’s gripping and unsettling work of sensory ethnography, Caniba, about the notorious Japanese cannibal Issei Sagawa and his remarkable relationship with his brother; Narimane Mari’s category-defying follow-up to her debut feature, Bloody Beans, Le Fort des fous, a scathing, subversive and shape-shifting indictment of European colonialism, past and present; Ben Russell’s exquisite, intercontinental mining documentary Good Luck, shot in Super 16mm in Serbia and Suriname; and Pedro Pinho’s FIPRESCI winning, left-leaning The Nothing Factory, which premiered at this year’s Quinzaine des réalisateurs. Wavelengths will also present the innovative 3D feature PROTOTYPE by Toronto-based Wavelengths alumnus Blake Williams; Occidental, the neo(n)-noir second feature by acclaimed contemporary artist-filmmaker Neïl Beloufa; and Dragonfly Eyes (蜻蜓之眼), the CCTV-sourced feature debut by leading Chinese artist Xu Bing. Other highlights include the World Premiere of Anna Marziano’s deeply moving and mysterious essay-film Beyond the One (Al di là dell’uno), as well as new films by master filmmakers Bruno Dumont and Denis Côté. The programme also features Wang Bing’s powerful, sobering and intimate Mrs. Fang, about a woman with Alzheimer’s dying days in a southern village in China, and Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias’ astonishing Cocote, which follows an evangelical gardener’s eye-opening homecoming as he attends his father’s funeral and grapples with religious belief and ritual. Both were recent winners at the 70th Locarno International Film Festival, where they received the Golden Leopard for Best Film and the Signs of Life Award, respectively. Short-film highlights include terrific new films and videos by Michael Robinson, Rosa Barba, Fern Silva, Wojciech Bąkowski, Jodie Mack, Laura Huertas Millán, Baloise Art Prize–winner Sara Cwynar, local performance artist Francesco Gagliardi, Dan Browne, Yoni Brook and Pacho Velez, Luis López Carrasco, Helga Fanderl, Friedl vom Gröller, Dane Komljen, André Lehmann, Kazik Radwanski and more. As always, Wavelengths will include historical work; this year’s archival selections are Florence (1970), by the late Finnish computer-art maverick and electronic musician Erkki Kurenniemi, and disarming diarist Anne Charlotte Robertson’s Pixillation (1976), which was recently restored by the Harvard Film Archive. A number of filmmakers included in this year’s Whitney Biennial will also present films at Wavelengths, including Dani Leventhal and Sheilah Wilson, Kevin Jerome Everson and Sky Hopinka.

SHORT FILM PROGRAMS

Wavelengths 1: Appetite for Destruction

As pessimistic prognoses flood in during our age of decline, dictatorships and devastation, this sweeping appetite for destruction also fuels rebellious — even mischievous — forms of resistance and necessary counter-investigation. Onward Lossless Follows  Michael Robinson, USA some cities Francesco Gagliardi, Canada The Watchmen Fern Silva, USA Wasteland No.1 – Ardent, Verdant Jodie Mack, USA Phantasiesätze (Fantasy Sentences) Dane Komljen, Germany/Denmark Dislocation Blues Sky Hopinka, Ho-Chunk Nation/USA

Wavelengths 2: Fluid Frontiers

A newly restored and astonishing short by film diarist Anne Charlotte Robertson launches this programme of portraits and homages, with links to notions of home and heritage. Pixillation Anne Charlotte Robertson, USA (Restoration courtesy of Harvard Film Archive) Ticino Friedl vom Gröller, Austria/Italy Brown And Clear Kevin Jerome Everson, USA Turtles Are Always Home (Sokun Al Sulhufat) Rawane Nassif, Canada/Lebanon/Qatar Configuration in Black and White Helga Fanderl, Germany Fire Lucy Parker, United Kingdom From Source to Poem Rosa Barba, Germany Fluid Frontiers Ephraim Asili, USA/Canada

Wavelengths 3: Figures in the Landscape

There is much to manoeuvre in the world. When quotidian objects seemingly conspire against and constrict our movement, inevitably slowing us down in an over-accelerated world, attendant shifts in meaning and interventions can propose unforeseen detours. Mr. Yellow Sweatshirt Pacho Velez, Yoni Brook, USA Yeti Wojciech Bąkowski, Poland (100ft) Minjung Kim, South Korea/USA Heart of a Mountain Parastoo Anoushahpour, Ryan Ferko, Faraz Anoushahpour, Taiwan/Canada Rose Gold Sara Cwynar, USA Division Movement to Vungtau Benjamin Crotty, Bertrand Dezoteux, France Flores Jorge Jácome, Portugal

Wavelengths 4: As Above, So Below

Four exceedingly different films, each with its own documentary impulse, suggest rich interplay between metaphoric and physical horizon lines and amid shifting scales: of thread, of light and shadow, of environmental elements, of existential contemplation and of memory. La Libertad Laura Huertas Millán, Colombia/France/USA Palmerston Blvd. Dan Browne, Canada below-above André Lehmann, Switzerland Aliens Luis López Carrasco, Spain

PAIRINGS

Beyond the One (Al di là dell’uno) Anna Marziano, France/Italy/Germany World Premiere Preceded by Strangely Ordinary this Devotion Dani Leventhal, Sheilah Wilson, USA International Premiere PROTOTYPE Blake Williams, Canada North American Premiere Preceded by Florence (Firenze) Erkki Kurenniemi, Finland North American Premiere Ta peau si lisse (A Skin so Soft) Denis Côté, Canada/Switzerland North American Premiere Preceded by Scaffold Kazik Radwanski, Canada North American Premiere

FEATURES

Caniba Véréna Paravel, Lucien Castaing-Taylor, France North American Premiere Cocote Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias, Dominican Republic North American Premiere Dragonfly Eyes (蜻蜓之眼) Xu Bing, China/USA North American Premiere Good Luck Ben Russell, France/Germany North American Premiere Jeannette, the Childhood of Joan of Arc Bruno Dumont, France North American Premiere Le fort des fous Narimane Mari, France/Algeria/Switzerland/Germany/Greece/Qatar North American Premiere Mrs. Fang Wang Bing, France/China/Germany North American Premiere Occidental Neïl Beloufa, France North American Premiere The Nothing Factory (A Fábrica De Nada) Pedro Pinho, Portugal North American Premiere Previously announced Wavelengths titles at the Festival include Blake Williams’s PROTOTYPE and Denis Côté’s Ta peau si lisse (A Skin so Soft).

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