Last year, the audience picked Green Book as the favorite film in the festival, starting its roller-coaster run to the Best Picture Oscar that many wish to forget about. Fair enough, let’s focus on the winners that made an everlasting impact; apologies to Thee Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and The King’s Speech. The festival began in 1976 but introduced the People’s Choice Award in 1978 to the American indie film Girlfriends. (I have a section on the bottom about this film.) What started in a hotel has now expanded into different movie venues, starting with the new TIFF Bell Lightbox, covering one city block in Toronto’s media and entertainment center fitting for the world to come by. And these winners below signal why Toronto has been a big deal.

The Big Chill (1983)

Lawrence Kasdan was writing for George Lucas while directing his own adult work with the noir Body Heat and his dramedy about old friends, the baby boomers, who get together to mourn the loss of one of their own (played by Kevin Costner, who was cut from the film) while reconnecting on the stuff that made them friends in the first place. William Hurt, Glenn Close, Kevin Kline, Tom Berenger,  Jeff Goldblum, Mary Kay Place, Meg Tilly, and JoBeth Williams get together and rekindle what had been abandoned years ago to an eclectic soundtrack including Marvin Gaye, The Temptations, Aretha Franklin, Three Dog Night, and The Rolling Stones. And while Kasdan’s writing to Raiders Of The Lost Ark and Return Of The Jedi brought in the big bucks, The Big Chill earned Oscar nods for Best Picture, Original Screenplay, and Supporting Actress for Glenn Close.

The Princess Bride (1987)

Inconceivable! But, yes, Rob Reiner’s classic fairy tale from the great William Goldman won at Toronto and became a permanent feature in our culture with its charm, humor, and Andre the Giant being so damn adorable compared to his tough-guy WWE persona. Cary Elwes, Robin Wright, Mandy Patinkin, Peter Falk, Chris Sanderson, Billy Crystal, Wallace Shawn, and  Christopher Guest are the characters of a different narrative style, a parody of the genre with the grandfather telling this who his grandson (Fred Savage) rather than a young girl who would appreciate it more. But the boy’s interest in having it told again is part of the cross-age and gender charm Goldman wrote in novel and script form.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)

Ang Lee went back to his native Taiwan to shoot a film close to his cultural roots and immediately grabbed everyone by the hair to lift up as much as the martial artists themselves in stunning choreography that encompasses the wuxia genre when they were at its peak in the 60s and 70s. It is a film that was strongly applauded in the West as a counter-flow, where a foreign culture influenced the Western market rather than the other way around, although the film does merge East/West manners on approaching characters, thus reducing cultural authenticity. Lee had a solid career up to this point and would only raise his profile when he later did Brokeback Mountain and Life of Pi, all winning Oscars.

Whale Rider (2002)

Niki Caro made her breakout directorial effort with the story of a Maori girl who seeks to become chief of the tribe despite it being reserved from men. Like the film listed above, this was a cross-cultural film, this time of a native New Zealand story with a young girl as the central character to the story. Keisha Castle-Hughes was only 12 when the film was made; the following year, she received a Best Actress Oscar nod and would be listed among the British Film Institute’s Top 50 films that should be seen by age 14.

Room (2015)

A huge portion of the festival is aimed at showing the best of Canadian cinema, both in English and French. Only two Canadian films would win both People’s Choice Award and the Genie/Canadian Screen Award (their Oscars) for Best Picture. One was 1986’s Decline of the American Empire by Denys Arcand (who did win the Best International Film Oscar for its sequel, Barbarian Invasions), and the other was Lenny Abrahamson’s Room. It got him an Oscar nod for Director, plus a Best Picture nomination, and began Brie Larson’s sweep to the Best Actress win. It also gave us Jacob Tremblay as among the list of cute child actors who are quite good at what they do. But, when we look at films if they hold up 5 years from its release, Room certainly maintains its power.

Now, for my epilogue about the first People’s Choice Winner. It should be stressed that Girlfriends, which I recently watched courtesy of Criterion Channel, was funded with mostly grants and took another three years to complete because there was no money for post-production. And it was directed by a woman, Claudia Weill, now a TV director professor at Columbia University. Christopher Guest and Bob Balaban were in supporting roles; her next film, It’s My Turn, starred Michael Douglas and Jill Clayburgh. She also was an Oscar nominee with Shirley Maclaine in the documentary The Other Half of the Sky: A China Memoir. She has also directed plays, TV movies, and several shows, most recently an episode of Girls. 

Why do I write this? Because this is what these film festivals are all about. This is why independent film matters. Although big-time films, some of them great, are using it as a platform to Oscar ambitions (Argo, 12 Years A Slave, La La Land, Roma), I do feel personal that it is being hijacked for the big studios and not for a more truly diverse section that doesn’t get coverage. Toronto served us Baz Luhrmann’s debut Strictly Ballroom, Billy Elliot by Stephen Daldry, Roger & Me by Michael Moore, and Chariots of Fire which sprinted its way by the big films of 1981 to a Best Picture Oscar. And to have an ending to the epilogue, here is Stanley Kubrick’s supporting remarks on Girlfirends:

“I think one of the most interesting Hollywood films, well not Hollywood — American films — that I’ve seen in a long time is Claudia Weill’s Girlfriends. That film, I thought, was one of the very rare American films that I would compare with the serious, intelligent, sensitive writing and filmmaking that you find in the best directors in Europe. It wasn’t a success, I don’t know why; it should have been. Certainly I thought it was a wonderful film. It seemed to make no compromise to the inner truth of the story, you know, the theme and everything else…

This film that Claudia Weill did, I think she did on an amateur basis; she shot it for about a year, two or three days a week. Of course she had a great advantage, because she had all the time she needed to think about it, to see what she had done. I thought she made the film extremely well.”

The debuted works and internationalization should give us more of those works instead of mainstream features that are now commonplace. 2011’s winner, the Lebanese drama Where Do We Go Now was a refreshing choice. Hopefully, Toronto and other festivals keep going with the independent leads over the big studios as part of their select showcase. 

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Yeah, I won’t really stop with these updates because they keep on coming and going. Akira Kurosawa’s catalogue is available and I’ve gotten to watch ones I haven’t seen (Sanshiro Sugata, The Men Who Tread On The Tiger’s Tail) as watch the special features from Criterion editions out to stream (My Beautiful Laundrette). Now, I’m checking out all the arthouse theatres and special films they have previewed in them, plus a mini-documentary about the theatre. It’s amazing that I find something different besides the movies every time I check in to this site. Anyway, here is the fifth volume of my Criterion viewing rundown.

I Live In Fear (1955)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-McmgQbee0

A decade after the atomic bomb dropped on Japan, Akira Kurosawa stepped away from the samurai genre for a moment to capture the story of an elderly man, disturbed by the development of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy, that he is seeking to move to Brazil and encourage his family to come along. The family, however, seeks to declare him insane, and the struggle over the right to declare him being rational of his fears or completely irrational and have him locked away. This was a true reflection as the Cold War heated up and more damaging weapons were being developed with the Japanese being neighbors to the Soviet Union but on the side of the Americans. The war of fear is also a war within the family with the patriarch, an unchallenged figurehead, now being questioned completely by the children who recognize that danger is around them regardless and that it is time to make their own decision on what the future really holds. (The one YouTube video about the film is really shortened and poor quality, so make do with this piece of advice from the master himself.)

In addition, I also watched Kurosawa’s Drunken Angel, Red Beard, and Dersu Uzula, which won the Oscar for Best International Film in 1976.

Withnail And I (1986)

Using some of his own experiences as an actor, Bruce Robinson wrote and directed this black comedy about two unemployed struggling actors who take a holiday in a village that is not of the type. Richard E. Grant made his breakthrough as the half-drunk titular character who says, “We’ve gone on holiday by mistake,” and gallops with his roommate, based on Robinson himself, through the gloom and bleakness in the late 60s while happily making a farce of their lives, which is a farce of their own kind. It’s funny, the lines are of self-deprecation are spot-on, and have a case of mistake sexual orientation with Withnail’s flamboyantly gay uncle, played by the great Richard Griffiths. For Paul McGann, who plays the “I” under the name Marwood, he’s just along for the ride as the one who is more desperately seeking to get out and actually work.

Beauty And The Beast (1946)

Jean Cocteau, a writer and artist of the avant-garde kind, took the traditional storyline more accurate to Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont’s legendary fairy tale about an unlikely love story and the beauty that is within. This is no musical or cartoon, not in color, and not meant to be pretty. The beast is a big, burly, terrifying, figure who is angry his roses are touched and, like in Cinderella, Belle’s sisters are the ones who envy the riches they see their sister in with this mysterious prince. Cocteau stays with traditional fantasy, horror, and magic to develop this incredible wonder of an adaptation that doesn’t get enough representation outside of its French homeland.

Also, you can check out Cocteau’s modern adaptation of the story of Orpheus (1950) and his collaboration with Jean-Pierre Melville in Les Enfants Terribles (1950).

Watership Down (1978)

This is not your animation for children. From the start, it gives a more shocking look with its violent images of survival about a group of rabbits, freeing themselves from an authoritarian clan, escaping to the named hillside as their new home. While the characters are cute and wonderfully acted (John Hurt, Richard Briers, Ralph Richardson, Denholm Elliott to name a few), the storyline shows the rabbits within their own mythology, culture, and language – the Lapine – and fighting for their own independence instead of being bossed around by bigger rabbits, a Spartacus-like adventure with a common rabbit and his psychic brother commanding their small band of freeing rabbits.

The Housemaid (1960)

From Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project comes this early example of South Korean cinema that is considered among the best films ever made from the young country. It’s a psychological thriller within a melodrama from the country’s first auteur, Kim Ki-young, about a newly hired help who helps a married couple and their two children. The wife is pregnant and the new maid begins to act strangely around the wife and especially the husband. Bong Joon-ho, who directed Parasite, has spoken fondly as an influence to his work because of the creeping insertion of the outsider into life and mix of genres it provides. The film was remade in 2011, but nothing is like the original.

The queue of classics yet to be seen continues onward into the fall where there will be even more collections coming out. It will be an indefinite bag of surprises. In fact, to all who follow, what films on the Channel do you recommend?

Follow me on Twitter: @brian_cine (Cine-A-Man)

Over the course of one weekend, Labor Day weekend, people fly up to the former mining town of Telluride, Colorado for the film festival that has been attracting big-time Oscar buzz since its inception in 1974. What Sundance in Utah was named after Robert Redford’s character, Telluride is also where he and Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman) go to for their first bank robbery. It’s been the starting line for recent winners in Argo, 12 Years A Slave, Spotlight, both Moonlight and La La Land, and The Shape of Water, as well as carried on for The Descendents, Room, Arrival, Lady Bird, and Roma. But the story of Telluride and what it has done goes a lot farther down the line as the entrances for cultural-changing movies and the beginning for many directors. After all, Kenneth Turn wrote about the festival being, “more a religion than anything as ordinary as a festival, complete with messianic believers and agnostic scoffers.”

The Crying Game (1992)

Neil Jordan made his sexual thriller on the run, pick up the budget by the week to pay his crew. But it didn’t have a ton of support because of the dual subject matter: the IRA (still going on during The Troubles) and transgenderism, still a very misunderstood subject. But one genius – we know who he is but shall be nameless – bought the film there and created a successful campaign of not telling anyone the major plot twist. A sleeper hit, it won Jordan the Best Original Screenplay Oscar and was nominated for Best Director, Best Actor (Stephen Rea), Best Supporting Actor (Jaye Davidson, who only made one more film and left acting), and Best Picture.

Roger And Me (1989)

For the haters of Michael Moore, you can blame Telluride for providing him the breakthrough with his documentary that would reflect a similar theme in his entire career: the little man and working man getting screwed over by the man. Here, it was the motor industry in his native Michigan surrounding GM CEO Roger Smith who shut down several plants, putting 30,000 people out of work. It’s part autobiography on Moore’s upbringing and part expose on how Smith’s management didn’t just make things for the city, but also even for GM itself. There is, as it would be in the rest of his movies, at least one bold move to confront the problem to the antagonist, as he tried to ask Smith questions but was declined in his face. Moore would return to Telluride with his bullseye feature, Bowling For Columbine.

El Mariachi (1992)

Robert Rodriguez shot his first film, the start of his Mexico trilogy with just $7,225 as a budget, half of it coming from Rodriguez getting paid in experimental clinical drug testings. He shot on location, had locals to play minor roles, had no dolly, used one camera and almost no extra takes, no synched sound, and shot on 16 mm which transferred to video for editing. His entire cost-cutting mechanisms, along with being virtually the only crewman as DP and editor, resulted in a successful debut which Columbia Pictures bought for $200,000 and then fix it up to proper standards before marketing and distribution in early 1993. Rodriguez would also write a book about making the film, Rebel Without a Crew.

Mulholland Drive (2001)

After driving up major buzz in Cannes, David Lynch took his TV pilot-turned-hypnotic drama to Colorado for its American debut, leaving no doubt what many had witnessed back in France. It’s traditional Lynch; mysterious, sensual, and never giving all the answers in Lynch’s mind, which is exactly what his work is meant to do. And this one is about breaking into the business, the creative struggle one must wrestle, and the questioning of our real identity. There are plenty of interpretations to read but the film did its job of sucking us in very slowly that we didn’t realize it.

The Artist (2011)

Like Mulholland, Cannes is where Michel Hazanavicius’ love letter to silent Hollywood began his drive to a Best Picture Oscar and made Colorado his North American debut. Again, the same famous producer from twenty years earlier bought the film and immediately knew that people would fall for this charming story with a cute dog and a handsome Frenchman (Jean Dujardin) at the front. That year, The Artist also went up against George Clooney in The Descendents and The Ides of March, all starting at Telluride.

Moonlight (2016)

Barry Jenkins had not made a film in 8 years as he struggled to get other projects started and hated his brief stint as a writer on The Leftovers. Thanks to his constant presence in Telluride trying to sell scripts, he finally got a meeting with Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment and bought Jenkins’ adaptation of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s play. This came from personal experience for both men; living in Liberty City, a harsh neighborhood in Miami, all Black, and full of drug dealing in the 80s and 90s. It’s their life through Chiron as he gets older and as he realizes his feelings are opposite to what Black machismo life expects from boys. And being a Miami native myself with friends who came from this area, it is accurate.

What other works shall we see this year? By the time this piece is published, we may know. But the list goes long from what I have written so far. In the 80s, it was Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise, Louis Malle’s My Dinner With Andre, and David Lynch earlier with Blue Velvet. This is where the early buzz of a film lives on or dies. No awards are given out. Telluride is a celebration of what is coming. And what has been and why cinema is the best medium for any entertainment.

Follow me on Twitter: @brian_cine (Cine-A-Man)