Did a donation from Ivan Reitman (and his family) of a King Street West parking lot slaughter the spirit of the Toronto International Film Festival? Or is the ongoing construction of the Bell Lightbox — which started in February 2007 and won’t end until somewhere around 2010 — a vital transition to rescue TIFF from the Yorkville-based celebutard façade? The facility’s artistic director — and onetime EYE WEEKLY film critic — Noah Cowan, hosted the first of a week of hardhat tours today, while explaining the architecture, design and ideals of the building in the most haughtily cinematic terms.
Toronto may never be the setting of a seminal movie in this generation — no matter how close The Love Guru might have come to achieving that feat — so it seems like the same sort of creative energies are being poured into the year-round TIFF headquarters instead.
For the time being, those behind the project are going to have to deflect criticism that they’re creating a new disaster area, sucking the soul out of what was once lauded as an accessible festival. Bruce Kirkland decided to remind the world that the Toronto Sun was still capable of publishing informed anti-elitist criticism by railing against the “edifice complex” that finds the Lightbox one-quarter short of its $196-million fundraising goal — which put prospective donors at the front of the line at gala screenings. TIFF director and CEO Piers Handling blames government cutbacks in response.
But the $22-million worth of pavement donated by Reitman and his sisters is about halfway to becoming a new home for the festival at King and John — the aesthetic opposite of AMC Yonge & Dundas. Cowan, who was being groomed to take over directorship of TIFF, was recruited to oversee a vision for the Lightbox.
While the tradition of multi-screen buildings involved making the shape of each auditorium indiscernible from the outside, the five cinemas of the Lightbox give shape to the concoction of architect Bruce Kuwabara. And, at the top of the building, a gathering space inspired by the stepped roof of Villa Malaparte of the Isle of Capri that is prominently featured in Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt. The neighbouring Holiday Inn on King, and other fugly remnants of the c. 1989 “world-class” SkyDome era of faux-roadhouses and sports collectible shops, can’t possibly compete.
Cowan speaks of the “maximized transparency” of the building, and the desire to “vector people into a transformative experience” through the lobby, gallery spaces, learning studios, library, restaurant and lounge — not to mention the roof. “The overall goal is to take the most obscure reference in cinema,” says Cowan, “and turn it into a place where people can gather and commune.” Presumably, the most regular gatherers will be the well-heeled residents of the 41-storey condo tower to be swiftly built atop the five-floor Lightbox after its completion.
Of course, workers on a construction site naturally aren’t the type to care about Cowan’s rhetorical contemplation of just how didactic such a complex should or shouldn’t be — they’re there to get the job done. But there’s also the sense that the Lightbox represents the movies as museum pieces — something to be primarily savoured by generations who grew up before the advent of the VCR. And the Bell corporate branding will serve as an indelible reminder that the selling of telecom product is now valued over any creative vision.
Still, as the director of Meatballs, Stripes and Ghostbusters — who was also checking out the site today — shall never earn deserved genius recognition in the artistic world, the Lightbox will only enhance his legacy.
Norman Jewison, meanwhile, presided over the annual Canadian Film Centre garden party on Sunday afternoon — a few hours after the federal election writ dropped. And the gathering might have felt more like a protest rally had pelting rain not thrown its coordination completely off-balance.
Nonetheless, announcements at the so-called barbecue — where caterers promoting themselves for future film industry orders had relatively few free buffet takers on most parts of the lawn — were geared to helping catapult TIFF from a feeding frenzy of Hollywood entrails to a part of a more self-sufficient system, even in the face of hostility from Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
CFC founder Jewison cranked up his 82-year-old cantankerousness into a microphone, wondering why the federal Conservative government put the fortunes of the Ford Motor Co. over and above support for the arts. The success of his own centre, where he loudly estimated that 90 per cent of program graduates are currently working in the film industry — “Maybe some of them are waiters,” the director conceded — should provide sufficient evidence of a significant economic payback.
So, it’s the provincial Ontario government stepping up to invest in the CFC instead, providing $2.5-million to improve its Bayview Avenue estate facilities. The centre will also develop an Actor’s Conservatory, supported by a charitable foundation with $1-million that the late Brian Linehan didn’t admit his estate had, helping fulfill the celebrity interviewer’s wish that Canada no longer be so colonial when it comes to screen talent.
Sticking it to federal philistines was the closest thing to a takeaway in the rain, though, leading the decidedly non-Jewish Jewison to extemporaneously exclaim that “it’s a mitzvah” to be at the BBQ in the face of inclement weather conditions. But all of that goodwill hasn’t prevented the problem movie lovers have with Stephen Harper from infesting the whole reputation of TIFF.
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