Film Production Fall Term, Festivals and New Faculty: By Christopher Lane
Just as festival season is slowly coming to a wraps and the leaves begin to fall, the Toronto Film School will be embracing new beginnings. This term we welcome five new industry talents to our teaching repertoire, dozens of visitors from all over the world and almost a hundred new faces to our study body. All this excitement leads to new energy around the campus and the Toronto Film School is as bustling as its ever been.
September madness brings us two festivals that get our students very excited. The first is the Toronto International Film Festival, which for 10 days brings in celebrities, directors, producers, writers and other amazing talent from all over the world to view the almost 400 amazing national and international films being shown on their 28 theatre screens all across Toronto. This year, 38 of the features hailed from right here in Canada showing us that the Toronto INTERNATIONAL Film Festival is not afraid to honour the brilliant films of its homeland. TIFF welcomed Canadian shorts as well and I hope that is somewhat inspiring to our students, and inspire you to reach for the stars. The second festival held in September is our annual Toronto Film School Festival of Films which took place at the VIP Theaters of Cineplex right here at 10 Dundas St. E. The films we screened this year were amazing, and I’m so proud of all the hard work and determination you all put into getting them festival ready.
Another film festival that has yet to take place, but is still accepting submissions for a brief time is the Golden Panda International Short Film Festival. Sponsored by China’s Orient Star Media, this GPIFF is in its fourth year and seems to get bigger and better every year. The festival accepts features and shorts in the documentary, animation, drama and other categories. Winners of the festival get an all expense paid trip to mainland China for a cultural immersion tour. Certainly more than enough incentive to get those films festival ready. The GPIFF accepted submissions until October 9th.
The newly enhanced curriculum is one-year-old this term and the excitement and enthusiasm for what we’re offering our students are unparalleled. The seniors, our first to go through, are now entering their fifth term where they will be experiencing another exciting addition to our program- Canadian Film Studies. As they were leaving the fourth term they had the chance to pitch their thesis project ideas and this year’s pitches were unbelievable. For the first time in our campus history, the selection committee was faced with an interesting but welcome dilemma and had no alternative but to greenlight an unprecedented number of projects! This is due in part to the hard work and dedication of our instructors and your ability to accept challenges and exceed expectations- I applaud you. I look forward to helping see these project through to completion, we believe they’re going to be outstanding.
There’s simply not enough time to name all the successes and ongoing activities that happen here at TFS. To see more student successes and learn more about our new faculty please visit our newly minted Toronto Film School website (www.torontofilmschool.ca).
As always stay focused, and get in the picture!
Christopher Lane is an instructor in the Film Production Diploma Program at Toronto Film School. He is a writer,producer and director who has been working in the film industry for more than 20 years.
