Story Tools: PRINT | Text Size: S M L XL | REPORT TYPO | SEND YOUR FEEDBACK

David Weaver TIFF blog

On with the show

Tuesday, September 2, 2008 | 09:33 AM ET

David Weaver is an old pro when it comes to the Toronto International Film Festival. The director behind Moon Palace (2000), Century Hotel (2001) and Siblings (2004) has attended the festival on several occasions, and knows the territory. This year, he came in support of Toronto Stories, a collaborative, four-part study of his native city shot with three other directors: Sudz Sutherland, Aaron Woodley and Sook-Yin Lee. Weaver blogged for CBCNews.ca throughout the festival, reporting on audience reactions, business deals, bizarre celebrity encounters and the general mayhem that is TIFF.

Against all odds (and the odds are pretty long these days), I was able to make another feature film. Toronto Stories is an anthology piece made with three other directors (Aaron Woodley, Sudz Sutherland and Sook-Yin Lee) about our hometown, a city that usually stands in for New York or Chicago in giant Hollywood productions. This little movie is an attempt to reclaim that cinematic landscape for ourselves.

It’s always been my secret hope that the film would premiere at TIFF. After all, leaving aside the movie’s setting, what better place to launch the film than at the largest and second-most prestigious film festival in the world? Especially since the most prestigious festival, Cannes, is run by snooty French people with peculiar tastes.

But having a film in TIFF is a little like going through the most intensive days of production. Right now, it feels like we’re in prep – rushing to finish the movie, trying to generate as much publicity as possible (including our capper, a giant party downtown in Union Station following the premiere) and awaiting the film’s reception by audiences and the press.

Ever since John Harkness, critic at the time for the Toronto weekly Now, walked out 10 minutes into my first feature, Century Hotel (2001), and reviewed it as if he’d seen the whole movie (getting a whole slew of facts wrong in the process), I’ve had a pretty jaded attitude about the press component of the festival. But a new generation of critics has come along and the internet has revolutionized the entire situation, with regular filmgoers being able to post reviews online and correct some of the biases of the mainstream media.

And surprisingly, we’re off to a good start. Toronto Stories has gotten positive reviews in Now and the Toronto Star, and a decent profile in Eye Weekly. A slew of interviews have been set up for the next week. I always find these a bit intimidating – everything I had wanted to say is already on the screen, and it’s hard not to believe that at some point you’ll make a pronouncement that’ll reveal you as a total idiot. Yikes!

That’s the strange thing about directing a film. You dream about it for years, can’t believe it’s happening when you finally go into production and then find yourself dreading saying a word about it for fear you’ll misrepresent your work and never live it down.

Nope, there’s no anxiety involved in that. None whatsoever.

There’s only one thing that can address this anxiety: seeing your movie with an audience. In the end, that’s what the film festival really offers – an opportunity to screen your movie for people who truly love cinema. Obviously, as a filmmaker you hope they’ll devour your movie, but even if they don’t, you can be assured that they came to it with the highest hopes. They wouldn’t be at the festival otherwise.

So here we go.

Main | Next Post »