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David Weaver TIFF blog

Parting shots

Saturday, September 13, 2008 | 12:50 PM 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.

The festival is over. The moviegoers have packed away their Post-it note-strewn copies of the program. The filmmakers have returned to their far-flung corners of the world, hunkering down to try and find the financing for their next films. The screens are once again reoccupied by Hollywood mediocrity. Everything has gone back to normal.

But one question remains: why do we make films in this country?

On Friday, I opened my copy of the Globe and Mail to discover in an interview that, all evidence to the contrary, Prime Minister Stephen Harper does not hate the arts. In truth, the article goes on to mention, he is a practiced classical pianist who loves music and only wants to discard the programs “people don’t actually want.”

So once again we’re faced with the utterly false notion that our artists are intent on living off of government largesse and foisting on the Canadian people work that has no interest in satisfying, in Harper’s words, “public need or public demand.” This is, essentially, an accountant’s argument for how support for the arts should work. And it’s not difficult to see that the Canadian film industry, with its struggles to find an audience in English Canada, would be at the top of Mr. Harper’s list for chopping were he to find himself with a majority government on Oct. 14.

The only problem with this analysis is that it’s wrong. The fact of the matter is that Canadians suffer from a prevalent and often suffocating disregard for their own artists. The reason for this, quite simply, is our proximity to the immense pop cultural engine that is the United States. And the remedy is time, lots of time, and persistence.

Only over time did our appreciation for Canadian music and Canadian writing develop to the point where it is today – in fact, it took 40 long years. And only over time has the festival emerged as a powerhouse on the world stage – roughly thirty years in that instance. There’s no doubt that Canadian film is in a different place than it was a decade ago, but we have to continue believing in ourselves and in the role film can play in our lives.

I think that Toronto Stories fit the bill. Over and over, people stopped me and the other filmmakers to tell us how thrilled they were to see their own city finally up on a movie screen, undisguised. It’s strange to think that the prime minister of the country would feel none of that pride. Sad.

At the end of each festival, I always feel the same way: I deeply miss seeing old friends at the screenings, the bizarre moments that could only happen in this particular pressure cooker (like Kirsten Scott Thomas being so intent on getting to her next interview that she happily ran me down, even though I was holding my five-month old baby), and of course, the opportunity to see the film projected in the most perfect circumstances possible. I miss the opportunity to shake hands with filmmakers I truly admire: Mike Leigh (Secrets and Lies) and Wong Kar-Wai (In the Mood for Love) this time around. I won’t miss – or at least my liver won’t – the alcohol consumption that goes with the constant round of parties, or the sniping of the critics (although that’s been in less evidence this year, I have to say).

But what I love about the festival above all else is the opportunity to show my work to filmgoers who, like me, just have an abiding, inexhaustible love for movies. The kind of people who can’t wait to enter the theatre, because every time the lights go down, they know there’s the chance, however slim it might be at times, that what they’re about to see could change how they look at the world forever. Those are the stalwarts, the true believers.

I miss them already.

Time to make another movie.

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