The Canadian titles announced last week for the 38th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival included a number of Asian Canadians in selection across the Short Cuts Canada programmes, but also in the Contemporary World Cinema programme. Reel Asian is proud to have presented earlier works by some of these filmmakers.
Missed our earlier coverage of Asian content at TIFF 2013? It’s here, and here. The Contemporary World Cinema programme includes just one Asian Canadian feature:
- Siddharth, dir. Richie Mehta (96min, Canada/India)
Mehta’s sci-fi feature I’ll Follow You Down made its world premiere earlier this month at Montreal’s Fantasia Festival and Mehta chairs our South Asian Advisory. Short Cuts Canada is the heart of TIFF’s Canadian programming and Asian Canadian key creatives, themes or content are in four of the six programmes, including:
- Beasts In The Real World, dir Sol Friedman (8min,Canada, SCC Programme 2)
- A Grand Canal (大運河), dir Johnny Ma 馬楠 (19min, Canada/China, SCC Programme 2)
- Jimbo, dir Ryan Flowers (25min, Canada, SCC Programme 3)
- Portrait As A Random Act Of Violence, dir Randall Okita (4min, Canada, SCC Programme 3)
- Nous avions, dir Stéphane Moukarzel (18min, Canada, SCC Programme 4)
- A Time Is A Terrible Thing To Waste, dir Leslie Supnet (3min, Canada, SCC Programme 4)
- CRIME: Joe Loya – The Beirut Bandit, dirs Alix Lambert & Sam Chou (2min, Canada, SCC Programme 5)
Director Sol Friedman‘s innovative Junko’s Shamisen won our Movieola Best Short Film or Video Award in 2010, and Randall Okita was on our shorts jury that year. Okita’s earlier films Machine with Wishbone and Fish In Barrel earned him back-to-back wins of our Centennial College @Wallace Studios Most Innovative Film Production Award in 2008 & 2009. Leslie Supnet was most recently one of our featured filmmakers for our Asian Heritage Month School Tour this past May and her work has been shown at Reel Asian numerous times.
Two shorts produced/co-produced by Michael Fukushima for the National Film Board will also have their world premieres as part of Short Cuts Canada:
- The End of Pinky, dir. Claire Blanchet (8min, Canada, SCC Programme 5)
- Impromptu, dir. Bruce Alcock (10min, Canada, SCC Programme 5)
The veteran animator and producer was the focus of Reel Asian’s Canadian Spotlight during our 2012 festival and has been a long-time supporter of Reel Asian.