TIFF Midnight Madness, Wavelengths and Family Zone Titles Announced!

LADY KILLERS AND KILLER LADIES, BRUSSELS’S MUSCLES AND CREATURE FEATURES… AND GENE SIMMONS… COMPLETE 2008 MIDNIGHT MADNESS LINEUP

Toronto – The Toronto International Film Festival announces the complete lineup of the 21st Midnight Madness, a Festival favourite drawing legions of devoted fans for manic midnight screenings of wild and wicked films for the witching hour.  Featuring work you might not expect in a festival context, Midnight Madness brings chillers, thrillers, and ‘”shock-u-mentaries” from around the world to ravenous cinephiles. The Midnight Madness Package is $156.51, and available to students and seniors for $100 (prices do not include GST, building fund fee and service charges). Purchase online at tiff08.ca, by phone at 416-968-FILM or 1-877-968-FILM or in person at the Festival Box Office at Manulife Centre, 55 Bloor Street West (main floor, north entrance).  Box Office hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Saturday. The 33rd Toronto International Film Festival runs September 4 through 13, 2008.

Midnight Madness Opening Night

JCVD Mabrouk El Mechri, France/Luxembourg/Belgium

International Premiere

Jean-Claude Van Damme stars as Jean-Claude Van Damme in the comeback story of one of the biggest action stars in movie history. When a trip to the post office lands the down-and-out Van Damme smack-dab in the middle of a dangerous heist, the “Muscles from Brussels” is exposed as an ordinary guy, complete with fears, contradictions and hopes. What can he do when the gun pointed to his temple isn’t filled with blanks? JCVD finds himself at the turning point of his life as a presumed hero.

The Burrowers JT Petty, USA

World Premiere

A horrific take on John Ford’s The Searchers, director JT Petty (S&MAN, TIFF’s Midnight Madness 2006) tells the story of a band of men who, in 1879, set out upon the plains of Dakota to find and recover a family of settlers mysteriously taken from their farm. Expecting the offenders to be a fierce band of natives, the group prepares for a routine battle. But, upon discovering strange holes in the ground, they soon realize that the real enemy is stalking them from below.

Deadgirl Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel, USA

World Premiere

In this kinky, funny and chilling exploration of friendship, morality and the horror of growing up, two teen boys discover the naked body of a long-forgotten girl in a sealed basement of an abandoned asylum. They quickly realize something far more mysterious is at play when the girl, who they presumed to be dead, begins to exhibit signs of life. When they decide to keep her, their twisted teen fantasy soon erupts into a desperate and dangerous battle of wills between friends. As word of their dark secret threatens to spread, the boys are forced to decide how far they are willing to go to get what they want, and at what cost. 

Sexykiller Miguel Martí, Spain

World Premiere

A serial killer is loose at a medical school in Spain, and nobody suspects that the culprit is Barbara, a sexy, fashion-obsessed student whose hunger for blood can’t be satiated by what she gets in anatomy class! She’s Paris Hilton with the mind of Hannibal Lector. But when her fellow students’ experiment to discover the killer’s identity goes terribly awry, Barbara’s victims start coming back to life. Add in some zombies and chainsaws for a bloody spin on the term “fashion victim.”

Detroit Metal City Toshio Lee, Japan

International Premiere

Based on the hugely popular manga series, Detroit Metal City tells the tale of Souichi, a sensitive and wimpy music geek who came to Tokyo from the country with the dream of becoming a fancy pop musician. But bubblegum dreams are crushed to a bloody pulp when Souichi is forced to front the satanic death metal band Detroit Metal City (DMC), whose trademark is eccentric makeup and destructive performance. Winning recognition as one of Japan’s top acts, DMC is challenged to a death metal duel by rock icon Jack IL Dark (KISS’s Gene Simmons). Souichi must battle for the title of death metal king while keeping Ms. Aikawa, his long-time crush with an affinity for shiny happy pop, unaware of his double identity. 

Not Quite Hollywood Mark Hartley, USA/Australia

International Premiere

Free-wheelin’ sex romps! Blood-soaked terror tales! Blazing action extravaganzas! The same cultural explosion that gave birth to Australian art classics also spawned a group of demon-children – maverick filmmakers who thumbed their noses at authority, made their own rules and, in the process, unleashed films such as Razorback, The Man from Hong Kong, Patrick and Mad Max. A rip-roaring documentary on Australian genre cinema of the 70s and 80s, Not Quite Hollywood features Jamie Lee Curtis, Dennis Hopper, Stacy Keach, Quentin Tarantino and other celebrities sharing their love and memories of an unjustly forgotten cinematic era.

Acolytes Jon Hewitt, Australia

North American Premiere

When they discover the body of a murdered Canadian backpacker buried in the woods, three high school students trace the crime back to a suspected killer. Taking full advantage of their situation, they attempt to blackmail their suspect into killing again. Their target? A brutal bully – recently released from prison – who has victimized them all their lives. But as their scheme lures them into a violent and sadistic world, the vulnerable teens soon discover that rather than destroying their childhood nightmare, they have created one far deadlier.

Chocolate Prachya Pinkaew, Thailand

North American Premiere

Starring martial arts dynamo Jija Yanin, Chocolate reunites the director and action choreographer of the breakout Midnight Madness hit, Ong-Bak Muay Thai Warrior (TIFF 2003). Exiled from a powerful Thai crime syndicate following a passionate but forbidden love affair with a Japanese gangster, cancer-stricken Zin struggles to raise her shy, autistic daughter Zen. When she learns of some outstanding debts owed to her mother that, if collected, would pay for much-needed medical treatment, Zen sets out to collect from dangerous and reluctant debtors, soon realizing that years obsessively playing video games and watching action movies have transformed her into a martial arts savant.

Eden Log Franck Vestiel, France

North American Premiere

Inspired by Manga and video game imagery, Eden Log is a visually stunning sci-fi vision of a tomb-like underworld. A man regains consciousness at the bottom of a deep cave. He has no idea of how he got there, nor can he determine what happened to the dead man whose body he wakes up next to. Only one thing is certain – he must escape the menacing creatures that are pursuing him, and climb back to the surface through a cemetery-like world that has been abandoned by a mysterious organization called Eden Log.

Martyrs Pascal Laugier, France/Canada

North American Premiere

One night in the early 1970s, Lucie, a little girl missing for over a year, is discovered wandering by the side of a country road, unable to say anything about what has happened to her. Hospitalized, Lucie slowly learns how to live again with the help of Anna, a victim of terrible abuse at the hands of her own family. In no time, they are inseparable. Fifteen years later, with the help of Anna, Lucie sets out to wreak vengeance on the family she believes to be responsible for her capture and torture. A visceral and deeply disturbing exploration of what it means to be pushed to the limits of human endurance, Martyrs redefines the nature of horror cinema.

WAVELENGTHS PRESENTS AN ENTICING CURATED SELECTION FROM TODAY’S AVANT-GARDE

Toronto - Wavelengths is a curated presentation of the best in recent international avant-garde film and video. Comprising six programmes, the eighth edition of Wavelengths is once again curated by Cinematheque Ontario programmer Andréa Picard and features 26 films and videos by renowned and emerging artists, including James Benning, Olaf Nicolai, Pat O’Neill, Nathaniel Dorsky, Jennifer Reeves, Ben Russell and Jean-Marie Straub. Over the years, Wavelengths has become an important forum for dialogue among artists, curators and filmgoers interested in formally challenging works and personal expressions made on film and video. This year’s lineup reflects the remarkable staying power of 16mm and highlights the use of 35mm among emerging artists.  Dates and screening times for Wavelengths can be found at tiff08.ca/wavelengths. The Wavelengths Package is now on sale; it includes one ticket to each of the six screenings for $66.49 (not including GST, building-fund fee and service charges). Purchase online at tiff08.ca, by phone at 416-968-FILM or 1-877-968-FILM or in person at the Festival Box Office at Manulife Centre, 55 Bloor Street West (main floor, north entrance). Box Office hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday to Saturday. The 33rd Toronto International Film Festival runs September 4 through 13, 2008.

The six programmes will run from Friday September 5 to Monday September 8, 2008 at the Art Gallery of Ontario’s Jackman Hall, 317 Dundas Street West (McCaul Street entrance).

Wavelengths 1: Films by Nathaniel Dorsky and Jean-Marie Straub

This year’s Wavelengths begins with a programme of avant-garde masters. One of the most gifted 16mm filmmakers of our time, Nathaniel Dorsky has been delighting audiences for over 40 years with his precise and insightful camerawork. Following his acclaimed Song and Solitude, Dorsky returns to the Festival with Sarabande (USA) and Winter (USA), the first two films in a new triptych titled Three Songs. Following its screening at the Directors Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival, Jean-Marie Straub’s Le Genou d’Artémide (Italy/France) has its International Premiere in Toronto and marks the first work Straub completed after the loss of his co-directing partner Danièle Huillet. A sequel of sorts to 2006’s Quei Loro Incontri, this new work is an adaptation of Cesare Pavese’s The Wild Beast (La Belva), which is the sixth conversation in the collection Dialogues with Leuco (1947). Filled with dappling sun and crafted with Straub’s implacable rigour, Le Genou d’Artémide is a heart-wrenching tale of the insoluble gap between mortals and gods.

Wavelengths 2: LOST AND FOUND

Hannes Schüpbach’s L’Atelier (Switzerland) is a 16mm homage to artistic creation; Charlotte Pryce’s The Parable of the Tulip Painter and the Fly (USA) sumptuously uses 16mm Kodachrome to imbue painting and film with intoxicating colour; the latest installment in David Gatten’s internationally celebrated The Secret History of the Dividing Line series, How to Conduct a Love Affair (USA) hints at love’s mystical and abiding powers; Astrid Ofner (Antigone in Straub and Huillet’s Antigone) matches Franz Kafka’s heart-rending letters to his beloved Milena Jesenská with fragile images of Vienna in Sag es mir Dienstag (Austria); Abraham Ravett’s TZIPORAH (USA) is a careful and quiet response to grief and loss. The programme concludes with a recently restored print of Encyclopaedia Britannica (UK) by late British conceptual art pioneer John Latham, whose work has been collected by several major museums.

Wavelengths 3: Horizontal Boundaries

Eminent multi-disciplinary artist Pat O’Neill, whose work has been exhibited at The Whitney Museum of American Art (New York) and Le Centre Pompidou (Paris), opens the programme with Horizontal Boundaries (USA); Rebecca Baron and Doug Goodwin’s Lossless #2 (USA) is part of a series exploring the effects of digital compression upon the film image; local filmmaker Chris Gehman’s Refraction Series (Canada) finds moments of beauty and mystery through the use of optics; Public Domain (USA) is Jim Jennings’s response to a controversial New York City bill prohibiting filming in public places; Robert Todd’s Dig (USA) reconfigures orange and white Dig Safe marks into a frenetic visual suite; T. Marie’s Optra Field III-VI (USA) is a series of dichromatic time-based drawings reminiscent of Sol LeWitt and Agnes Martin. Eriko Sonoda’s Garden/ing (Japan) confounds a view from a window with an enlarged photograph of that very vista.

Wavelengths 4: RR

An abbreviation for “railroad”, RR (USA) is the latest (and possibly the last) 16mm work by the great American independent filmmaker James Benning, who was recently the subject of a monograph published by the Austrian Film Museum. A banner work at 2008’s Berlinale, RR is a breathtaking film of 43 freight trains traversing the expansive American landscape. The film is shot in 43 static shots, duration is determined by the length and speed of the passing trains. In addition to Benning’s synch-sound recording, sound excerpts and songs provide a clever counterpoint to the images, obliquely invoking past events including the Vietnam War. The collaged soundtrack includes Karen Carpenter singing for a Coca-Cola commercial, Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” and Gregory Peck reading from Revelations.

Wavelengths 5: Trips

German art star Olaf Nicolai makes his film debut with Rodakis (Germany), a fictitious biography of Greek craftsman Alekos Rodakis; Chris Chong Chan Fui’s Block B (Malaysia/Canada) examines the lives of an expatriate Indian community weaving itself through the contradicting soundscapes of contemporary Malaysia; Norbert Pfaffenbichler’s rigorous MOSAIK MÉCANIQUE (Austria) systematically lays out the 98 shots of Charlie Chaplin’s 1914 short A Film Johnnie in parallel loops across a CinemaScope image; Ben Russell’s Black and White Trypps Number Three (USA) focuses on a young, mesmerized audience during a performance by the noise band Lightning Bolt; Rosalind Nashashibi (who represented Scotland at the 2007 Venice Biennale) and Lucy Skaer’s Flash in the Metropolitan (UK), is a sibylline nighttime excursion through The Met’s antiquities galleries; Erika Loic’s Parícutin (Toronto) chronicles the history of the titular Mexican volcano. Ben Russell, experimental filmmaker and Guggenheim award recipient, concludes the programme with Trypps #5 (Dubai) (USA/United Arab Emirates), a slice of happiness packaged under the flickering neon light of global capitalism.

Programme 6: When It Was Blue

This year’s edition of Wavelengths wraps up in pairs: two double 16mm overlapping projections united in their study of colour, subject and form. Vanessa O’Neill’s silent Suspension (USA) is composed of a roll of black-and-white film and a toned roll, resulting in a diaphanous blue creation with seemingly endless hue gradations. Jennifer Reeves’s When It Was Blue (USA/Iceland) was initially shown at the Museum of Modern Art in 2005. Several residencies and finishing grants enabled Reeves to re-edit the original material and to shoot, optically print and paint additional footage. The result is the completion of a formidable three-and-a-half-year collaboration with composer-musician Skúli Sverrisson, music director to Laurie Anderson. When It Was Blue substantially expands Reeves’s impressive 16mm visual repertoire in a virtuosic display of luminescent overlapping imagery and it will be presented live, with Reeves projecting the film and Sverrisson performing the soundtrack.

SPROCKETS FAMILY ZONE OFFERS THE FINEST IN FILM FOR CHILDREN OF ALL AGES

Toronto – The Toronto International Film Festival announces the complete lineup of this year’s Sprockets Family Zone, presented by the Sprockets Toronto International Film Festival for Children. Showcasing the best in contemporary international children’s cinema, Sprockets Family Zone will delight families with four entertaining and engaging world premieres for fans seven years of age or older. The Family Package is available for $76.72 (prices do not include GST, building fund fee and service charges).  Purchase online at tiff08.ca, by phone at 416-968-FILM or 1-877-968-FILM or in person at the Festival Box Office at Manulife Centre, 55 Bloor Street West (main floor, north entrance). Box Office hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Saturday. The 33rd Toronto International Film Festival runs September 4 through 13, 2008.

Krabat Marco Kreuzpaintner, Germany

World Premiere

In the seventeenth century, a 14-year-old orphan named Krabat flees the horrors of the Thirty Years War by becoming an apprentice to the ominous master of a mysterious mill. One of 12 young men working for the miller, Krabat is not only taught the craft of milling but is also initiated into a sinister world of dark arts. When the life of his friend and protector becomes threatened, Krabat must struggle to free himself from an evil sorcerer’s control in a gripping fight for freedom, friendship and love. Based on Otfried Preußler’s bestselling book, Krabat stars Daniel Brühl, Christian Redl and David Kross. Live action, German with English subtitles, recommended for ages 12 and up.

Mia et le Migou Jacques-Rémy Girerd, France/Italy

World Premiere

When her father becomes trapped in a tunnel on a construction site far from home, Mia decides to leave her village to look for him. Trekking through the vast and mysterious forest, Mia finds herself face-to-face with the Migou, a large, unusual species charged with protecting a powerful and important tree – a tree threatened by the same construction site that has endangered the life of her father. Featuring exquisite painterly animation, Mia et le Migou weaves a message of environmental responsibility into an imaginative world filled with fantastic creatures and one brave little girl. Animation, French with English subtitles, recommended for ages nine and up.

The Secret of Moonacre Gabor Csupo, United Kingdom/Hungary/France

World Premiere

Thirteen-year-old orphan Maria Merryweather is sent away to live with her uncle, Sir Benjamin, in the mysterious Moonacre Manor. There Maria uncovers the dark truth about the ancient curse that has nourished a destructive feud for centuries. She must find a set of magical pearls before the next full moon to undo the curse and save Moonacre Valley from disaster. Aided by a stable of wonderful characters and fantastical beasts, Maria sets out to bring peace to this magical world. Based on the acclaimed book The Little White Horse, The Secret of Moonacre stars Ioan Gruffudd, Tim Curry, Natascha McElhone, Juliet Stevenson and Dakota Blue Richards. Live action, English, recommended for ages nine and up.

Sunshine Barry & the Disco Worms Thomas Borch Nielsen, Denmark/Germany

World Premiere

It’s not easy being Barry. An earthworm gets no respect. He’s at the bottom of the food chain, with a dead-end job at the compost plant. Barry’s lot is a dull, dark existence. But one day an old disco record turns his life upside down. Barry suddenly sees the light: he will star in the world’s greatest disco band, Sunshine Barry & the Disco Worms, and play that funky music to stardom. True, he’s got no rhythm, no band and no arms, but, as Barry says, “we’ll do it anyway!” Animation, English, recommended for ages seven and up.

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