by Jessica Knapp
Every September for the past forty years, film enthusiasts, filmmakers, directors, and actors and actresses have travelled to Canada for the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).
The festival began in 1976 as the “Festival of Festivals,” collecting the best movies from other film festivals around the world and showing them to audiences in Toronto. The festival was renamed the Toronto International Film Festival in 1995. TIFF continues to provide a platform for members of the film industry to launch their careers.
Over the years this has included: Paul Haggis, Jason Reitman, Michael Moore, David Cronenberg, and John Woo.
We at Canada’s History are big fans of history-inspired films; here are three playing at TIFF 2015 that stood out for us.
Beyond the Horizon – Directed by Ryan J. Noth. This eight-minute film illustrates Parks Canada's investigation of the wreck of the HMS Erebus and the haunting isolation of Arctic exploration.
Ryan J. Noth was born in Chatham, Ontario, and graduated from Queen's University. He has directed the shorts National Parks Project: Gros Morne (2011), A Tomb with a View (2014), which played the Festival, and Beyond the Horizon (2015).
Ninth Floor – Directed by Mina Shum. This feature-length documentary “…takes a penetrating look at a pivotal but perversely obscure incident in Canadian history: the Sir George Williams University riot of February 1969, when a protest against institutional racism snowballed into a fourteen-day student occupation of the Montreal University's computer room.”
Mina Shum was born in Hong Kong and raised in Canada. Shum is an independent filmmaker and artist. With Ninth Floor, a production of the National Film Board of Canada, Shum has written and directed her fourth feature film and first feature documentary.
Clouds of Autumn – Directed by Trevor Mack and Matthew Taylor Blais. This fifteen-minute film depicts an Aboriginal girl’s separation from her brother when she is forced to attend a Residential School far from home. This film is infused with co-director Trevor Mack’s family history.
Trevor Mack is a Tsilhqot'in filmmaker from Williams Lake and the Tl'etinqox area in British Columbia. He directed the shorts The Blanketing (2013) and Clouds of Autumn (2015).
Matthew Blais is a Vancouver-based filmmaker. He directed the documentary feature Born In The Night (2014) and the fiction short Clouds of Autumn (2015).
We also wanted offer special congratulations to Paul Gross, who directed the film Hyena Road (2015), showing at this year’s TIFF. In 2009, Canada’s History presented Gross with the Governor General's History Award for Popular Media: The Pierre Berton Award for his 2008 film, Passchendaele.