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The short film Homecoming, which screeed at TIFF 2013 in
To Repel Ghosts: Urban Tales from the African Continent |
Exciting news from the festival circuit for shorts fans!
The Toronto International Film Festival announced the creation of
Short Cuts International, a programme
of international short films that will premiere at TIFF 2014. “With new
technologies and a constant influx of new talent, short filmmaking is
flourishing,” said Cameron Bailey, Artistic Director of the Toronto
International Film Festival, speaking in Berlin. “As TIFF expands its global
reach, we want to bring some of the world's finest short films to the audience,
industry and media that gather in Toronto every year.”
Not only does the evolving nature of filmmaking offer plenty
of films ripe for the picking, but TIFF’s new shorts programme should fill a gap that was left in Toronto's film festival scene by the hiatus of the CFC Worldwide Short Film
Festival and desperately
needs to be filled. The announcement should see a boon for shorts at the festival, as
previous editions of TIFF have offered festivalgoers maple-flavoured shorts in
the Short Cuts Canada programme, which will continue to run as its own
programme at the festival alongside the international contingent of shorts. (The new
programme could also bring a sizable increase to TIFF’s
tally of premiere-status films.) International
short films were represented at the festival last year in the popular
Contemporary World Cinema screening
To
Repel Ghosts: Urban Tales from the African Continent and in the
experimental Wavelenghts programme.
Short Cuts International will screen international short
films in five curated programmes beginning this September and will kick off a
new monthly shorts programme that will run year-round at TIFF Bell Lightbox.
Shane Smith, TIFF’s Director of Special Projects, will oversee Short Cuts
International. (Programmers will be announced in the coming months.) The
Festival will begin accepting film submissions for all film programmes on Wednesday,
February 12, with an early-bird deadline of May 2 and a late deadline
of May 30.
The 39th Toronto
International Film Festival runs September 4 to 14, 2014.
