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2/10/2014

Shorts of Every Colour: TIFF Announces Short Cuts International

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.