Beyond TIFF

The city is currently experiencing TIFF fever. The world class festival is celebrating its 40th year and the stars have come out once again to help us celebrate. If for no other reason, this 11 days of international movie magic makes Toronto a great place to be a fan of all things film. Lucky for those of us who live here though there's lots of other options to keep us happy the rest of the year. And many of them, while lacking the glamour of TIFF, sport much smaller price tags.

Did you know that Toronto currently hosts over 70 different film festivals throughout the year? When you think about it, that's more than one a week! We host short films, documentaries, genre films, films from the LGBTQIA community and films from many of the cultural groups that call Toronto home. Some of the festivals offer free screenings and most have tickets in the $10 - $15 range. A great site for upcoming film events is Toronto Plex which also includes a list of festivals throughout the year so you can plan in advance!

The city also boasts a number of unique venues for seeing movies. If you're a fan of documentaries, there's the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema. Located in one of Toronto's classic heritage theatres, this theatre programs documentaries from home and abroad and hosts other festivals, community events and special screenings. Memberships are reasonable, are available in various levels and provide great value. Community activism saved the Revue Cinema at 400 Roncesvalles, which now shows predominantly second run movies for $11, but a star card gets you $3 off every movie you see for a whole year. They're having a town hall meeting on September 26 so if you live in the neighbourhood and have ideas about how they can better serve the community, think about attending. Other heritage theatres with second run and special offerings include The Royal Cinema at 608 College, The Fox at 2236 Queen St. E. and the Kingsway at 3030 Bloor St. W.

Many of the city's cultural organizations, such as the Japan Foundation and the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, regularly sponsor free film screenings, either at their own locations or more commonly, at one of the community-based theatres listed above. Many of these are listed on this blog's Events page. Some organizations have their own theatre, like the Art Gallery of Ontario's Jackman Hall which regularly screens films related to current exhibits. The University of Toronto has Innis Town Hall, whose theatre has recently been refurbished. The Cinema Studies Student Union programs regular free features there every week during the school year, including premieres and screenings with special guests.

The Toronto Public Library is another organization that regularly schedules movie screenings. Many are geared to families, with appropriate movie selections and time slots. Others are intended for a broader audience. Some branches have regular screenings, such as Barbara Frum which hosts afternoon movies at 2 pm two Thursdays a month, while others are geared to special events or programming. For example, the Hillcrest branch will be hosting Puppetmongers Movie Night on September 17 which will show movies featuring puppetry from around the world, and starting September 16, the Brentwood branch will be hosting a monthly Polish film night.

The library also has a vast collection of movies to borrow, ranging from popular titles and foreign films to documentaries and how-to videos. New movies are added regularly.

This post wouldn't be complete without mentioning two of the bigger players in Toronto movie houses: Cineplex and the Magic Lantern and Rainbow theatres. Cineplex offers two programs that I love. The first is Scene, their customer loyalty card. It's free and the concept is simple: see movies, use the card, earn free movies. Plus 10% off movies on Tuesdays and concessions. The second program is their Classic Film Series. About once a month it puts classics back on the big screen for the reasonable ticket price of $6.

Rainbow Cinemas has a few locations around the city and if you don't mind seeing your films on a slightly older, smaller screen, it's a good way to save a few bucks. They even have $5 Tuesdays. The Carlton Cinema, which operates as a Magic Lantern Theatre, is also special in that shows a lot of new independent and foreign releases and on the third Saturday of the month as part of their Carlton Midnight Society they screen cult oddities.

There's lots more to say about the movie offerings in Toronto. As the summer has just ended, I've completely ignored the outdoor screenings that happen at multiple venues across the city for example. Watch the Events page for free and special screenings, check out Toronto Plex or Cinema Clock for listings, and add your favourites by leaving a comment on this post.

TD Gallery

The Toronto Reference Library, centrally located just north of Bloor and Yonge, is much more than a place to research your latest passion. It’s also a community hub offering talks, classes, lectures and exhibits. While display cases filled with fascinating treasures can be found throughout the library, the main exhibition space is on the main floor, just to the right of the entrance. The TD Gallery is a wonderful space which is used to highlight rare and interesting items from the library’s varied collection.

 

The TD Gallery is free to visit and hosts roughly four exhibits per year. The current exhibit is entitled The Gilded Age of Fashion: 1890-1914 and it uses text and original and reproduced illustrations and ephemera to explore this exciting time in fashion. It also looks at how the theatre has interpreted this period in fashion through wardrobe sketches and actual theatrical costumes on loan from the Shaw Festival. If you can’t get out to the show, or just want to get a sense of what you’ll see when you do visit, the library has prepared a virtual exhibit that you can enjoy from home.

 

The library has also planned some special events in relation to this exhibit so you may want to time your visit to take advantage:

Designing for the Shaw  November 26, 2:00 p.m.
Cameron Porteous, former Head of Design at the Shaw Festival Theatre, will provide a behind-the-scenes look at designing costumes for the Canadian stage. The presentation will be followed by a curated tour of the gallery.

Vintage Fashion: Reliving the Gilded Age  November 27 , 7:00 p.m.
Live models will wear period costumes, including summer party dresses from the Downton Abbey era.

 

General Gallery Details:

Location: Toronto Reference Library, 789 Yonge Street - Main Level
Hours: Monday to Thursday, 9:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., Friday, 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Saturday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Exhibit closes January 5, 2014.

Author Talks and Book Signings

Toronto is a wonderful city for anyone who loves books – and obviously a lot of us do if the stats regarding our library system are any indication: over 1.25 million people are registered library cardholders, and our system is the busiest urban public library system in the world. (For more fun facts about the Toronto Public Library, check out their Media Facts page).

What makes Toronto a truly great city for curious readers however is the number of opportunities we have for meeting with authors and listening to them read and comment on their work. Sometimes this happens at festivals held at specific times of the year, like the International Festival of Authors, held at Harbourfront each October, but there are plenty of opportunities throughout the year, offered by a wide variety of different groups. Below I’ve highlighted some of the organizations that bring these writers to us, and list some of the offerings available this April and May to provide some example. See the What’s On page for even more listings.

I’ve already done a post about the great programming offered through the Toronto Public Library, but as many of the programs involve bringing in writers, I have to mention it again here. While many of the “big ticket” events happen at the Toronto Reference Library on Yonge Street, they do make sure to spread the events out to the various branches as well. Often, this involves repeating events, so if you’re unable to catch a talk one night, you might have another chance. For example, award-winning author Hugh Brewster will be speaking about his new book on the sinking of the Titanic, which happened 100 years ago this year, at the Reference Library on April 3, and then on subsequent dates at the following branches: Albert Campbell, Port Union, Danforth/Coxwell and Annette Street. All library lectures are free, although some do require you to reserve tickets in advance.

Also, talks at the Reference Library are recorded and can be watched on the library's YouTube channel. For example, see a video of Anne Rice's recent visit here.


Harbourfront Centre has been inviting authors to Toronto since 1974 through its Authors at Harbourfront series. Upcoming guests include John Boyne, Sadie Jones and Farley Mowat. Tickets are generally $10 but free for members, youth and students, and programs often feature more than 1 author.

It’s long been a tradition for bookstores to host book launches and signings and Toronto’s book sellers are definitely keeping the tradition alive. Indigo hosts author events fairly regularly, usually at either their Manulife Centre or Yorkdale locations. Coming up, Nicholas Sparks and Kelley Armstrong. While these events are usually limited to book signings, there are occasionally more in-depth offerings. For example, on April 11, Heather Reisman will be in conversation with Dr. Sanjay Gupta about his new book Monday Mornings. Our independent bookstores and publishers also host their share of events, so watch for them. Or better yet, check out Open Book: Toronto, a goldmine of literary event information.

In addition to these big players, lots of other groups host authors from time to time. Coming up for example, the Italian Cultural Institute teams up with the University of Toronto Press to launch Elena Lamberti’s book Marshall McLuhan’s Mosaic. So with all these book-related events going on, not to mention all the other great offerings out there, the only hard part is finding the time to fit it all in! Enjoy!

Toronto Public Library Part 1: Programs

Now that the weather has been begun to shift and we're faced with colder, often darker days, the nature of the city's free offerings that most appeals - at least for me - begins to change. Not a lover of the cold, I tend to move inside once November hits, no longer looking for street festivals or walking tours, opting instead for more cerebral interests that can be appreciated in comfort indoors. One organization that comes through with an incredible array of stimulating free programming is the Toronto Public Library (I've called this entry Part 1 because there is so much to love about the Toronto Public Library system that I plan to write several entries about it).

The Library hosts a number of different talk, lecture and salon series. While talks are held throughout the city at the various branches, a good number of them are held at the centrally located Reference Library, situated just north of Bloor on Yonge Street. It has many rooms available for these events, including the well appointed Appel Salon. The marquee events are held in the evenings and are generally preceded by a cash bar reception. All events are free, although depending on the series, they may require you to book a ticket in advance. Many events "sell out" well in advance, although the Library usually does offer some rush seating on the night of the talk, or occasionally makes extra space available in an adjoining room where the talk can be watched via video screen.

The only complaint I have with the Library offerings is that there are so many of them, it can be difficult to sift through them on the website. Every time you click on their home page, different lectures or events come up in the Featured Programs section, which provides a nice intro to upcoming events, but to delve more deeply, I find the Program, Classes & Exhibits link provides too many options to be clear. A straightforward calendar would be useful, but so far I have been unable to find one. Every time I go looking, I seem to find a really interesting lecture happening in an hour or two that I had somehow managed to overlook in my previous searches. So good luck with the site. I'll be listing some of the talks - mostly the evening and weekend ones - in the What's On page, but certainly not all of them, and I won't be updating them with notes as to availability.

To give you an idea of the types of people and topics you can experience, here's a brief run-down of just a few of the series:

The Appel Salon: Billed as "New Books. Big Ideas. Join the Conversation." Top notch thinkers and writers, discussing or debating the topics of their latest books. This year's guests include Jeffrey Sachs, Umberto Echo and Peter C. Newman. These talks are recorded and can be watched after the event on the Library website.

The Eh List Author's series, which as you would expect features Canadian writers. These events take place at branches throughout the city and all events are followed by book signings.

The Thought Exchange. This is the one that covers all those interesting topics that don't fit into a neat bucket, and its tagline is "Programs for the Constantly Curious". These take place at branches throughout the city.

As a final note, I wanted to put the value of these talks into perspective. The talk I attended tonight featured Wade Davis, who spoke about the early British expeditions to Everest. Davis is, among other things, the Explorer-in-Residence at National Geographic. As it happens, the National Geographic Toronto Speaker Series is currently running at Roy Thomson Hall, featuring other contributors to the magazine. I'm sure the talks are deeply engaging, but single tickets start at $39.50. The event tonight was free, and at the end, members of the audience could meet Davis, ask questions and get their books signed. Artifacts from those early expeditions were even in attendance, and made available to the audience afterward for up-close viewing. I'd say that's pretty hard to beat.