The Toronto International Film Festival will come to a close on Saturday having launched 41 or so documentary projects. Of course, that number depends on how you define documentary. My count includes the animated WALTZ WITH BASHIR, but not Jia Zhang-ke’s hybrid 24 CITY (both coming soon to the New York Film Festival). Nor am I including the works in Short Cuts Canada or experimental titles in the Wavelengths section, so you could count even higher than 41. New Yorkers can get a sampling of Toronto’s doc line-up at STF this fall with three titles: BLOOD TRAIL, THE DUNGEON MASTERS and the opening night film AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD (whose subject Paul Watson is pictured on the left with programmer Thom Powers and director Dan Stone at the TIFF world premiere on Monday). STF regulars will recall getting a taste of another TIFF title SOUL POWER when we screened an 8-minute preview last spring with WHEN WE WERE KINGS. Earlier this week, A.O. Scott wrote in the New York Times that SOUL POWER was “the most entertaining movie I’ve seen so far” at the festival. Stay tuned to this space for further reflections on TIFF and my brushes with Jimmy Page, The Edge, Jack White, LeBron James, Bill Maher, Valentino, Youssou Ndour, Paris Hilton, Howard Zinn and Viggo Mortensen. You can read other reviews of TIFF docs in the excellent round-up coverage at AJ Schnack’s blog All These Wonderful Things.
Meanwhile, don’t delay in buying your STF Fall Season Pass for what Indiewire blogger Mark Rabinowitz calls the “weekly must-go-to for the NYC indie crowd.”