Toronto on Film is a six-part course on the moving picture history of Toronto, a city as rich and varied in its cinematic representations as the people who have lived and made movies here. From its early years as a modest shipping hub to its current status as one North America's most dynamically varied urban centres, Toronto has changed as quickly as cameras can capture it. It is the story of a place so restlessly mutable it could only be told in the movies.
This course will be led by Geoff Pevere, who has been writing, teaching and broadcasting about movies, media and popular culture for more than thirty years. A former movie critic with The Toronto Star and regular contributor to The Globe and Mail, he is also the author of two books on Toronto's cinematic legacy, Toronto on Film and Don Shebib's Goin' Down the Road.
6-Week Course: $60 (Bloor Members: $50, $40, Free)
Doors will open one hour before the first class. Registrants will receive supplementary materials in advance of their first class.
Thursdays, October 8 - November 12, 10:00 a.m. to noon
October 8: The City as Movie, the City as Myth
Cinema elevated cities like New York, London and Paris to mythic
proportions, but Toronto remained elusive. What kept this city from
dressing up and playing a fantasy version of itself?
October 15: Toronto: The Lost City
Toronto as a place to disappear has proven to be one of the most
persistent identifying cinematic tropes in TO films, but what makes it a
good place to get lost in?
October 22: Dressing the Strip: Toronto and Its Landmarks
Despite its lack of identifying landmarks and neighbourhoods,
Toronto’s defining features have proven persistent visual references for
the dreams and nightmares the city has of itself.
October 29: Coming Out: How the City of Toronto Went From Dressing Up in Drag to Playing Itself
Although often cast as a city that could be anywhere, by the 1980s
Toronto stepped out in all its diverse, changing and sometimes perverse
particularity.
November 5: The City Interpreted: Bruce McDonald’s Toronto
Toronto is a city that each filmmaker imagines differently, but where
does the projected vision of the city meet the place itself? Legendary
Toronto filmmaker Bruce McDonald (Pontypool, Hard Core Logo, The Tracey Fragments) joins us for a lively discussion.
November 12: The Non-Fiction City: Toronto’s Documentary Legacy
Toronto has a deep and rich documentary history, which is every bit
as interpretive, varied, nuanced and fluctuating as the fiction movies
made here. There’s no better location than the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema to
explore Toronto in docs.