From Sept. 8 to Sept. 14 the Toronto Urban Film Festival used news screens in subway stations as a medium for showcasing short films. While the event happened to coincide with the Toronto International Film Festival, the two are unlikely to be confused.
Each TUFF film is silent and exactly 60 seconds long, ranging across six general themes: Forgotten Places, Uncommon Spaces, Big Smoke, Big Dreams, The Imaginary City, 905 to 416, Urban Ennui, and My TOwn. Submission was open to anyone with a camera.
Programmer Sharon Switzer dreamt of a festival focussing on “the experience of living in an urban centre.” To Switzer, the subway was “a unique urban environment.”
To produce the festival, Switzer partnered with the Onestop Media Group, who operates the TTC’s network of news screens. After working with OMG last year on a similar project involving photography, they decided to go bigger. TUFF was a perfect fit for Toronto’s filmmaker community, said Switzer, who is also a video artist.
The festival got a late start on publicity, and for a time Switzer was concerned.
“We ran calls for submission on the subway screens and we tried to go through Facebook, word of mouth […] I was really worried. I didn’t know if the world was getting out there.”
Despite the rocky start, Art for Commuters and OMG were pleasantly surprised with the number of submissions.
“We had a great response, over 170 submissions. It was really quite phenomenal,” said Erin Jandciu, OMG’s communications director. “We are really looking forward to making it bigger and better next year, so it is definitely something we are going to continue to do.”
TUFF was a juried by a panel of notable Canadian filmmakers, video artists and curators. Beginning Sept. 8 the public was able to vote for their favourite film online or via text messaging.
On Sept. 14 the best of the festival, as voted by the public, aired once every 10 minutes. The top three films will then be selected by TUFF judge and noted filmmaker Jeremy Podeswa (whose film Fugitive Pieces opened TIFF). An audience favourite will also be selected through online voting. Three viewer’s choice awards will be given out at an awards ceremony to be held at the Drake Hotel on Sept. 22.
Switzer was astonished by the range and quality of the submissions. “I was surprised how much work some people put into it, how fun some films were and how really supportive of Toronto they were. They really embraced the city.”
