TIFF UNCUT

Documentary duo Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier of Mercury Films have collaborated on some of the most commercially successful and visually stunning documentaries in Canadian history, including Watermark and Manufactured Landscapes (selected by TIFF as one of 150 Definitive Works in the Canada on Screen programme). This conversation will explore their expansive body of work, including the upcoming films Man Machine Poem, documenting The Tragically Hip’s historic final tour, and Anthropocene, the third collaboration with renowned photographer Edward Burtynsky. This session was designed for an industry professional audience. Guest Jennifer Baichwal Jennifer Baichwal was born in Montreal and raised in Victoria, British Columbia. Her documentaries The True Meaning of Pictures: Shelby Lee Adams' Appalachia (02) and Manufactured Landscapes (06) premiered at the Festival. Her other films include Act of God (09), Payback (12), and Watermark (13). Guest Nicholas de Pencier Nicholas de Pencier is a documentary filmmaker, producer, and director of photography. His cinematography work includes Let It Come Down: The Life of Paul Bowles (98), The True Meaning of Pictures: Shelby Lee Adams’ Appalachia (02), The Hockey Nomad (03), and Al Purdy Was Here (15), and he also produced the award-winning Manufactured Landscapes (06), Act of God (09), and Watermark (13). Black Code (16) is his directorial debut. Moderator Sean Farnel Sean Farnel is an independent writer, producer, and marketing consultant. He has established himself as a leading curator of documentary media over a 15-year career at the Toronto International Film Festival and Hot Docs, and has collaborated with directors and producers while developing and executing market launch plans.

Canada’s impressive legacy of comedic talent led to the creation of enduring classics like SCTV, Kids in the Hall and Trailer Park Boys. Now, a new crop of talented voices have emerged on the Canadian television scene, reinvigorating the reputation of Canada’s comedic resonance at home and abroad. These cutting edge creators are here to discuss the serious business of being funny. This session was designed for an industry professional audience. Guest Jared Keeso Jared Keeso is an award-winning Canadian film and television actor. He had his television breakout role with Smallville (01–11), and also appeared in CBC’s Keep Your Head Up, Kid: The Don Cherry Story (10), for which he won a Gemini Award for Best Actor, and Bravo’s 19-2 (11–15). He has starred in the features Smokin’ Aces (07), Life as We Know It (10), A Beginner’s Guide to Endings (10), Elysium (13), and Godzilla (14). He also wrote, produced, and starred in the web series sensation Letterkenny Problems (13) on Funny or Die, and recently received a development deal to draft the show’s third season, which was reformatted as Letterkenny (16) for CraveTV and The Comedy Network. Guest Carolyn Taylor Carolyn Taylor is a Toronto-based writer and actor. She has written multiple seasons of This Hour Has 22 Minutes (93– ), for which she earned a Canadian Comedy Award, a Writers Guild of Canada Screenwriting Award, and a Gemini nomination. Taylor has also written sketches and political commentary for CBC's The Hour (05–14) and YTV's That's So Weird (09–12). Her television acting credits include The Gavin Crawford Show (00–03), Sue Thomas F.B.Eye (02–05), Wild Card (03–05), and Queer as Folk (00–05), and she has also appeared in the features 19 Months (02) and Portrait of a Serial Monogamist (16). Taylor is the showrunner for the Baroness von Sketch Show (16), and she has written and acted in five original revues at The Second City. Guest Matt Johnson Matt Johnson was born in Toronto and studied film at York University. His debut feature,The Dirties(13), won the Grand Jury Prize at Slamdance. His other projects include Operation Avalanche (16) and nirvanna the band the show(16). Guest Jay McCarrol JAY MCCARROL is an accomplished Canadian musician, composer and actor. After co-creating and starring in the hit web series, Nirvana the Band the Show, he has composed music for over 50 film/theater/online projects. He served as the musical director at Second City in Toronto for several years and has written music for countless commercials including national spots for Bell Canada, Tylenol, Budweiser, and Coca-Cola. Brave Shores, a band started with Jay and Stefanie McCarrol, currently have national airplay on radio and television (Much Music). He is currently a co-creator, writer and actor on Nirvanna the Band the Show. Moderator Geoff Macnaughton Geoff Macnaughton was born in Toronto, Ontario. He has a Master's degree in Cinema and Media Studies from York University. He is the Senior Manager of TIFF's Industry team and co-host of the TIFF podcast Well, Nobody’s Perfect.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has made waves with recent changes to the access of Certified Independent Production Funds. These efforts have provided Canadian productions with more flexibility to secure funding and increase quality CanCon — affecting all corners of the industry, including actors, writers, producers, distributors, and broadcasters. We will unpack the terms of the new regulations and look at their impact on the future of independent film and television production in Canada. This session was designed for an industry professional audience. Guest John Bain Guest Dave Forget Guest Ferne Downey Guest Marcia Douglas

Those Who Make Revolution Halfway Only Dig Their Own Graves is one of the most ambitious – and deliriously-titled – films to come out of Canada in a long, long time. Co-written and directed by the two young Montreal filmmakers Simon Lavoie and Mathieu Denis, the film posits what could have happened after the 2012 Quebec student protests, otherwise known as the “Maple Spring.” It also won the “Best Canadian Feature” award at TIFF '16 and is now screening as part of Canada’s Top Ten Film Festival. During TIFF '16, Lavoie and Denis spoke to TIFF CEO Piers Handling about their cinematic influences, inciting revolution, and creating a new era of Canadian film. http://www.tiff.net/canadas-top-ten/

In a wide-ranging conversation conducted at TIFF '16, experimental filmmakers Kazik Radwanksi and Matias Pineiro talk about their work, their process, and how they've developed their voices over the years. With discussion of working with actors and non-actors alike, the importance of doing work that is not in film in order to stay in touch with life, allowing chance to play a role, and many more insights, it's an invaluable look at the process of two of the most interesting filmmakers working today.

This screening will be followed by a panel discussion moderated by TIFF Artistic Director, Cameron Bailey, and TiKA The Creator, producer of #Gyalcast. The panel will feature CBC Arts writer Peter Knegt, co-founder of Collective of Black Artists, BaKari Lindsay, and filmmaker and founder of Black Women Film! Canada, Ella Cooper. Media Partner Vice Inc.

LGBTQ activist David France joins us for an extended conversation following a screening of his Oscar-nominated and Peabody Award–winning documentary How to Survive a Plague, and returns after the event for a book signing. This event is co-presented by Penguin Random House Canada.

"After the election, I got all these messages from people saying 'I didn't know what to do with myself. So I went and saw your film.' If people need to seek it out as a place of solace, or as a reminder that we can have empathy, I'm happy that I didn't wait any longer to make it." Moonlight Director, Barry Jenkins, talks about discovering another layer of his film's importance following the American election. See it now at TIFF Bell Lightbox: http://www.tiff.net/films/moonlight

In celebration of his highly anticipated memoir Testimony, legendary songwriter and guitarist Robbie Robertson joins George Stroumboulopoulos for a unique onstage conversation about his life, music, and artistic influences both with The Band and as a solo artist, as well as his collaborations with award-winning musicians and filmmakers such as Ronnie Hawkins, Bob Dylan, and Martin Scorsese.

Following a screening of Julie Taymor's acclaimed The Tempest, Canadian literary icon Margaret Atwood joins award-winning stage director and actress Martha Henry for a discussion of William Shakespeare's original play, Taymor's film adaptation, and Atwood's highly anticipated novel Hag-Seed, a re-telling of The Tempest as part of the Hogarth Shakespeare series.

Debuting at the height of the US-Soviet Space Race, Star Trek offered an alternative to the adversarial ideology then underlying space exploration in the United Federation of Planets. A kind of intergalactic United Nations, the Federation is dedicated to preserving peace between species, ridding the known universe of war, inequality, hunger, and disease, and upholding the values of cooperation, equality, justice and liberty for all. The Federation's utopian balance between principled interventionism and self-determination is embodied in the Prime Directive, which decrees that Starfleet — the combined military, scientific, and exploratory forces of the Federation — must not interfere with either the cultural evolution or internal politics of "pre-warp" civilizations to avoid impacting their independent development. A number of storylines in both series and films centre on threats to the Federation (from both within and outside), the precariousness of peace building, the difficulties of diplomacy, and the need to understand and accommodate cultural difference within a collective. This roundtable discussion on Star Trek, politics, and diplomacy brings together Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, feature-film writer and director Nicholas Meyer (director of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country) and Margaret Weitekamp, space history curator at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, to consider what the series can teach us about geopolitics and peace building.

Since its debut in 1966, Star Trek has inspired people to pursue their passions and dreams in a variety of fields, from science and engineering to technology and the arts. From Martin Cooper, who invented the portable cellular phone in 1973 inspired by Captain Kirk's communicator, to Dr. Mae Jemison, whose admiration of Nichelle Nichols' Lt. Uhura led her to realize her dream to become the first African American woman in space, Star Trek has motivated fans to realize its ideals in their own lives. Beyond inspiring individuals, Trek is used as a teaching tool by educators in courses on law and diplomacy, physics, information studies, and even philosophy and sociology. Its representation of real-world issues through metaphor and analogy engages with complex scientific and philosophical concepts for a mass audience, making the series itself a form of educational inquiry. This roundtable discussion on Star Trek and science education brings together Sonny Kohli, physician and co-founder of Cloud DX, Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, and STEAMLabs co-founder and Managing Director at the Royal Ontario Museum Marianne Mader, to consider how science can inspire art and art can inspire science, and how film and television projects like Star Trek can inspire careers in space, technology, math, arts, and engineering fields.

Premiering three years before Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, Star Trek helped catalyze the public's curiosity about space travel and the existence of life beyond our planet, representing it not as unattainable fantasy but as a reality that was within our reach. Rooting the Enterprise's voyages within galaxies and constellations that were known to be in existence (the planet Vulcan may have been invented, but the star system it belongs to is entirely real), Star Trek also posited futuristic technologies based on imaginative extrapolations of the universe's physical laws, such as warp speed — a propulsion system that "bends" space-time to enable otherwise impossibly rapid travel across vast distances — and teleportation, which transmutes a person or object into an energy pattern and beams it to another location. While these technologies have yet to be realized (and may never be), the efforts to ground Star Trek in scientific fact has endeared it to the scientific community for decades. To explore the innovative ways in which Star Trek represented space travel and technology, we welcome Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen for a keynote presentation on Star Trek and space. Lt. Col. Hansen was one of two recruits selected in May 2009 through the third Canadian Astronaut Recruitment Campaign. While waiting for a flight assignment, Lt. Col. Hansen works at NASA's Mission Control Center as Capcom, the voice between the ground and the ISS. Join us on this voyage to the Final Frontier!

Nigeria has long been Africa's largest producer of film, and the second largest producer in the world. As TIFF's 2016 City to City programming reveals, Nigerian cinema in is in the midst of a contemporary new wave, with established and emerging directors, producers, talent, and crew creating rich cinematic storytelling. Guests for this discussion include: Mo Abudu - CEO, EbonyLife TV Funa Maduka - Content Stategist Wendy Mitchell - Film Programme Manager, British Council

Jonathan Olsberg is the Chairman of Olsberg-SPI, and a seasoned strategic adviser of many public and private media organizations. For over 25 years his company has helped screen agencies around the world to develop sustainable and viable independent film businesses. In this keynote speech, taken from TIFF's 2016 Industry Conference, Jonathan talks about how he see's film production driving the expansion of other creative industries, and why film's contribution to cultural capital needs to be recognized.