TIFF UNCUT

Best known in cinephile circles for his collaborations with director Richard Linklater in the Before trilogy and BOYHOOD, Ethan Hawke is also no stranger to the Toronto International Film Festival as a writer, director, and actor. His latest directorial effort, SEYMOUR: AN INTRODUCTION, played at TIFF ’15, while he also personified the late jazz trumpeter Chet Baker that year in BORN TO BE BLUE. In 2016, he returned to the Festival for dual appearances in THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN and MAUDIE. This year at TIFF, the Hawke appears in Paul Schrader’s terse religious drama FIRST REFORMED, playing an ex–military chaplain grieving the death of his son. TIFF UN/CUT has unearthed a career-spanning conversation from 2014 in which the sensitive and soul-searching multi-hyphenate was joined by Jesse Wente, Director of Film Programmes at TIFF Bell Lightbox. Listen as Ethan Hawke tells you the story of his life as an actor, director, screenwriter, novelist, and — first and foremost — film lover.

Sarah Polley began her career in film at the age of four, appearing in the Disney movie ONE MAGIC CHRISTMAS. After her roles in Atom Egoyan’s THE SWEET HEREAFTER, Terry Gilliam’s THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN and Doug Liman's GO gained her attention as an emotionally intuitive and intelligent young actor, she attended the Director’s Lab at the Canadian Film Centre in 2001. Polley’s first feature AWAY FROM HER, an adaption of the Alice Munro short story “The Bear Came over the Mountain,” which she wrote and directed, nabbed her a nomination for “Best Adapted Screenplay” at the 2008 Academy Awards. Her follow-up films, 2011’s TAKE THIS WALTZ and the 2012 documentary STORIES WE TELL (all of which have premiered at TIFF) have cemented the filmmaker as one of Canada’s most indelible auteurs. In this episode of TIFF Un/cut, you’ll hear Sarah Polley interviewed onstage by documentary programmer Thom Powers in a discussion originally conducted for the 2012 Industry Doc Conference when STORIES WE TELL premiered at TIFF. They discuss the knotty complexities of revealing family secrets, how to show many sides of one story, and why documentary is her favourite medium. Sarah Polley’s newest project, a forthcoming miniseries adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 1996 novel ALIAS GRACE on which she serves as showrunner and executive producer, will premiere at TIFF ‘17 with the series’ star Sarah Gadon and director Mary Harron in attendance.

Hear from one of our country’s most inspiring artists, who is still making documentaries about her Indigenous community at age 84 At age 84, Alanis Obomsawin is still crafting incisive documentaries about the Indigenous crisis in Canada with over 40 projects to her name in collaboration with the National Film Board. At the heart of her work is the act of listening to other people tell their stories as a way of survival. Her latest work, titled Our People Will Be Healed, is a portrait of the community in one of Manitoba’s largest First Nations populations and will premiere at TIFF ’17. The following audio is a conversation conducted by TIFF Digital Producer Malcolm Gilderdale when Obomsawin’s heartbreaking film We Can’t Make the Same Mistake Twice played the Festival last year. Hear the filmmaker detail how she first became drawn to telling the stories of her people, why she’s always fought for education, and how being an artist means believing in your own self-worth. You can attend a free screening of her breakthrough 1993 documentary Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance this Sunday, August 27 at TIFF Bell Lightbox, as part of Canada On Screen. Want to hear more inspiring conversations with your favourite filmmakers? Subscribe to TIFF UN/CUT over at iTunes, and please rate and review us!

In 2016, Richard Linklater brought his awesome casual hangout movie — and “spiritual sequel” to DAZED AND CONFUSED — EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!! to TIFF Bell Lightbox. After screening the film, Linklater sat down for a talk moderated by Theresa Scandiffio, the Senior Director of TIFF's Adult Learning department. Their conversation spans Linklater’s entire journey in film, from SLACKER, to DAZED AND CONFUSED, to the BEFORE movies, to BOYHOOD, to EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!!, viewed through the lens of defining moments. Hear why Linklater is drawn to character-based ensemble films, the joys of working with emerging actors, and the three books every young film lover should read. You can catch a screening of Linklater’s infectious 2003 comedy SCHOOL OF ROCK (written by TIFF '17 filmmaker Mike White) on August 16 at TIFF Bell Lightbox, as part of our TIFF Kids Summer series.

The great Jill Soloway is the creator, writer, director, and executive producer of TRANSPARENT. While Soloway was at TIFF '16 with the show's third season, they delivered a keynote address at the TIFF Industry Conference on the female gaze — which we’ve reproduced here. On this week’s TIFF UN/CUT, Soloway’s keynote address explores the power of the gaze and the ways in which the cis male gaze has historically limited and controlled our view of ourselves and each other. Soloway reclaims the power of the gaze to reflect diverse and important voices while championing protagonism as a means to creative revolution. Jill is currently an ambassador for TIFF’s Share Her Journey campaign, a five-year initiative prioritizing gender parity within the film industry. To find out more about the campaign, please visit http://www.tiff.net/shareherjourney/

This week on TIFF UN/CUT, we hear from Canadian film and art legend Michael Snow. From Flightstop, his iconic collection of life-size Canada Geese sculptures that hang in Toronto's Eaton Centre, to his landmark experimental films La Région Centrale (1971) and Wavelength (1967) (the title of which inspired the Toronto International Film Festival's programme of experimental works, Wavelengths), Snow's work as a visual artist and filmmaker has been celebrated around the world. In this episode, we hear an extended conversation about Snow's early career, his influences, his initial encounters with the medium of film, life as an artist in Europe, Canada, and New York in the late 1950s and early 1960s, his relationship with fellow artist Joyce Wieland, and the interplay in his work between the visual arts, music, and film.

The first wave of Festival announcements has passed, and among the bombshells is the news that honourary Torontonian Guillermo del Toro’s latest film will premiere at TIFF ‘17. THE SHAPE OF WATER is many things — an aquatic love story between a lonely janitor (Sally Hawkins) and an amphibian, an ironic commentary on the American dream, a tribute to star Michael Shannon’s jawline — but fans of the auteur’s creature features and his twisted sense of humour will not be disappointed. Not only has del Toro made a moving ode to old Hollywood cinema, but it is also his most emotional and deftly realized work yet. One of the perks of having the Mexican filmmaker make his home in Toronto is del Toro’s annual Masterclass, held at TIFF Bell Lightbox. 2016 saw him lecture expertly on the work of Luis Buñuel, delivering in-depth analysis on the films Los Olvidados, El Bruto, Nazarin, Virdiana, Susana, and El. This week’s TIFF UN/CUT airs a masterclass conducted while del Toro was deep in production mode for 2015’s Crimson Peak. The topic of conversation is, naturally, Gothic romances, as the cineaste analyzes three films in his identification of the genre’s conventions. In this recording, you’ll hear del Toro do a deep dive into Robert Stevenson’s 1943 adaptation of Jane Eyre, which boasts an impressive pedigree in its cast and crew with Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine starring as Mr. Rochester and Jane Eyre, a score by Bernard Herrmann, and a script co-written by Brave New World author Aldous Huxley. It’s an engaging and fascination discussion from an auteur who's just as comfortable citing the Brontë sisters as he is breaking down Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead series.

George A. Romero, the father of the zombie film and a fiercely independent filmmaker, passed away last week at the age of 77. On this week's episode of TIFF Un/cut, hear an in-depth conversation with Romero conducted by then-TIFF Midnight Madness Programmer Colin Geddes in 2012. From NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, his low-budget 1968 film which made tons of money at the box office and reframed the whole idea of the zombie in the public imagination, all the way through to his final film as director, 2009's SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD, Romero's inventiveness and societal awareness were unparalleled. In this episode, you'll hear all about Romero's process of making movies, his take on modern zombie stories, and that time he and a very young Martin Scorsese got into a fight over a copy of a classic opera film.

Before he created the A Song of Ice and Fire novels, which inspired HBO's award-winning series GAME OF THRONES, George R.R. Martin was a kid growing up in an underserved neighbourhood, selling made-up stories for a penny each, until he raised his prices to a nickel. In this hour-long talk hosted by TIFF Cinematheque director Jesse Wente and recorded at TIFF in 2012 just before GAME OF THRONES' second season launched, Martin talks about how his childhood influenced his creative life, what he learned working in TV before GOT began, and how he built the massive and intricate world of Westeros.

This week on TIFF UN/CUT, hear a master class from the subject of a current retrospective. Something in the Air: The Cinema of Olivier Assayas traces the French auteur’s eclectic catalogue, from his early music videos for electro-pop stars Jacno and Winston Tong, to his documentary portrait of Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien, to his brilliant work in narrative film and his recent career-high collaborations with Kristen Stewart on CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA and PERSONAL SHOPPER, which have brought him even greater acclaim and a whole new audience. This week, you can catch Assayas’ first feature DISORDER, a portrait of France’s mid-’80s post-punk scene (and undoubtedly, a Joy Division reference), as well as his 2002 cyberthriller DEMONLOVER (which sports a score by Sonic Youth!). At the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival, where Assayas presented his film SOMETHING IN THE AIR — a youthful and semi-autobiographical portrait of young political activists living in a Parisian suburb in the early ‘70s — the director also participated in an onstage master class moderated by Brad Deane, Senior Manager of TIFF Cinematheque and programmer of the current Assayas retrospective. You’ll hear how Olivier’s screenwriter father made him think twice about making movies early on in his career, which Bresson films blew his mind, and why he never intended to be a film critic for Cahiers du Cinéma.