All films are art of a kind, of course. And when it comes to showcasing new movies, the immaculately organized and supremely well-attended Toronto International Film Festival has managed to distinguish itself as one of the world’s leading movie events. But it has done so in part by recognizing that, well, some films are more arty than others. And showing them too brings real depth and ingenuity to the festival.Called Wavelengths, the art-film section of TIFF has been curated by Andrea Picard since 2006. A former student of Art History, Cinema Studies and French Literature at the University of Toronto, Picard moonlighted as a costume designer, cutting her teeth on David Cronenberg’s “Crash” and “eXistenZ,” before becoming a film critic.Now, her section of TIFF has developed a loyal following composed of local filmgoers, cinephiles, filmmakers and artists, seeking new forms and languages of cinema.“We are living in turbulent times –political and economic ones- and I think that film and video are actively engaged in our contemporary moment, attempting to make sense of the confusion but also thankfully providing us with innumerable aesthetic and emotional pleasures,” Picard says. “[We are] very fortunate [to present] storytelling in radically novel ways, which condense or flout the boundaries between fact and fiction, and which push the aesthetic qualities of the mediums of film and video.”The films selected for Wavelengths combine works by auteurs that are uncompromising in their filmmaking, with those who have their origins in the art world. One such example is Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul, a former Cannes Palme d’Or winner whose work is highly singular. “He has a very distinct art practice that is considered one of the most exciting to have emerged from Thailand,” says Picard. TIFF will screen his “Fireworks (Archives),” which combines the artist’s exploration of memory with light, phantoms and pyrotechnics through storytelling.Two notable contemporary artists more renowned for their gallery works but presenting at TIFF this year are Francis Alÿs and Yto Barrada. Mexico’s Alÿs will present “Paradox of Praxis 5,” a performative video that sees a ball of fire kicked down desolate streets to map out a city. Morocco’s Barrada will show “Faux Depart,” which looks at the country’s fossil industry between the Atlas Mountains and the Sahara Desert to examine the “fetishistic thirst for foreign objects.”“My search for films is wide-ranging as I work with sales agents and distributors, but also gallerists and artists directly,” says Picard. “I seek out new films from film festivals but also from biennales and studio visits with artists.”“In some ways, Wavelengths takes the temperature of where film and video art is at this juncture in time, and though the films are selected on their own merit, they are also curated into a whole from which certain themes resonate and lend insight into today,” says Picard of the selection. And certainly, despite the eclecticism, there’s a prescience that runs through the program, notably with works focusing on the crippling crisis in Europe, race issues in America, and violence in Mexico. Providing the counterbalance are works that argue for quietude and complicity by painting intimate portraits of their subjects.“Cinema itself is a constant reference with filmmakers like Ben Rivers, Guy Maddin, Sergei Loznitsa, Nicolás Pereda, Mark Lewis and Isiah Media exploring the continued enthrallment that cinema provides,” says Picard. “If forced to name one [I’m most looking forward to screening], I would have to cite Miguel Gomes’ epic “Arabian Nights” trilogy as I think it’s already become a monument of our time and is the epitome of cinematic freedom.”The selection at Wavelengths includes a wide variety of filming techniques, from the performative video of “A Fire in My Brain that Separates Us” to the intriguing grid of calligraphic light of “Fugue,” by German artists Benjamin Ramírez Peréz and Kerstin Schroedinger respectively. Perhaps then Wavelengths may include more pioneering films than the main selection.“The avant-garde has always led the way, and though that term has been much debated of late, I think many of the films in Wavelengths follow its ethos,” says Picard. “Peréz studied under brilliant contemporary artist Phil Collins and the very influential experimental filmmaker Christoph Girardet. Their influence can be felt in this seductive video, but one also feels the emergence of an important new vision. Likewise, Kerstin Schroedinger has been quite busy on the festival and art circuits, and her practice is deeply embedded in the politics of image production and film and video’s relationship to sound and text.”Picard believes that the two are part of a young generation that is exceedingly film literate but are asserting their own style and preoccupations – formally rigorous, even when playful. But she thinks the most potentially influential work of Wavelengths may be another. “If I were to wager on someone it might be [Canadian experimental filmmaker] Isiah Medina, whose debut feature “88:88” contains more ideas in a single shot than in some features!”Perhaps the most notable observation about the line-up of Wavelengths though, is the range of films from nations from around the world. Despite this, the 2015 edition contains a record number of Canadian films. “In line with TIFF’s original “festival of festivals” mandate, it’s important to represent the best of this year’s crop to a local audience, to give them access to global trends and far flung point-of-views,” says Picard, though she also notes that the term World Cinema might be losing its meaning in an increasingly connected world. “Artists are traveling at unprecedented rates as a result of exchanges, residencies, and one can certain detect a more globalized style at work, also reflected in the themes of political unrest, post-colonial conditions, and a return to the intimate.”Nevertheless, art is always personal and subjective, and in this year’s Wavelengths program, Picard suggests an extraordinary itinerary that shows that while big-budget movies may steal the headlines, they can’t match the experience of “encountering abstract Agnes Martin-like grids, Rayographed erotic imagery, a talking baby buffalo with sad brown eyes, a ghost Dog named Dixie, a vintage look at the collapse of the Soviet Union, wind-whipped desert lands in Israel shot by a legendary feminist filmmaker, a hunky lumberjack trapped in a submarine, faux fossil makers in Morocco, a kidnapped filmmaker in a tin can suit in the Atlas Mountains, as well as a private tour through the Louvre, a trip through Juárez via Roberto Bolaño’s posthumous novel 2666, LSD experiments conducted by the CIA … and how about a visit with the last living witch on the island of Lanzarote?"
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