Canada Letter: A TIFF Film About Film and an Immigrant’s Story
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Version 0 of 1. The Toronto International Film Festival, a major event on the movie festival circuit, is underway. It’s facing some uncertainty now that Piers Handling has announced that he will end his 23-year run as chief executive and step down after next year. Mr. Hadling brought the festival, commonly know as TIFF, into international prominence. But he has also occasionally been the subject of criticism, particularly over how much he is paid to run the nonprofit festival. Among those attending this year will be Manohla Dargis, The Times’s co-chief film critic. I asked her about TIFF and its place in world cinema: This year’s festival includes a movie with a Times connection. “Kodachrome” is based on an elegiac article by A. G. Sulzberger about the final rolls of the once-popular slide film being processed by a photo lab in Kansas. Kodachrome became the first commercially successful color film after its introduction in 1935. Then, in 2006, Kodak took Kodachrome off the market. Soon afterward, Dwayne’s Photo in Parsons, Kan., became the last place on earth that could develop it. But it was running out of chemicals, also discontinued by Kodak, as the end of 2010 neared. When Mr. Sulzberger, who is now deputy publisher of The Times, arrived to witness the extinction of perhaps the only film to become the subject of a hit song (by Paul Simon), he found a curious mix of customers. They included a railway worker who spent $15,798 to process about 50,000 slides of the interiors of railway cars. “Kodachrome” is directed by Mark Raso, who is from Toronto, and stars Jason Sudeikis, Ed Harris and Elizabeth Olsen. The film brings the Canada Letter its second contest. We’re giving away 10 pairs of tickets to a Sept. 16 screening at TIFF. Just fill out the form here to enter the sweepstakes draw. A postscript: At least one photographer has come up with an imperfect way to still develop Kodachrome. And this year, a Kodak executive said the company was looking at the possibility of reviving the film. Read: For Kodachrome Fans, Road Ends at Photo Lab in Kansas Enter: Canada Letter’s “Kodachrome” Sweepstakes Ahmed Hussen, Canada’s immigration minister, has an apt background. Catherine Porter wrote an evocative profile of Mr. Hussen that fills in the details of his extraordinary life. Working on it, she told me, gave her an insight into how the immigrant community, and refugees in particular, view his appointment: Read: In Canada, an Immigration Minister Who Himself Is a Refugee More on photography. Larry Towell was the first Canadian to become a member of the prestigious Magnum photo agency, a cooperative whose founders include Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson. For The Times’s Lens blog, James Estrin caught up with Mr. Towell in Perpignan, France. There the Visa Pour l’Image photojournalism festival is featuring an exhibition of Mr. Towell’s photos from the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. The protests were eventually broken up by police. But for Mr. Towell, that may actually have been a positive outcome for the indigenous protesters. “By dispersing them, they also dispersed them back to the communities where they are now developing more efficient strategies to have a say over what happens on their land,” he told Mr. Estrin. Read and View: Land, Loss and Rebirth in Standing Rock ■ There’s a new artistic director at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, and the reporter Tim Grode found that he’s already shaking up the repertory theater company, which had been struggling with declining ticket sales. ■ Round Two of the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement wrapped up this week in Mexico City. Progress was underwhelming. ■ Canada has been discreetly running a refuge program for gay men and lesbians from Chechnya. ■ The Times’s popular 36 Hours travel feature made a stop in Vancouver, British Columbia. |