FILM
Buenos Aires Goes to Toronto
This fall, Buenos Airesfilmmak- ers willrubshoulders withthe best of Hollywood and the in- die film world at the presti- gious Toronto International
Film Festival (TIFF)—known to critics
and movie buffs the world over as the
Festival of Festivals.
Buenos Aires is the first city from
Latin America to be chosen for TIFF’s
new City to City series, which spotlights
films from a different international city
each year through screenings and visits
by filmmakers.
Since the series began in 2009, it has
featured Tel Aviv and Istanbul. The “Paris
of Latin America” beat out Manila and
Mexico City for this year’s honor.
TIFF, which began in 1976, now rivals
Cannes and Sundance thanks to the buzz
created by the quantity and quality of
its programs, which screen Holly wood’s
most-anticipated fl icks as well as smaller
arthouse films.
It has also promoted other initiatives,
such as the Toronto International Film
Festival for Children, launched in 1998,
and the Film Circuit, which, since 1994,
has brought independent films to rural
Canadian towns. But the City to City pro-
gram brings in outside urban perspec-
tives to filmgoers.
Buenos Aires was chosen for its “strong
European influence and flavor, its ability
to overcome economic crises, and even
its legacy of dictatorship, which have in-
fluenced the city’s actors and filmmak-
ers,” explained Cameron Bailey, a City to
City programmer.
Her colleague Kate Lawrie Van de Ven
adds that Buenos Aires was especially at-
tractive to the judges because of its “flour-
ishing creative community” that has
made it a twenty-first century hub for
international artists and filmmakers.
The Festival runs September 8 to 18.
The selection of films from Buenos Aires
that are scheduled to be shown will be
available on TIFF’s website in late sum-
mer ( www.tiff.net).
Fans wait for a glimpse of their
favorite stars at TIFF in 2010.
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Daniel Mera
Paulo Rogério
Meet two of our social in-
clusion bloggers. Daniel
Mera lives in Bogotá, Co-
lombia and is a board mem-
ber of Fundación Color de
Colombia, a blogger for Co-
lombia’s Semana magazine
and an occasional contrib-
utor to El Espectador. He
also headed the academic
department of Foros Se-
mana—the magazine’s so-
cial outreach division. Paulo
Rogério is the founder of
Instituto Mídia Étnica in
Salvador, Brazil, and is a
longstanding contributing
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was featured as a young
leader in the Winter 2010
issue of AQ.
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