The Toronto International Film Festival is one of the most prestigious and largest publicly attended film festivals in the world, founded in 1976 and taking place each September. It is also a permanent destination for film culture operating out of the TIFF Lightbox cultural centre, located in Downtown Toronto.
Lisa Wegner is a Canadian actress, filmmaker, performance artist, producer, film programmer and installation artist. She has been nominated twice for Canadian Comedy Awards for "best actress" in films she produced. Her film production company is Mighty Brave Productions. In 2005 she ran Zebra Pictures, a commercial production based in Toronto, Ontario. Since a brain injury in 2008 she has been working in installation art, curating for Gallery1313, programming for the Regent Park Film Festival and mentoring various interns in art and film. In 2014 Lisa played The Agent in Will Kwan's triptych film Hammer Nail, commissioned for Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival.
Toronto is the largest city in Canada and one of the most multicultural cities in the world. Many immigrant cultures have brought their traditions languages and music to Toronto. Toronto, the capital of the province of Ontario, is a major Canadian city along Lake Ontario's northwestern shore. It's a dynamic metropolis with a core of soaring skyscrapers, all dwarfed by the iconic, free-standing CN Tower. Toronto also has many green spaces, from the orderly oval of Queen's Park to 400-acre High Park and its trails, sports facilities and zoo.
Casey Mecija is a multi-disciplinary artist, academic and musician. She is active in Toronto's music and cultural scene.
Michèle Pearson Clarke is a Trinidadian filmmaker and photographer based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Richard Fung is a video artist, writer, public intellectual and theorist who currently lives and works in Toronto, Ontario. He was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad and is openly gay.
FatLabs is a Canadian home recording studio in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. It was established in 2003 by Vikas Kohli. The studio is known for its ability to work with different categories of genres.
The Images Festival is a yearly event devoted to independent and experimental film, video art, new media and media installation that takes place each spring in Toronto.
Reelworld Film Festival, founded in 2001 by Tonya Williams, is held annually in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The festival screens film and provides professional development for Canadian racially diverse and indigenous filmmakers and media artists.
The Toronto Youth Shorts Film Festival is a showcase of short films, video art and new media projects held during the summer in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. All work is made by young people living in the Greater Toronto Area. While the festival used to be open to those aged 18–28, it has now opened its submission call to those aged 14–28.
Mateo Guez is a director, writer, photographer and producer. Born in Paris, France, he resides in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Helen Lee is a Korean-Canadian film director. Born in Seoul, South Korea, she emigrated to Canada at the age of four and grew up in Scarborough, Ontario. Interested in film at a young age, she took film studies at the University of Toronto and, later, New York University. While in university she was influenced by gender and minority theories, as reflected in her first film, the short Sally's Beauty Spot (1990). While continuing her studies she produced two more films before taking a five-year hiatus to live in Korea beginning in 1995. After her return, she released another short film and her feature film debut, The Art of Woo (2001). She continues to produce films, although at a reduced rate. Lee's films often deal with gender and racial issues, reflecting the state of East Asians in modern society; a common theme in her work is sexuality, with several films featuring interracial relationships.
Simon Chung Tak-sing, is a Hong Kong film director. His films include Innocent, released in 2005, End of Love which premiered at the 59th Berlin International Film Festival in 2009, and Speechless, released in 2012, and which premiered at the BFI 26th London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, on 28 March 2012. Chung is gay.
Nathalie Younglai is a Canadian writer, director, producer, and harpist. She is the founder of BIPOC TV & Film. She was the writing mentor for the Reel Asian Film Festival's Unsung Voices summer workshop for youth and speaker at Reel Asian's 2012 industry series.
Randall Okita is a Canadian film director, screenwriter and visual artist known for creating work that involves rich visual language and innovative approaches to storytelling.
The Toronto Queer Film Festival is an LGBT film festival held annually in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Launched in 2016 by a collective of artists and activists who perceived the programming of the city's established Inside Out Film and Video Festival to be too mainstream and commercialized, the event stages a program of independent feature and short films and videos over several days in the fall of each year, focusing primarily on works created from an alternative or activist perspective.
Louise Liliefeldt is a Canadian artist primarily working in performance and painting. She was born in South Africa and currently lives and works in Toronto, Canada. Liliefeldt’s artistic practice draws directly from her lived experience and is apparent in the use of symbol, colour and material in her work. Other influences include Italian, Latin and Eastern European horror films, surrealism and African cinema. Taken as a whole, Liliefeldt’s work is an embodied investigation of the culture and politics of identity, as influenced by collective issues such as gender, race and class. Her performance work has developed through many prolific and specific periods.
