Grandoise Galleries Toronto Style

The French coastal town of La Ciotat seems like an unlikely location for a horror movie.  As the scene begins, it looks to be a clear day on a train station platform, around the late-19th century. The travellers awaiting the locomotive’s arrival begin to gather. But to first-time Parisian movie audiences in 1895, the moving image of a life-sized train coming directly at them was so overwhelming it is believed that people screamed and ran into the back of the theatre. Despite their terror, it was with this film that cinema was born.

And so begins the tour of the Essential Cinema gallery, inside Toronto’s brand new TIFF Bell Lightbox building. The free exhibition, continuing until Oct. 23, is part of the building’s opening celebration, which now gives the Toronto International Film Festival a permanent home.

The above “horror movie” was made by pioneering filmmakers and brothers, Auguste and Louis Lumière. Their 50-second silent film, L’Arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat (The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station), shows the entry of a train being pulled by a steam locomotive into a station. Most of the early Lumière films consist of a single, unedited view illustrating an aspect of everyday life, as is learned at the exhibit. However, it certainly is not the only iconic artifact amongst the Essential Cinema gallery.

It was artistic director’s Noah Cowan’s desire to create a list that would contribute to a collective, ongoing reflection on the history, culture and future of film that spurred the creation of the “Essential 100”: a list of must-see films, where “essential” refers to the area between what is considered best and what is considered most influential.

As we enter the gallery, we are greeted by a space that alone is an overwhelming, yet artistically breathtaking experience. Every inch of space in the vast room is strategically occupied: Covering each wall are movie posters — some being the originals, lent to the exhibit from other museums — of the films on the list. Intermixed among the posters are selected movie clips projected on sections of the walls, such as L’Arrive d’un train a La Ciotat, rendering it difficult at first to discern what is wall and what is movie screen, as the clips will play and then disappear only to momentarily reappear again. Audible throughout the gallery are various sound clips, and placed throughout the gallery are film artifacts, from the original movie camera used by Italian filmmaker Vittorio De Sica when filming Bicycle Thieves, to the dress with a 25-inch waist worn in The Leopard by actress Claudia Cardinale.

Incredibly informative and extravagantly enticing, Essential Cinema is an exhibition that will leave visitors in awe and reluctant to leave, as the possibilities for learning are endless. Although a bit intimidating at first glance to the non-movie buff, it becomes quite clear that whether or not you know what movie #34 is, it really makes no difference.  Film connoisseur or not, Essential Cinema is a marvelously disorienting experience.
But in order to step foot into Essential Cinema, we must first walk through the main gallery, which appears more like a ghost town of films passed on. Although physically separated from Essential Cinema, this “haunted gallery” is cleverly related.

Bombarded by 11 ominous black-and-white film projections, each depicting various eerie scenes without sound, this haunted cinema is titled Hauntings, by Guy Maddin. A part of Essential Cinema, the Winnipeg director’s exhibit is a collection of films lost or never completed: an array of film fragments, one of which was even found left on a train, with no owner to claim it.

Filled with fragments of film – whether lost and abandoned, partially destroyed, or never even completed – this exhibition provides an artistic contrast to Essential Cinema. After just a few steps one leaves behind the salvaged remnants of virtually unknown films and enters a world of cinematic establishment. By presenting Hauntings, Maddin does much more than “haunt” the TIFF Bell Lightbox. He effectively demonstrates the necessity for one to regard not just those films that made the list, but also those that were never available to be selected in the first place, essentially providing new life to nearly perished art.

Next on the tour, our movie recognition skills are put to the test in the following gallery, E-100. In this sound installation, James Andean and François Xavier-St. Pierre re-contextualize cinematic sounds from the “Essential 100” — fragments of dialogue, instrumental samples and environmental sounds — according to their musical properties, creating an encyclopedic sonic collage. Out of the entire list, the only sound clip we both recognize out of the 100 played is the shower scene from Psycho. After our epic failure at cinematic audio trivia, we are then whisked away into theatre number four, where all was not as it seemed.

A projector stands on stage, boldly spewing out light. On screens spread throughout the venue, various characters — some angry, some in love — occupy their own spaces, by occupying their own screens.  Featuring clips from director Fredrico Fellini’s 8½ — essentially a film about films — is this special new commission from Atom Egoyan, titled 8½ Screens. The effect leaves the audience to work out their own place in this upside-down world. Egoyan reverses the relationship between viewer and screen, as visitors are virtuously watching a film of a film.

Overall Egoyan’s exhibit can perhaps be seen as a metaphor for the TIFF Lightbox experience. Just like the 8½ Screens exhibit, visitors are invited to find their place within this new home of film.• 

About TIFF Bell Lightbox

TIFF Bell Lightbox, an awe-inspiring five-storey complex located in downtown Toronto, provides a permanent home for film lovers to celebrate cinema from around the world.  It was designed by architecture firm KPMB, and has been referred to as a hybrid creation as it houses galleries, cinemas and a condo tower, as well as a restaurant on street level.