Agata Smoluch Del Sorbo
Agata Smoluch Del Sorbo is a programmer on the Canadian features team. Previously, she was the Manager of Canadian Programming and the lead programmer for the Short Cuts Canada section for TIFF as well as an international programming associate since 2005.
Smoluch Del Sorbo has been a lecturer in American cinema at the University of Genova in Italy and served on juries at the The National Screen Institute, imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival and the Ontario Film Review Board. She has written on cinema for Take One, the Canadian Film Encyclopedia and her essay on Patricia Rozema appears in the recently published book, The Gendered Screen: Canadian Women Filmmakers.
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Alex Rogalski
Alex Rogalski is a Short Cuts Canada Programmer for the Toronto International Film Festival®. In this role, he is responsible for introducing audiences to excellence in short-form Canadian films. Rogalski also programmes for the Hot Docs International Documentary Film Festival and the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in Toronto.
Rogalski regularly travels across North America as the Co-ordinator of the One Take Super 8 Event. His Super 8 programmes have been included in the Images Festival, Pop Montreal and the WNDX Festival of Avant Garde Film. Rogalski coordinated Canada’s Top 10 - Short Films in 2008, and curated film programs for the Pacific Cinematheque (Vancouver) and Winnipeg Cinematheque.
Rogalski has a Masters of Arts in Communications and Culture from York University in Toronto and continues to participate in academia. Most recently, Rogalski was an invited guest lecturer at Ryerson University, Concordia University, Montreal, University of Regina, Saskatchewan and Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio. He is also a board member of the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre.
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Allen Braude
Allen Braude is the Co-Director of Learning for TIFF, a position he has held since January 2008. He is jointly responsible for leading the Sprockets Toronto International Film Festival for Children and overseeing with fellow Co-Director Elizabeth Muskala. Together they are driving the future Youth and Adult Learning initiatives to take place in TIFF Bell Lightbox.
Braude first joined the organization in 1999 and his work has included holding the role of Programme Administration Manager for both Sprockets and the Toronto International Film Festival and served for three years as the Programming Manager for the Sprockets.
Prior to joining TIFF, Braude was both a programmer and board member with the Out on Screen Festival in Vancouver, B.C. After moving to Toronto, he worked for two years as the Operations Manager for the Inside Out Toronto LGBT Film and Video Festival. He is also a past member of the programming committee at the Inside Out Festival and the Toronto Jewish Film Festival, and is a member of the advisory committee for Breast Fest - the world's first film festival dedicated to breast cancer awareness.
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Andréa Picard
Andréa Picard has been a programmer for TIFF Cinematheque since 1999. She has curated the Toronto International Film Festival's Wavelengths section since 2006 and this year will also contribute to the Visions and Future Projections sections.
She has programmed numerous directors’ retrospectives and thematic shows for TIFF Cinematheque, most recently Factory Empire: The Films of Andy Warhol, Taipei Stories: The Cinema of Edward Yang, States of Longing: Films from the Berlin School,and Catherine Breillat’s Anatomies of Desire. In addition, she has presented The Free Screen, a bi-weekly series exploring the history, as well the ever-changing evolution of avant-garde film and video and its intersections with other artforms.
Picard has also contributed successful exhibitions and film programmes to numerous local festivals, including Images Festival and the Scotiabank Nuit Blanche festival. Mostly recently, Picard has curated Phantoms of Nabua, a single-channel installation by Hugo Boss nominee and Palme d’Or winner Apichatpong Weerasethakul for MOCCA and the Toronto International Film Festival’s Future Projections programme.
An accomplished writer on film, art and architecture, her essays and articles have been published by, among others, Sonnabend Gallery (New York City), Oakville Art Gallery, Gallery TPW (Toronto), Flash Arts International (Italy), Canadian Architect, Canadian Art, Prefix Photo, Millennium Film Journal (NYC), Border Crossings and Cahiers du cinéma. Her longstanding “Film/Art” column for Cinema Scope magazine explores the junctions between cinema and the visual arts. In 2009, she contributed essays to books on Swiss painter/filmmaker Hannes Schüpbach and Dutch installation artists Lonnie van Brummelen and Siebren de Haan.
Picard has sat on the board of the Canadian Filmmakers’ Distribution Centre (Toronto) and served as an advisor to the Flaherty Film Seminars and the Images Festival. She has sat on juries for numerous organizations, including festivals in Toronto, Chicago, Cleveland, Berlin, Copenhagen, Paris, Buenos Aires, and for The Guggenheim Foundation.
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Cameron Bailey
Cameron Bailey is the Co-Director of the Toronto International Film Festival®. In this role, Bailey is responsible for the overall vision of the Festival programming, as well as creating and maintaining relationships with the international film industry.
Bailey began working as a programmer for the Festival in 1990, eventually heading the Canadian selection committee, the selection from South Asia and founding the Planet Africa programme, which ran from 1995-2004. He has also programmed and hosted TIFF's year-round subscription screening series Reel Talk.
Bailey has held positions as a curator, a journalist and a writer. He has curated film series for TIFF Cinematheque, the National Gallery of Canada, the National Film Board of Canada, and Australia's Sydney International Film Festival. He has also served on awards juries in Canada and internationally, including the U.S., Turkey, Greece, South Korea, Burkina Faso and Tanzania and has been a guest speaker at several Canadian universities, the Smithsonian Institution, Harvard University and the Banff Centre for the Arts.
As a journalist, Bailey reviewed films for Toronto's NOW Magazine, CBC Radio One and CTV’s Canada AM. He has been published in The Globe and Mail, The Village Voice, CineAction!, and Screen among others. He presented international cinema nightly on Showcase Television's The Showcase Revue, and produced and hosted the interview programme Filmmaker on the Independent Film Channel Canada.
In 1997, Bailey co-wrote his first screenplay, The Planet of Junior Brown, with director Clement Virgo. The film was named Best Picture at the 1998 Urbanworld Film Festival in New York, and nominated for a Best Screenplay Gemini Award. Bailey also completed a video essay, Hotel Saudade, which was shot in Brazil. The film premiered at the 2004 Toronto International Film Festival and made its U.S. premiere in 2005 at New York's Museum of Modern Art.
Bailey has served on the Advisory Board of the Royal Ontario Museum's Institute for Contemporary Culture, and is a former board member of the Ontario Film Development Corporation and Toronto's Images Festival. He currently sits on the Board of Directors for Tourism Toronto. In 2007, Bailey was a member of the delegation accompanying Governor-General Michaëlle Jean on her state visit to Brazil.
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Colin Geddes
Colin Geddes selects cutting-edge films for the Toronto International Film Festival's Real to Reel, Vanguard, Visions and the Midnight Madness programmes. Since joining TIFF in 1998, he has introduced new talent and programmed many notable world premieres including Miike Takashi’s Ichi The Killer; Johnnie To’s Full Time Killer; Eli Roth’s Cabin Fever and Hostel; Alex Aja’s Haute Tension, Pratchya Pinkaew’s Ong Bak: Muay Thai Warrior.
A specialist in Asian cinema, Geddes' additional programming efforts include the Asian rep theatre Golden Classics Cinema, TIFF Cinematheque, FantAsia Toronto and in May 2010 he was appointed as Festival Director for ActionFest in Asheville, North Carolina. He is on the advisory committee of the Reel Asian Film Festival, The Austin Fantastic Film Fest, and has served on juries for several international film festivals. For more than a decade, Geddes curated the Kung Fu Fridays screening series, which showcased martial arts and cult cinema from Asia.
Geddes holds one of North America's largest collections of Hong Kong cinema promotional materials, posters, and lobby cards. In July 2008, La Cinémathèque Québécoise presented an exhibit of fifty posters from the collection. Over the past fifteen years, Geddes has rescued abandoned 35mm prints from Toronto’s closed Chinatown cinemas and garbage heaps and in March 2010, he donated 200 feature films originating from Hong Kong and Taiwan to the University of Toronto.
In 2004 he founded Ultra 8 Pictures, an independent theatrical distribution and booking company, dedicated to bringing offbeat international films to Canadian cinemas. Releases have included Bubba Ho-Tep, A Tale of Two Sisters, Ju-On, and The Human Centipede.
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Diana Sanchez
Diana Sanchez is an International Programmer for the Toronto International Film Festival®, responsible for introducing audiences to the best in Latin American cinema.
The year after she joined the Festival in 2002, she programmed the Festival's spotlight on Brazil, Vida de Novo. Sanchez subsequently programmed two surveys of Argentine Cinema for TIFF Cinematheque, in 2004 and 2006. Also in 2006, she programmed a week of Cuban cinema at the Royal Ontario Museum.
Sanchez is currently a programme consultant for the International Film Festival Rotterdam and has been involved in a variety of other festivals and cinematic presentations. In 2010 she programmed Calgary Latin, a selection of 8 Latin American films, with PROA Foundation in Argentina. In 2007 Sanchez was on the Ecuadorian Ministry of Culture Film Fund jury and in 2008 was on the first Premiera Copia jury at the Havana Film Festival. She has also been a jury member for the script development fund at the Colombian Ministry of Culture. She successfully negotiated the co-production contract and distribution for Nos Hacemos Falta – Tilt [(We Need Each Other – Tilt) 2001].
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Dimitri Eipides
Dimitri Eipides is an International Programmer for the Toronto International Film Festival®, responsible for programming films from Russia, the Balkans, and a number of Central European countries. In 1988, his first year with the Festival, he programmed 26 features from Iran. It marked one of the earliest such presentations to western audiences and was a great success.
His extensive career began by establishing the Independent Filmmakers Cooperative in Montreal in 1969. Also in 1969, he worked with the Canadian Consul of the Arts and the Ministry of External Affairs to present a tour of Canadian films at film museums and institutes in 35 European cities. In 1971, he founded the Festival International du Nouveau Cinema et de la Video de Montreal, where he was the Director until 1994. From 1970 through to 1972, Eipides was the Director of Film Programmes at Montreal’s Museum of Fine Arts.
In demand internationally, Eipides was Director of Film Events for “Athens, Cultural Capital of Europe, 1985.” In 1992 he began his tenure as Director of the New Horizons section of the Thessaloniki Film Festival, and in 1999 he became the Director of the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival – Images of the 21st Century, which he still heads today. For the past five years, Eipides has also been Program Director of the Reykjavik Film Festival.
Eipides has been a jury member at numerous film festivals including San Sebastian, Istanbul, Teheran, Vancouver and Bilbao. He has been a lecturer on the History of Cinema at McGill and Concordia Universities and is programme consultant for the festival du nouveau cinema in Montreal. He is a member of the European Film Academy.
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Giovanna Fulvi
Giovanna Fulvi is the Asian Cinema Programmer for the Toronto International Film Festival®, and has been programming for the Festival since 1996. Fulvi is responsible for discovering and introducing audiences to the newest films and filmmakers of Asian cinema from countries such as mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea.
Fulvi is based in Italy and currently works as a programming consultant for the Torino Film Festival and International Film Festival Rotterdam. Along with her various programming duties, Fulvi has worked as a film consultant and acquisitions manager for various organizations over the past seventeen years. She is presently the Head of Acquisitions for Filmauro in Rome, Italy. In 1997, Fulvi worked as a production assistant for Alan Miller’s documentary on the Italian production Opera Turandot, staged by Zhang Yimou. Fulvi also worked on Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor as a researcher for historical and cultural accuracy.
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Jane Schoettle
Jane Schoettle is an International Programmer for the Toronto International Film Festival®, responsible for programming films from Australia, New Zealand and Israel, as well as American independent cinema. She is also a Programmer for TIFF's Reel Talk subscription series. Having joined TIFF in 2002, her keen eye for discovering new talent was confirmed when films she programmed won the Cadillac People’s Choice Award three years running – Hotel Rwanda in 2004, Tsotsi in 2005 and Bella in 2006.
Schoettle is the founder and former Director of the Sprockets Toronto International Film Festival for Children, recognized as one of the top five children’s festivals in the world. During her tenure at Sprockets, she also established the John VanDuzer Children’s Film Collection, which provides teachers with the opportunity to screen engaging and educational films not otherwise available in Canada. She also established Reel Comfort, which brings screenings and workshops to patients in acute care psychiatric wards in hospitals, and Special Delivery, a filmmaking workshop for at-risk youth in under-serviced communities.
Schoettle has worked as a script consultant for private clients and participated in several film residency programmes, most recently for the South Australian Film Corporation. She has served on numerous international festival juries including events in Scandinavia, Europe, South America and South Asia, and often appears on-camera or in-print as a film expert. She has spoken extensively on the subject of ‘Festival Strategies for Indepent Films’, most recently in Auckland, Sydney, Melbouorne and at SXSW 2010.
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Kate Lawrie Van de Ven
Kate Lawrie Van de Ven is Co-Programmer of the Toronto International Film Festival’s City to City programme, a spotlight that looks at a different world city each year through the lens of its cinema.
She is a doctoral candidate in UCLA’s Department of Film, TV + Digital Media. Her forthcoming dissertation focuses on contemporary city film and its relation to changes in urban experience. She also holds a Master's degree in Cinema Studies from UCLA.
She has worked for TIFF in various capacities since 2001, including heading the organization's Editorial department from 2007 through early 2010.
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Elizabeth Muskala
Elizabeth Muskala is the Co-Director of Learning for TIFF, a position she has held since January 2008. She is jointly responsible for leading the Sprockets Toronto International Film Festival for Children and overseeing Learning with fellow Co-Director Allen Braude. Together they will drive the future Youth and Adult Learning initiatives in preparation for TIFF Bell Lightbox.
Muskala has been with the organization since 1996 and over the past decade has contributed to the organization in a number of capacities, including the Managing Editor of Publications, the Gala and Special Presentations Coordinator and most recently the Director of Programme Administration. She has supervised the administrative details and programmed Special Presentations for Sprockets Toronto International Film Festival for Children since 2002 and has helped to curate and build the profile of the Special Presentations programme at the Toronto International Film Festival®. She has also programmed Future Frames and coordinated Young People’s Juries for Sprockets.
Prior to joining TIFF, Elizabeth Muskala worked for a Toronto-based communications and investor relations marketing firm.
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Magali Simard
Magali Simard is the Coordinator of Canadian Programming working of Canada’s Top Ten and TIFF Cineamtheque and sits on the programming teams for the Festival’s Short Cuts Canada and TIFF’s Student Film Showcase.
Simard contributed film notes for the recent TIFF publication, Toronto on Film, and has written for local online publications. She was a jury member for the 2009 and 2010 annual Alberta Film and Television Awards, and is on the short film jury for the 2010 Outfest in Los Angeles.
Simard has a Cinema Studies degree from the University of Toronto. She also studied film in Quebec while managing youth in a documentary film committee in Ottawa.
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Martin Bilodeau
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Michèle Maheux
Michèle Maheux is the Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer for TIFF and has been with the organization for two decades. She has been a driving force within TIFF and is responsible through the Vice-Presidents for all business and operations of the $20 million cultural organization. Maheux’s leading priorities are the organization's operational needs and plans, including the project milestones of the capital campaign for TIFF Bell Lightbox.
With nearly 30 years of work experience in the cultural arena for private and governmental organizations, Maheux has accrued a wealth of knowledge and experiences in the film and television sectors. She worked in the distribution and exhibition fields of the film industry and established her own consulting company - MMM Marketing - which specialized in corporate communications and marketing. She began her career after graduating from Carleton University in Ottawa where she completed a combined degree in Film Studies, French, and Canadian Studies. As Assistant to the Director of the library at the Canadian Film Institute (CFI) in Ottawa, she worked with Piers Handling, CEO and Director of TIFF, marking the beginning of their 30-year collaboration, which continues today.
Maheux has been a member of many provincial, municipal, and arts organizations’ committees for tourism and public relations professionals during her twenty-year tenure. In December 2008, Maheux was appointed to the Ryerson University Board of Governors.
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Noah Cowan
As the Artistic Director for TIFF Bell Lightbox, opening in September 2010, Noah Cowan drives the curatorial vision for the year-round programming that will be housed in TIFF’s new home.
Cowan has a long history with TIFF – his first venture as a programmer was for the Midnight Madness programme in 1989, which remains one of the Festival’s most popular sections. He subsequently constructed major national cinema retrospectives on India and Japan for the organization, becoming a recognized new voice in contemporary international film programming by the mid-1990s.
In 1993, Cowan launched Cowboy Pictures, a pioneering distributor devoted to the art of cinema. Films Cowboy represented were acclaimed by a number of organizations including the National Board of Review, the New York Film Critics Circle and the Academy Awards®.
In 2002, Cowan founded the Global Film Initiative in New York City, a not-for-profit organization devoted to worldwide understanding through film. In partnership with the Museum of Modern Art, the foundation funds, acquires, distributes and creates educational material for socially meaningful cinema from the developing world.
Cowan returned to Toronto in 2003 to assume the position of Co-Director for theToronto International Film Festival®, a position he held until January 2008. His dynamic leadership saw the Festival’s international impact grow and the launch of several major new programmes, including the celebrated city-wide meeting of the visual arts and cinema, Future Projections. Under Cowan’s personal direction, the Festival launched significant collaborations with the ROM, Power Plant, AGO and MOCCA under the programme’s auspices.
Cowan has written critically on film for Canadian and international publications and served on numerous juries and award panels in North America and overseas. He continues to be involved on a number of boards and committees, adding to his expertise in advocacy, policy development and public affairs.
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Piers Handling
Piers Handling is the Director and Chief Executive Officer of TIFF. He has held this position since 1994, responsible for leading both the operational and artistic growth of the organization. TIFF has a $20 million annual operation budget and employs more than 120 full-time staff. For the past three years it has been named one of Canada’s Top 100 Employers and, for the last two years, one of Toronto’s Top 50 employers.
Under his direction, the organization has grown to become an internationally renowned cultural institution with year-round film programming, learning programmes, a children’s film festival, an archive and a library, and a wide-range of industry oriented initiatives.
Mr. Handling is currently wrapping up a $196 million capital campaign to build TIFF Bell Lightbox, an international home for cinema which will open in September 2010.
Prior to joining the Toronto International Film Festival in 1982, Mr. Handling began his career at the Canadian Film Institute (CFI), ultimately becoming Deputy Director. After leaving the CFI, he taught Canadian cinema at Carleton University in Ottawa and Queen’s University in Kingston. He has published extensively on Canadian cinema and its filmmakers.
Mr. Handling currently sits on the Board of the Canadian Film Centre and and is a past Director of Tafelmusik in Toronto. He is currently a member of the Minister of Culture’s Advisory Council for Arts and Culture (MACAC). Previously he was on the board of Luminato Toronto Festival of Arts + Creativity. . He has been honoured with the “Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres”, France’s highest cultural insignia. In2003, Handling was recognized as 2003, he was named CEO of the Year by the Canadian Public Relations Society (Toronto), recognizing for the first time, a CEO from the cultural not-for-profit sector. In 2006 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Law from Ryerson University.
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Steve Gravestock
Steve Gravestock, Associate Director of Canadian Programming is responsible for the organization’s Canadian programming initiatives, including Canada's Top Ten, as well as the majority of the Canadian programming at TIFF Cinematheque. As a Festival programmer, he has been part of the Canadian feature film selection since 2004 and also selects films from Scandinavia and the Netherlands.
In addition, Gravestock oversees Festival’s Canadian Open Vault programmes and is responsible for the organization’s ongoing series of monographs on Canadian films and filmmakers, which has recently partnered with University of Toronto Press. Gravestock contributed an essay and managed the 2009 publication of the anthology Toronto on Film. In spring 2008, Gravestock helped mount a multi-faceted retrospective on filmmaker Peter Lynch, which included an extensive talk and elaborate audio-visual presentation and in 2005, Gravestock programmed the Canadian Retrospective on Canadian filmmaker Don Owen. Steve Gravestock programmed Dialogues for almost a decade which has included the participation of industry professionals such as John Sayles and Guy Maddin.
Having interviewed over 100 directors, ranging from Abel Ferrara to Krzysztof Kieślowski, Gravestock has written extensively on cinema for many publications including The Toronto Star, POV Magazine, NOW Magazine and Cinema Scope. He has also written the programme notes for numerous TIFF Cinematheque series, including the films of Daniel MacIvor, the Toronto on Film series, and a retrospective of films celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes. Gravestock’s interview with John Sayles was published in Interviews: John Sayles from the University of Mississippi Press in 1999 and in 2005, Don Owen: Notes on a Filmmaker and His Culture, was published by Wilfred University Press and Indiana University Press.
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Thom Powers
Thom Powers has been an International Documentary Programmer for the Toronto International Film Festival® since 2006. He is also responsible for Mavericks, the Festival's discussion series with cinema innovators.
Powers is the Artistic Director for the weekly documentary series, “Stranger than Fiction” at Manhattan’s IFC Center and for DOC NYC, a new festival launching in November, 2010. He has directed documentaries for HBO and PBS; and is a founding member of the documentary production company Sugar Pictures. He teaches documentary courses at New York University’s School of Continuing Professional Studies and the School of Visual Arts.
He is a co-founder of the Cinema Eye Honors, an annual award for documentary excellence; and the Garrrett Scott Development Grant.
He has served as a juror for Sundance, SXSW, CPH:DOX, and DocAviv festivals; as well as the Emmy, IDA and Independent Spirit Awards. He has written extensively on documentary filmmaking for The Boston Globe, Real Screen, and Filmmaker Magazine.
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