The Canadian premiere of William Greaves’ posthumously completed Once Upon a Time in Harlem leads the documentary side of TIFF’s Wavelengths programme. The festival announced today that the film, which was completed by David Greaves who shot the film with his father in 1972, would continue its run on the festival circuit in Toronto after debuting to considerable acclaim at Sundance earlier this year. Once Upon a Time in Harlem offers a time capsule of the Harlem Renaissance as luminaries from the period gather in Duke Ellington’s apartment to reflect upon their ongoing efforts to bring cultural change. (Read more about the film in our interview with David Greaves and Liani Greaves in issue #125.)
Audiences looking to explore the borders of genre and form will want to catch the world premiere of The Black Box Is Orange, directed by Yuula Benivolski. The Toronto artist uses the incompleteness of archives to consider her borders and military presence through a personal lens.
Questions of memory also fuel the programme’s pairing of personal works from Wavelengths alumni Kamal Aljafari (With Hasan in Gaza) and Parastoo Anoushahpour (The Time that Separates Us). Their respective films Masao Adachi Takes a Passport Photo and Peacocks Come with the Clouds have their world premieres at the festival.
Other highlights in TIFF’s experimental section include the North American premiere of At Night directed by Beatrice Gibson. The film is described as a “work of choral autofiction that shifts from narrative to documentary to dream over a single night in Paris, reflecting on the nature of womanhood, privilege, and solidarity” and features Wavelengths regular Ben Rivers on cinematography duties.
Meanwhile, Wavelengths audiences looking to immerse themselves in durational cinema get some bang for their buck in Mariano Llinás’s Life of Jorge Luis Borges. Clocking in at only 330 minutes, the film marks one of the Argentine auteur’s shorter works after the 808 minute, La Flor. (Excluding intermissions, but fodder for film critics increasingly fixated on running times.) This whopper considers the life of the titular author.
Also having its North American premiere is perennial Wavelengths resident Nicolás Pereda. He’s back with the comedy Everything Else Is Noise. Other festival favourites returning to the Wavelengths slate include Denis Côté with Nobody’s Violence, Angela Schanelec with My Wife Cries, and Lisandro Alonso with Double Freedom, which returns to the story of a treecutter featured in his 2001 breakthrough La Libertad.
TIFF also announced its Classics and Centrepiece programmes today. The former features a restoration of Lynne Stopkewich’s Kissed, while Canadian titles in the world cinema slate include Rodrigo Barriuso’s Nevermind starring trans Broadway breakthrough Justin Vivian Bond and Cody Lightning’s hockey comedy Smudge the Blades. TIFF announces its documentary slate on August 5.
