From Oct. 17 to Dec. 14, Cinematheque Ontario’s fall season will offer Toronto audiences cinematic treats and restored buried treasures. Opening on Oct. 17 with a return engagement of War and Peace, the season also includes the sixth edition of Home Movie Day; retrospectives of the films of David Lean and Japanese master Nagisa Oshima; cutting- edge Canadian and international experimental works in The Free Screen; the Toronto premiere of The Exiles; a spotlight on the Cannes Film Festival’s prestigious Directors’ Fortnight programme; and the Canadian premiere of the restored version of Berlin Alexanderplatz.


Free Events
Now in its sixth year, Home Movie Day is an annual worldwide celebration of amateur films and filmmaking. On October 18, the Film Reference Library will present a curated programme of local home movies, and give audiences the opportunity to meet with archivists and learn about film preservation.
Running from Oct. 27 to Dec. 10, The Free Screen continues to offer the most innovative filmmaking from both emerging and established film and video artists. This season’s programme includes “Cinema and Disjunction,” a co-presentation with The Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto (LIFT), featuring the world premiere of new architectural films by artists Daniel Young, Christian Giroux and Adrian Blackwell; Free Films Made Freely: The Experimental Cinema of Paolo Gioli, featuring six films by one of Italy’s most important experimental filmmakers curated by Patrick Rumble; Takashi Ishida In Person, a selected retrospective of the film and video works of the renowned Japanese animator; and the restored archival 35mm print of Mário Peixoto’s Limite (1931), an enthralling and elliptical depiction of three castaways battling unforgiving waters.

Director Retrospectives
Encounter David Lean, running from Oct. 24 to Dec. 6, is a comprehensive retrospective that offers 16 films in total, including 10 new prints recently restored by the British Film Institue (BFI). The retrospective opens with Doctor Zhivago (1965), a sprawling epic that follows the doomed romance of Zhivago and Lara throughout the Russian revolution of 1917. Lean’s other multiple Academy Award-winning epics are also included in the retrospective: Lawrence of Arabia (1962), a spectacular biopic based on accounts of British officer T. E. Lawrence’s efforts to unify various desert tribes against the Ottoman Turks during World War I; The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), tells the story of a group of British POWs forced by their Japanese captors to build the infamous titular bridge during World War II; and Lean’s last film, A Passage to India (1984), a powerful examination of politics, prejudice and cultural divide in British-ruled India. Audiences will also have the opportunity to see some of Lean’s early, intimate dramas such as This Happy Breed (1944), a Technicolor portrait of the trials and tribulations of a middle-class British family during the interwar years; Blithe Spirit (1945), a supernatural comedy of bickering wives and eccentric psychics; Brief Encounter (1945), a heartbreaking drama about an affair between a doctor and a housewife; and Hobson’s Choice (1953), a working-class comedy starring Charles Laughton as a despotic boot maker who will not allow his daughters to marry, considering them a fine source of free labour. The retrospective is co-presented by the BFI.

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