Toronto New Wave

The Toronto New Wave refers to a loose-knit group of filmmakers from Toronto who came of age during the 1980s and early 1990s.

History

Atom Egoyan, John Greyson, Ron Mann, Bruce McDonald, Don McKellar, Peter Mettler, Jeremy Podeswa and Patricia Rozema, along with producers Camelia Frieberg, Alexandra Raffé, Colin Brunton, Janis Lundman and others came bursting on to the Canadian movie scene in the 1980s with fresh, original films that rejected not only Hollywood's formulaic dramas, but also the legacy of earlier English-Canadian cinéastes (such as Don Shebib and Don Owen), who had made downbeat films about heartbreak and loss.

Feature filmmaking in Ontario in the 1980s may stand as one of the most significant developments in the history of this country's cinema. Leading the way into features was Peter Mettler (whose 1982 film ''Scissere'' became the first student feature programmed by the Toronto Festival of Festivals, now the Toronto International Film Festival) and Mann (with two exceptional documentaries – ''Imagine the Sound'' in 1981 and ''Poetry in Motion'' in 1982). Egoyan followed in 1984 with ''Next of Kin'', a fictional comic feature about identity.

Many of the young filmmakers (they were all under the age of 30) worked on each other's films. Mettler shot Egoyan's ''Next of Kin'' and '' Family Viewing'' (1987), Rozema's ''Passion: A Letter in 16mm'' (1985), Podeswa's '' Nion in the Kabaret de La Vita'' (1986) and McDonald's ''Knock! Knock!'' (1985), while McDonald edited ''Scissere'', Egoyan's ''Family Viewing'' and '' Speaking Parts'' (1989), and Mann's '' Comic Book Confidential'' (1988). McDonald also guest-edited the October 1988 “Outlaw Edition” of ''Cinema Canada'' that first publicized the existence of this new group of filmmakers. Despite the lack of a defining manifesto, the Toronto-based group existed through a close-knit sense of cooperation of a kind rarely seen in Canada since the growth of Quebec cinema in the early sixties.

Two major events of the 1980s gave credence and cash to these young Toronto filmmakers. In 1984, the Toronto Festival of Festivals held the largest retrospective of Canadian films ever programmed in Canada. This event premiered Perspective Canada, a Festival series that for 20 years was the most prestigious venue for launching English-Canadian features. Then, in 1986, the Ontario Film Development Corporation (OFDC) was founded, providing a much-needed funding alternative to the restrictions of the Ontario Arts Council and Telefilm Canada in Montreal. From the start, the OFDC was officially mandated to create an Ontario film culture. Under the guidance of its first CEO, Wayne Clarkson (who, as the former head of the Festival of Festivals, had been partially responsible for launching Perspective Canada), it proceeded to do so.

The breakthrough came in 1987 when Rozema's first low-budget feature, ''I've Heard the Mermaids Singing'', won the Prix de la Jeunesse at the Cannes Film Festival. The film, and Rozema herself, received a tremendous amount of international press attention and ''Mermaids'' did something almost unheard of for an English-Canadian film: it made money at the box office. In the same year, Montreal's Festival du Nouveau Cinéma famously concluded with Wim Wenders publicly reassigning the first-place prize money from his ''Wings of Desire'' to Egoyan, whose ''Speaking Parts'' had received a special mention. A number of key New Wave films followed in the wake this stunning successes: Egoyan's ''The Adjuster'' (1991) and ''Exotica'' (which won the International Critics’ Prize at Cannes in 1994); McDonald's ''Roadkill'' (1989) and ''Highway 61'' (1991), both written by and starring McKellar; Greyson's ''Zero Patience'' (1994); and Mettler's ''The Top of His Head'' (1989) and ''Tectonic Plates'' (1992).

In 1992, Geoff Pevere wrote a piece for retrospective of Canadian cinema that took place at the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris (“Middle of Nowhere: Ontario Movies after 1980,” which was reprinted in ''Post Script'' in 1995). In it he described this “Ontario New Wave” as “one of the most vital and productive booms in the history of the country’s cinema” and a major “semantic reversal” that saw the artistic heart of Canadian filmmaking shift from Quebec to Ontario during the 1980s. Cameron Bailey

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