York lays siege to Toronto film

Omeed Asadi
Contributor

If you happened to miss the Toronto International Film Festival this year, you’re probably pretty bummed that you have to wait another year just to procrastinate and end up not going again.
Fortunately for film enthusiasts, York film’s annual CineSiege festival provides a great way to support your classmates while enjoying some truly great films.
CineSiege 2010, happening Tuesday Oct. 26 at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, is a juried showcase featuring movies by students in York’s department of film. Of the 172 short films produced at York last year, 23 have been nominated, and will be judged by an independent jury consisting of alumni from York University’s film production program. The winning films will be announced and screened on the night of the event.
Student-made or not, I thoroughly enjoyed virtually every nominee.
Janice Lee’s Bonds, a nominee, is a very delicately made piece that places a somewhat obscure situation inside a familiar atmosphere. Anyone who’s watched the TV series Ready or Not will fuzzily recognize Lani Billard – who played Busy – but will be quickly distracted once her remarkably mature and raw character develops.
“Bonds is about finding good things in unexpected places,” said director Lee. “I wanted to make a film that explored this idea, including the fact that we often construct barriers based on shallow judgments of character […] Aside from that, Bonds was really just another excuse to have some fun.”
The dreaded blind date, which features prominently in Bonds, is something we all fear and often vow never to repeat, but Lee shows how something unexpectedly pleasant can arise from even the most undesirable situations.
Another nominee, Triple Chocolate Cake, was just as delicious to watch as it sounds. Director Lesean Harris’s film watches a young man gradually break down into a criminal, all in the name of keeping his daughter happy on her birthday.
Triple Chocolate Cake was by far the most intriguing short film I’ve seen in a while. The fact that Harris was able to coherently work in so many different layers in such a short period of time is truly remarkable. While watching Triple Chocolate Cake, I couldn’t stop thinking of Crash: both are aesthetically alike, and the characters’ situational circumstances in both films make you re-think, well, pretty much everything.
It would be ludicrous to wrap up without also mentioning Elisa L. Ian- nacone’s Vidalonga. The film is one of my favourites from CineSiege 2010, but its cinematography is what earned it this special mention. Iannacone shows incredible maturity and imagination in her Aranofksy-esque short film, which looks like something you would expect to see at TIFF – another bonus if you missed it this year. Boasting a truly original plot and stellar acting, the film manages to progressively develop into a seat-clenching thriller.
Since only the event’s jury-selected winning entries will be shown, Bonds, Triple Chocolate Cake and Vidalonga may not necessarily be screened at CineSiege 2010. Nevertheless, these films represent the cream of an already creamed crop.
So, if you missed TIFF, grab some friends, head downtown and have a great time this year at CineSiege.
CineSiege 2010 takes place at the TIFF Lightbox on Oct. 26 at 7 p.m. Admission to the event and screenings is free.