Sunday, September 20, 2009

TIFF – Toronto International Film Festival 2009


Sometimes it just happens; you have no idea how you spotted the possibility, you just did and it turns out to be a moment of sheer magic. 120 minutes of laughing, crying and experiencing.
The world around you has disappeared and you live only in this on-screen universe. In a way it’s like a good conversation but the dialog is not with a fellow human being but with a movie and it´s director who have created this space in time with the ability to reach out and communicate with YOU, the audience.
In a way it´s like falling in love. An all consuming feeling where nothing else matters as long as you can be with together with the adored object.

I have had that experience twice during this festival. The first time was a movie called “Mao’s last Dancer”, about a ballet dancer trained in communist China who defects to the United States. The second time was a documentary from New Zeeland called “The Topp Twins” about two country singing, yodelling, lesbian twin sisters. Both movies provided me with this extraordinary thing – to be able to experience a phenomenon and a story I had no idea existed. It made my world bigger and my life richer.




I have watched 35 movies during this festival and thousands over the years. You should think this could very easily have made me into a cynic and when you are 51 years old and have to watch “Hannah Montana” in a dubbed Danish version, the possibility definitely exists but luckily it hasn’t. I can still enjoy a good movie as much as when I started in the cinema business 35 years ago. I love movies and feel so lucky to have the best job in the world watching them and afterwards providing the audience in my cinemas with the same experience.

No comments: