TIFF to host art installations at ROM, galleries

The Toronto International Film Festival will be spilling out of cinemas and into Toronto galleries and exhibition spaces this year.

Nine video installations and multimedia projects will be displayed throughout the city in conjunction with the festival, running Sept. 6 to 15.

As part of the program, images from war-torn Darfur will be projected on the Royal Ontario Museum's new Crystal addition, and the Power Plant will be devoted to an exhibit of the works of Italy's Francesco Vezzoli.

The DARFUF/DARFUR exhibit features photos by former U.S. marine Brian Steidle and photojournalists Lynsey Addario, Mark Brecke, Helene Caux and Michal Safdie.

It has previously been displayed on the exteriors of the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and the Jewish Museum in Berlin.

Vezzoli, who explores the nature of celebrity in film, embroideries and poster paintings, brings a retrospective of his work titled A True Hollywood Story!

Canadian filmmakers Noam Gonick and Luis Jacob are running a video installation called Wildflowers of Manitoba, which is to be shown inside a geodesic dome at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art.

The Ontario College of Art is hosting a juried exhibit of works from international artists from the interactive game industry and a video installation based on the I Ching by Brian Johnson and Anthony Roberts.

Other exhibits include:

• Best Minds, Part One, by Vancouver's Jeremy Shaw, who documents skateboarding culture.
• Death in the Land of Encantos, by Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz, about how a typhoon alters the landscape.
• Late Fragment, an interactive installation involving the stories of three strangers.

TIFF has previously hosted an artist-made film and video program called Wavelengths, but this is the first year it has presented art installations with galleries throughout the city.