TIFF’s Midnight Maestro: An Interview with Peter Kuplowsky
Image Credit: Sam Santos (TIFF)
Overseeing the hidden gems of the world's craziest cinema, it's not only a staple to any festivalgoer's experience, but also the best part of it... Depending on who you ask. Peter Kuplowsky is the programmer responsible for TIFF’s annual genre-bending, electrifying, and legendary Midnight Madness section.
LAYERED BUTTER: What’s your earliest TIFF memory?
PETER KUPLOWSKY: My earliest it would be Sprockets, which was their children’s festival, until it was changed to TIFF kids. That was the first film festival event I ever went to, and I believe I saw a Greek comedy called Tsatsiki, Mum, and the Policeman (Tsatsiki, morsan och polisen). I remember there was another film that was called Amy. That was about a little girl who saw her dad died at a rock concert, and because of that, she doesn't speak anymore, but then they discover that she only speaks and hears through song. I remember for Tsatsiki though, there was a script reader because it was subtitled. And for young audiences, they had someone in the theater reading dramatically with subtitles. At one point there was a swear word in the subtitles, and the reader did not read the swear word; all the children laughed, because we could read. That was my earliest memory. The next memory would be me getting kicked out of line to see Volcano High because I was 17, and then walked down the street to get a bootleg of it in Toronto’s Chinatown.
What is the mandate of Midnight Madness to you? What does it bring to the festival?
I've said this before in other interviews, but I've always viewed it when I was a fan of the section and when Collin [Geddes] did it and looking back, when Noah Cowan did it. I've always considered Midnight Madness as a state of the union on genre cinema but more specifically midnight cinema, and I do think there is a distinction. I think the Midnight section should not be exclusively genre films, I think it's more about films that are actually bucking trends. One of the other chestnuts that I throw out there is that I think Midnight Madness should be about adding boxes, not just checking boxes. Boxes that we didn't even know existed. I feel like a Midnight film is a film that truly presents something that is a new perspective, maybe from a foundation of genre, and it's certainly going to influence genre. I mean, I've always felt that what was at the Midnight Madness section is what sets the tone and the trend for various genres. Now, it's true, a lot of the films, especially this year too, tend to be horror movies, but I also think horror is one of those genres in which transgressive and taboo subjects can be explored, shattered, or investigated. I think that's one of the reasons why the trends tend to skew in that direction, but for me, it really comes down to wanting to show something that I haven’t seen before. That's really the goal. I look for films that are made by filmmakers that I think are making interesting decisions, new decisions, innovative decisions with regards to their filmmaking, and I'm looking for new perspectives. I'm always excited, and I know that my predecessors were as well, when I can bring a country into the section that hasn't been represented before, because genre storytelling, and storytelling period exists across all cultures. Often, we're being presented to one kind of movie, whether it's a horror movie, action, science fiction, or an animated film, and I think the Midnight Madness audience, which is one of the most enthusiastic and passionate audiences out there, I think they're up to seeing something new. This is an audience that is very savvy. They watch movies all the time, they breathe movies like I do, and therefore, they don't want to watch something that's generic, which is the irony. It's referred to as a genre section, but I think the last thing anyone wants from a Midnight section is a generic movie.
About representing films from other countries that have never been screened before, what examples would you give for that?
During my tenure, the Midnight section finally hosted an Indian film [The Man Who Feels No Pain], and it won the Midnight Madness People's Choice Award, but In 2019, a huge dream of mine was to not only to bring filmmakers from Uganda, which had never been represented in the next section before, but also bring filmmakers in who made movies with resources and at a budget level that I, frankly, don't think had been represented before at a festival of this scale and size. I thought that was very important, because I do think that we shouldn't let production value fully dictate what deserves a stage at the Toronto International Film Festival. I mean, it is always attention, I think that there's an audience that expects a certain kind of movie at film festivals, and you do sometimes have to balance between the stuff that I think could be perceived as amateur or unprofessional or uncommercial or not industry friendly. But it was very important me to play something like Wakliwood, and Crazy World specifically. Then this year, I'm excited to have two firsts. We have the first film from Iran has ever been in the Midnight section, and we have the first film from West Africa, specifically Senegal, that's ever been in the Midnight Madness section. The Iranian film is Zalava by Arsalan Amiri, and the Senegalese film is Saloum by Jean Luc Herbulot. What I think is so fascinating is that I think that one of the reasons why they both work so perfectly for the Midnight Madness section is they're absolutely in conversation with films that I think Midnighters will have seen before. Like, Zalava is a supernatural possession film, and there are countless examples of those movies, but it is telling that story from a Kurdistan perspective. Saloum similarly, I mean, this is a movie that has been influenced by From Dusk Till Dawn, Predator and Deep Rising, those were touchstone influences for the filmmaker. He just wanted to see West African characters in that story, and that's what he's accomplished, but the thing that's so great is that as much as there's that familiar foundation, everything else feels so new and so fresh. It's exciting because it's like you're discovering a new mythology, a new world.
I've read in previous interviews, that because it’s midnight, you like watching these movies with an audience. As you've said, it's very much a state of the union. What's been your favorite screening as a programmer for TIFF, where you've had that visceral reaction thinking “This is why I program”?
I don't mean to keep talking with the same movie, but it's got to be Crazy World. I think it'll be a long time before I approach a screening that was that meaningful to both the filmmakers and the audience. Here was a situation where we had filmmakers who themselves have never watched their work, not only with a Western audience, but never watched their work in a cinema projected of that size and scale, and that we did it with live narration. That was legitimately a new form of how to engage and experience a movie. I think that was just so exciting, and exactly the type of boundaries that I wanted to be pushing in a Midnight section to really challenge how we watch movies, and that there is this one way to watch films. There's a myriad of ways to watch movies and to join movies as community. I've had some other screenings that I'm so thrilled with how they went. I've hosted Nicolas Cage twice, and that's definitely a feather in the cap, but I don't think anything will hold a candle to 1000 people cheering Isaac Nabwana and VJ Emmie and then seeing the whole village from Wakaliga behind them on the screen. Like, that was such a special night, and we worked so hard to make it happen. So many people sacrificed so many hours to figure out how to get their visas cleared and bring them to Canada. I remember when the pandemic started, and I went “Well, if film festivals end, we ended Midnight Madness with Crazy World.” That's the perfect ending. Fortunately, we've continued.
What has been different for you programming this year knowing that the pandemic is going to limit audiences, changing the ways of viewing and experiencing the film?
It's a good question because it has changed things I think considerably. The process is still the same. I'm still scouting and tracking movies, but movies are still submitted to the festival. I'm still watching more or less the same number of movies. I think we wondered if not as many movies would be submitted to the festival? Will a bunch of movies not play 2020 and then we'd have too many movies look at in 2021? At least I think other programmers might have different reactions. For me, at least, it was it was a pretty similar process, but I did realize, especially after 2020 where we did have a hybrid festival for the first time, that most of my audience was watching digitally. I became cognizant that it is a very different experience, and there are certain movies that I appreciate will work very well in a roomful of 1000 people, but they might not work the same when it's just one person when you're by yourself. I always try to remind myself when I'm watching screeners, is that when it comes to programming, movie watching shouldn't really be in a vacuum. I do believe that the best movies are ones that are communally felt. So sometimes if something is not working for me as the screener, I try to imagine how is this going to work with 1000 people, and how is that going to change things? That's something that I couldn't count on this time. Even though we had in person screenings in 2020, they were sometimes 25 to 45 people, which is more midnight mass than Midnight Madness. It's not that energy level isn't the same, I do think we will feel more of it this year, that's why it was actually really important for something like Titane, which is so hyped, people are so excited about it that if we could show it in a venue, I wanted to show it one of the biggest venues possible, so that we could have an audience that approximates a typical midnight crowd. But even still, we're gonna be wearing masks, so how will that affect peoples comfort level in terms of laughing or gasping or applauding. I mean, mercifully, a lot of those reactions are pretty impulsive and instinctual, but it is kind of like putting a mute on a trumpet. It’s going to change the sound I think of Midnight for sure, and I have I have thought that. I do think that there's a couple titles in the lineup that I anticipate that most audiences will watch this at home, like After Blue (Dirty Paradise). It's a long movie for Midnight, but I also feel like if you’ve got a J [laughs] and you get baked to this movie, I think you're gonna have a good time. I knew that there just be keen interest in Bertrand Mandico’s stuff, he's sort of an iconoclast on the rise these days, especially in Europe, but I don't believe his work is played at Toronto yet, so I felt like this would be an exciting opportunity to introduce him to the Toronto Midnight audience. And if they're all going to be at home, I mean, I definitely encourage people to sit in the theater if they're comfortable too, because it's a real trip. Like it's a pretty wild experience. Another thing that did change this year, was that there were a couple occasions where filmmakers were very concerned that I wouldn't have a chance to watch the movie in a cinema when I was making my evaluation. Because oftentimes, if a filmmaker’s insistent, we do try to set up a screening in the TIFF Bell Lightbox with the programming team and watch it together, and that was a lot harder to do this year with COVID restrictions and the lockdown restrictions in Toronto. So I actually figured out how to use my PlayStation VR to watch the screeners, and I actually watched a couple screeners in VR to just assure them that I'm locked in, if it feels larger than life, that it feels like I'm in a movie theater. And I got to say it was actually kind of a fun experience. I probably damaged my eyes a bit with too much VR exposure, but some of the films that I did it with definitely are in the festival.
Do you think that VR really could be the future of how a hybrid program could maybe work in the future?
I mean, I’d love that idea if VR gets better. At the end of the day, the resolution is still not where I think filmmakers would want it to be. but I think it would be a really cool idea to explore if you get the right tech partner to rent VR units for an audience. A number of festivals are engaging in VR, and TIFF did briefly as well. I love the idea though of being in some sort of virtual cinema, you'd like look to your left or right, you got like Sonic and Knuckles on either side [laughs], and it's like this bizarre Ready Player One cinema experience. I'm still waiting for the first major festival to premiere something in Fortnite. I feel like we're so close. That's gonna happen.
No, don't put that energy out in the world.
Someone's gonna do it. Someone's gonna do it. We're so close to it happening, and I feel like it's gonna be Sundance or Cannes or Tribeca maybe. But someone's gonna do it.
What do you hope to be the future for the kind of stories or films that get programmed within Midnight Madness?
At the end of the day, I'm always interested in something I haven't seen before, you know, Zig when I expect you to zag. I think that this is a space for unpredictable storytelling, and I really like watching stuff that is upsetting expectations. Ask yourself what hasn't been done? Whose story haven't we heard? What perspective haven't we heard? But then from the exhibition standpoint, like the Crazy World screening, I'm really interested in experimenting with how we watch movies, and I had hoped that we could do a bit more of that with the digital TIFF. I hoped that we could figure out new ways to watch movies, and at the moment it's pretty similar to just how we consume VOD or SVOD content for the most part, but I do think that like what we just discussed with that VR conversation, there could be new and experimental ways to engage with cinema. I have so much reverence for the act of watching movies in in a theater, the conventional way, but I do think that Midnight could be a place to explore that, so I'm open to hearing other filmmakers pitch how one might create a experience in a cinema that is different and unique. That's what really excites me.
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