The Toronto International Film Festival loves a party and loves film. So what better way to start the celebrations for our new home at Bell Lightbox than to invite the smartest cats of the video remix world to reinterpret the history of cinema as decided by . . . us. The Essential 100 is a list of cinema's greatest as chosen by our own mashup of TIFF expert opinion and a survey filled out by you, our stakeholders. We provided Eclectic Method with various clips from the films selected and let the group loose. The results – almost entirely improvised – will be on display at Yonge-Dundas Square on September 19.
Finding recent fame with seemingly deranged tributes to everything from Barack Obama's search for a new puppy to the hip-hop stylings of Elmo on Sesame Street, this trio of British-born artists has slyly used party mixes to explore issues like copyright law and race politics. The group's live show is a marvel of performance: these rock dervishes rhythmically gesticulate, mesmerically spinning computerized turntables while twisting magical knobs. Images and sounds – some from high culture, some from the trash bin of audio and visual history – find themselves in odd company and start to groove.
It's not every day you see the history and culture of cinema letting down its cinematographic hair and shaking its auteurist ass.
Noah Cowan
Curated by Noah Cowan
September 19, 9 pm to 11 pm
Yonge-Dundas Square
FREE to the public
Eclectic Method is made up of Londoners Jonny Wilson, Ian Edgar and Geoff Gamien. Their audio-visual mashups have been commissioned by U2, Fatboy Slim and Public Enemy. they have released two DVDs of music-video remixes. We're Not VJs (05) and Lock Up Your Videos (08). The group's remix work has also included video games, the films of Quentin Tarantino, the British television series Skins and the 2002 jet Li feature Hero.