Thoughts on Toronto

Skyscrapers with lantern Toronto
Originally uploaded by swisscan

I am here for a shoot for the Asexuals movie and luckily the shoot coincides with The Hot Docs Film Festival, a documentary film festival. The first shoot went really well. I interviewed Elizabeth Abbott who wrote A History of Celibacy. She was really smart, well spoken and got me thinking about a lot of different things. Next up is Anthony Boegart who did a major study on asexuality. He is based two hours away from Toronto so we are in for a long drive manana.

I am having some more conflict with a work situation and on Wednesday we are going to have another “talk”. I work a bunch of different projects at my job and this is the one that has taken up a majority of my time. I just don’t know how badly I want to resolve this situation. I am unhappy and tired of being unhappy on this project. I don’t want to walk away because that's not who I am. But I may have to. Can’t get too much more into it than that.

I’ve seen a lot of films while here. It has been pretty great. So far I’ve seen:

-Emoticons (dir by Heddy Honigmann): I love her but this film, about Dutch teenagers who spend a lot of time on the internet, felt slight somehow. Her films are pretty heady and focus on many people engaging in the same seemingly mundane task that, after the film moves along, grows in significance. This concept works usually but not this time. Not sure why.
-Kids + Money (dir by Lauren Greenfield): This was a ½ hour short before Emoticons. I love Greenfield’s photography. Though this film, which will show on HBO at some point, was entertaining, it seemed like she was making fun of some of her subjects in a way that felt kind of glib. Still, it is pretty entertaining.
-Beyond the Frey (dir. Luke Walker and Melissa Maclean): I am obsessed with cult movies and this one is about a cult in Australia. It was great and juicy.
-Life.Support.Music (dir Eric Daniel Metzgar): This was my favorite film that I have seen here. It was about a guitar player who has a brain hemmorage and his incredible road to recovery. At the Q and A, the filmmaker said that this is a film about optomism and that is really true. It was so moving and gives you faith in the human spirit. You should see this when it comes to a theater near you. It is coming to Boston next. I think I want to see this director's first movie, The Chances of The World Changing.

Some random facts about my time here:

-Boy Toronto is multi culti. It is great!
-There are a lot of couples that consist of hot women of color and ok white men.
-Toronto has it all over New York when it comes to being a green city.
-I am staying at an amazing Super 8 and I was put in a suite because the regular rooms were taken. It is a pretty hot room.

That’s all for now.