Usually in protest of the festival ticket prices, there are those out there who criticize the Toronto International Film Festival’s designation as a non-profit charity. However, those critics of TIFF’s status as charity are probably unaware of the year-round work TIFF does in promoting and preserving the film medium. In fact, it has just been announced that TIFF is about to undergo one of their largest film preservation efforts.
TIFF will be acquiring four major film print collections from NBC Universal, Mongrel Media, entertainmentOne and Canadian filmmaker Peter Mettler, consisting of 1,460 film prints in 16mm and 35mm formats. Highlights of the films included in these collections are 11 Alfred Hitchcock films including Rear Window (1954), Tod Browning’s Dracula (1931), Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy (2011), John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982), and the Coen Brothers’ The Big Lebowski (1998).
To help cover the costs of storing, revising, and maintaining the prints, TIFF has launched the Save This Moment fundraising campaign, with the first $15,000 raised to be matched by an anonymous donor. The Save This Moment campaign runs from November 15 to December 31 and more information can be found at tiff.net/savethismoment.
Donate and help TIFF preserve film history.
