Four colour risograph poster, printed by Colour Code Printing, designed by Rennie Taylor
BUS Collective x TIFF
The Little Free Cinema is coming to TIFF September 10th-20th! See the four cinemas screening works by Philip Hoffman, Martin Heath, Lindsay McIntyre and Christina Dovolois.
Programming:*
Philip Hoffman Flowers #3 (Kissed by the Sun) (2024)
Lindsay McIntyre all-around junior male (2012)
Martin Heath Walking Film (2008)
Christina Dovolis Sidewalk 3000 (2026)
Where: The cinemas will be located outside of TIFF’s Lightbox Theatre on Festival Street from September 10th-13th, before moving to the David Pecaut Square across from the Royal Alexandra Theatre for the duration of the festival.
Film curation by Rennie Taylor
Little Free Cinemas are generously supported by the Toronto Downtown West BIA.
*All programming presented as silent digital videos, looped 24/7
Philip Hoffman
Flowers #3 (Kissed by the Sun) (2024)
Flowers #3 (Kissed by the Sun), 10 minutes, 35mm photogram to HDV, silent, 2024 by Philip Hoffman in collaboration with Alexander Granger and Jason O’Hara
These motion picture photograms were initiated through a five hour plunge into the darkroom; remembering the Galician celebration of flowers on the road in Baiona, near Vigo in 2019, here too we made a floral carpet of photograms. –P.Hoffman
A Procession of herbs “emerge in all their structures, colors and epidermis. The motion picture itself becomes a plant which delicately stretches petioles and petals.” – Séance #3-Sentir Comme une Plante, Muséum National d’Histoire naturelle, Paris.
A film artist of memory and association, Philip Hoffman has long been recognized as Canada’s pre-eminent diary filmmaker. He apprenticed in Europe with Peter Greenaway in 1985, where he made ?O,Zoo! (The Making of a Fiction Film) (1985), which was nominated for a Canadian Genie Award. On passing through/torn formations (1988), Stan Brakhage recognized how “Hoffman’s editing throughout is true to thought process, tracks visual theme as the mind tracks shape, makes melody of noise and words as the mind recalls sound.” Hoffman has been honored with more than 25 retrospectives of his work. Among them was the centrepiece series at the 2001 Images Festival for Independent Film and Video in Toronto, coupled with the launch of a book titled Landscape with Shipwreck: First Person Cinema and the Films of Philip Hoffman, comprising some 25 essays by academics and artists. As well in 2002 he received the Golden Gate Award from the San Francisco International Film Festival and Gus Van Sant Award from the Ann Arbor Film Festival for What These Ashes Wanted, a diaristic meditation on loss and grief. In 2009 he premiered his feature-length experimental documentary, All Fall Down, at the Berlin International Film Festival. The film is a reflection on childhood, property, ecology and love. Hoffman completed three works in 2014: Slaughterhouse (based on his installation for LandSlide, at the Markham Museum) and Aged, which have won awards at the Black Maria Festival in New Jersey, and Onion City Film Festival in Chicago, respectively. Also in 2014, Hoffman was a participating artist in the exhibition Border Cultures, at the Art Gallery of Windsor, where he presented the interactive work Racing Home (from an unfinished film by Marian McMahon), produced through A.R.C. at Concordia University in Montreal. In 2016 Docpoint Documentary Film Festival in Helsinki mounted an “Introspective”, gathering together five programs of Hoffman’s works, along with works of students and artists he was involved with during the 1990’s in Finland. In 2016 Hoffman received the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts and in 2019 his film ‘vulture’ received the Kodak Cinematic Vision Award at Ann Arbor Film Festival. Since 1994, he has been the artistic director of the Independent Imaging Retreat (Film Farm), a 1 week workshop in artisanal filmmaking in Mount Forest, Ontario. In 2019 Film Farm celebrated its 25th anniversary with screenings and a gallery installation at TIFF Bell Lightbox, in Toronto. In 2024 the workshop will be celebrating its 30th Anniversary with screenings at CamLab in Boston, at the S8 Festival in A Coruña, Spain and Other Cinema in San Francisco.
Lindsay McIntyre
all-around junior male (2012)
all-around junior male, 7 minutes 30 seconds, hi-contrast b+w 16mm with mono optical, 2012
A single-subject portrait of a young Nunamiut athlete practicing his sport, the most challenging of Arctic games, the one-foot high-kick.
Lindsay McIntyre is an Inuk artist and filmmaker working at the intersection of material innovation and personal histories. Rooted in analogue processes, she employs handmade emulsions and deep material research in her autoethnographic explorations, forging visceral, place-based connections. Her short NIGIQTUQ ᓂᒋᖅᑐᖅ garnered the Oscar-qualifying Best Short Award at imagineNATIVE and her upcoming feature, The Words We Can’t Speak won the WIDC Feature Film Award. Her most recent film, Tuktuit: Caribou considers the close and enduring connections between caribou, lichens and Inuit, and employs caribou-gelatin handmade emulsion. As a fellow of Forge Project, Sundance Institute, and COUSIN Collective, many of her over 45 films and expanded cinema performances have won awards and been projected around the world.
Martin Heath
Walking Film (2008)
Walking Film, 3 minutes, 35mm, 2008
“Walking Film” by Martin Heath shot on a “Samurai” ½ frame motor drive camera around Alston Cumbria 2008.
Martin Heath, TIFF 1976-2008, CineCycle 1989-
Christina Dovolis
Sidewalk 3000 (2026)
Sidewalk 3000, 2 minutes and 50 seconds, digital, 2026
A sidewalk is more than just a route from point A to B—it’s a reflection of a city’s culture, a marker of neighborhood civic engagement (or lack thereof). It is a collective creation, a living collage scattered with old bubblegum, lost movie tickets, rusty grates, feces, and hotdog wrappers. Sidewalk 3000 plays like a sensory conveyor belt of these very urban textures. Using a portable scanner, the film is constructed entirely from actual scans of Toronto’s sidewalks, allowing the viewer to experience the City of Toronto not just visually, but through haptic Sensation.
Christina Dovolis is an interdisciplinary filmmaker and geographer, often working with cutting-edge technologies to explore how our built environments shape community and identity. Hailing from the Midwest, Christina draws inspiration from themes of the region: girlhood and gossip, kitschy deluxe, religious mythologies, and the complexities of urban/rural land development. As an educator and community organizer, Christina is committed to making new media programs more accessible to the public, particularly focusing on empowering women and marginalized groups. She has achieved acclaim for her projects, with presentations at Museum of the Moving Image, SXSW Sydney, Aga Khan Museum, Kasseler Dokfest, Fantasia, and more.