Wavelengths, the avant-garde film & video section of the Toronto International Film Festival, reaches its tenth edition presenting six programmes with the latest experimental works from all over the world.

Curated by TIFF Cinematheque programmer Andréa Picard and running from September 10 to 13, among the section's highlights are the latest works by Peter Tscherkassky, Nathaniel Dorsky, Dominic Angeranme, Tomonari Nishikawa, Vincent Grenier and John Price. This year's edition also features some jewels from early twentieth-century film, including a short work by cinema pioneer Segundo de Chomón. Also worthy of interest is this year's section City to City, dedicated to Istanbul, that features experimental works by turkish filmmakers Eytan Ipeker, Yoel Meranda and Burçak Kaygun.

Wavelengths section at TIFF 2010
September 10-13, 2010

Wavelengths 1: Soul Of The City
Friday September 10, 21:00h, Jackman Hall - Art Gallery of Ontario

- Tokyo - Ebisu (Tomonari Nishikawa, 2010, silent, 5 min.)
An entrancing patchwork of spectral apparitions from the platforms of Tokyo's busiest railway line.
- Soul of Things (Dominic Angerame, 2010, silent, 16 min.)
Luscious chiaroscuro images of the construction and destruction of modern structures exposing the inner soul of things. An ode to human endeavour as much as a harkening back to the 20s and 30s city symphony films.
- Get Out Of The Car (Thom Andersen, 2010, sound, 34 min.)
From the director of "Los Angeles Plays Itself" comes another city symphony exploring Los Angeles' gentrification through a thoughtful montage of façades and a playful excursus through its musical history.
- Victoria, George, Edward & Thatcher (Callum Cooper, 2010, sound, 2 min.)
An ecstatic, taxonomic montage of London row-houses shot with an iPhone.
- Landscape, semi-surround (Eriko Sonoda, 2009, silent, 9 min.)
Semi-opaque reflections of a landscape seen through a train window not only reflect back, but multiply and create a rhythmic composition worthy of hanging on a wall. With sonic dislocation and frame by frame animation, Eriko Sonoda's Landscape, semi-surround revels in the afterglow of memory.
- Everywhere Was The Same (Basma Al Sharif, 2007, sound, 12 min.)
A slideshow depicting abandoned houses develops into a pre-apocalyptic paradise for the state of Palestine.
- Leona Alone (Oliver Husain, 2009, sound, 5 min.)
Ornate aesthetic interventions in a historic Toronto neighbourhood cum suburb. Art combats against poor taste.

Wavelengths 2: Plein-Air
Saturday September 11, 16:30h, Jackman Hall - Art Gallery of Ontario

- Burning Bush (Vincent Grenier, 2010, 9 min.)
A virtuosic use of video sets this burning bush alight with crimson colour and transcendent allusions.
- Home Movie (John Price, 2010, 32 min.)
A home movie fresco comprised of bold colour experiments and an intimate race with time.
- Ouverture (Christopher Becks, 2010, silent, 5 min.)
A serene, yet kinetic in-camera meditation on an old barn in Normandy.
- Cinematographie (Philipp Fleischmann, 2009, 6 min.)
A reinvention of the filmstrip by way of an astonishing 360 degree camera obscura construction, which allows for a continuous single frame to emerge like a scroll rather than a series of frames.
- Portrait, Teetrinken, Roter Vorhang (Helga Fanderl, 2010, silent, 7 min.)
Intimate Super 8 portraits from a great love affair.
- Anne Truitt, Working (Jem Cohen, 2009, sound, 12 min.)
A lovely, observational portrait of Minimalist painter and sculptor Anne Truitt, who is finally receiving long-overdue recognition for her critical contribution to the American avant-garde painting scene of the 60s.
- Color Field Films 1 & 2 (Madison Brookshire, 2010, 7 min.)
Colour field films made of slow dissolves and winsome wavelength compositions of light.

Wavelengths 3: Ruhr
Saturday September 11, 21:15h, Jackman Hall - Art Gallery of Ontario

- Ruhr (James Benning, 2009, 120 min.)
Ruhr is legendary American filmmaker James Benning's monumental meditation on the Ruhr, the largest urban agglomeration in Germany. While Ruhr marks Benning's foray into both high-definition video and the European landscape (leaving behind his 16mm camera and his exploration of his native land), the film continues his audio-visual portraits that have come to define the cinematic sublime.

Wavelengths 4: Pastourelle
Sunday September 12, 19:00h, Jackman Hall - Art Gallery of Ontario

- Aubade (Nathaniel Dorsky, 2010, silent, 12 min.)
"An aubade is a poem or morning song evoking the first rays of the sun at daybreak. Often, it includes the atmosphere of lovers parting. This film is my first venture into shooting in color negative after having spent a lifetime shooting Kodachrome. In some sense, it is a new beginning for me." (N. Dorsky)
- Compline (Nathaniel Dorsky, 2010, silent, 19 min.)
"Compline is a night devotion or prayer, the last of the canonical hours, the final act in a cycle. This film is also the last film I will be able to shoot in Kodachrome, a film stock I have shot since I was 10 years old. It is a loving duet with and a fond farewell to this noble emulsion." (N. Dorsky)
- Pastourelle (Nathaniel Dorsky, 2010, silent, 17 min.)
"A pastourelle and an aubade are two different forms of courtship songs from the Troubadour tradition. In this case, the film Pastourelle, a sister film to Aubade, is in the more tumultuous key of spring." (N. Dorsky)
- Water Lilies (T. Marie, 2010, silent, 7 min.)
A shimmery, abstract tryptich inspired by Claude Monet.

Wavelengths 5: Blue Mantle
Sunday September 12, 21:15h, Jackman Hall - Art Gallery of Ontario

- Atlantiques (Mati Diop, 2009, 15 min.)
Winner of International Film Festival Rotterdam's Best Short Film Award, Atlantiques is by Mati Diop, who recently starred in Claire Denis's 35 Rhums. Atlantiques recounts the oddysey of Senegalese friends who attempt a life-threatening boat crossing. Melancholic and mysterious, the film urgently and elegantly addresses the perils of illegal migration.
- One (Eve Heller, 2009, silent, 4 min.)
A single roll of Super 8mm to capture the mystery in the everyday, blown up to 35mm.
- 753 McPherson St. (Kevin Jerome Everson, 2010, silent, 2 min.)
Life may not go on but careful work continues at this Mansfield Ohio address.
- blue mantle (Rebecca Meyers, 2010, 34 min.)
An ode to the sea, where beauty and death often meet.
- Slaveship (T. Marie, 2010, silent)
The apocalyptic sublime of J. M. W. Turner’s 1840 masterpiece The Slave Ship, with its firery conflagration and strewn debris amid wild waters, is the source for T. Marie’s time-based pixel painting-film Slaveship.
- Hell Roaring Creek (Lucien Castaing-Taylor, 2010, 20 min.)
A quiet, ravishing pastoral to restore the senses. A shepherdess guides a parade of sheep across Montana's Hell Roaring Creek; a quotidian ritual that exists out of time.

Wavelengths 6: Coming Attractions
Sunday September 13, 21:00h, Jackman Hall - Art Gallery of Ontario

- Photofinish Figures (Paolo Gioli, 2010, silent, 9 min.)
With exhilirating rhythms and flashing sideways motion, the latest by celebrated Italian aritst Paolo Gioli is a 16mm, black and white ode to faces and the city. Il Finish delle Figure reminds one of Muybridge but relays a sense of the conteporary, sensory overload of living in a metropolis.
- Day was a Scorcher (Ken Jacobs, 2009, 8 min.)
Stroboscopic home movies, from Rome to NYC.
- Concorso di bellezza fra bambini a Torino (Various, 1909, silent)
Amazing images gleaned from the archives of the EYE Film Institute of Netherlands; a parade of pint-sized pulchritude.
- Delphine de Oliveira (Friedl vom Gröller, 2009, silent, 3 min.)
A young woman is photographed in a Parisian courtyard. Her belle laide looks convey a paradox of emotion and many untold mysteries.
- Jonas Mekas In Kodachrome Days (Ken Jacobs, 2009, silent, 4 min.)
Stroboscopic home movies of a famous filmmaker, by another.
- Roi des Dollars (Segundo de Chomón, 1905, silent, 2 min.)
Illusions of gutteral gold.
- COMING ATTRACTIONS (Peter Tscherkassky, 2010, 25 min.)
Austrian master Peter Tscherkassky's latest epic is a sly comedy that mines the relationship between early cinema and the avant-garde by way of advertising. With references to Méliès, les Lumières, Cocteau and Fernand Léger, COMING ATTRACTIONS playfully explores cinema's subliminal possibilities.
- Bits and Pieces (Various and Anonymous, 1900-1919, silent, 30 min.)
Amazing images gleaned from the archives of the EYE Film Institute Netherlands.