Once upon a time, the Toronto International Film Festival was about showing movies. It’s time for a reboot.“Our main product used to be film,” it says in a new five-year strategic plan, presented this week to TIFF board members. “Now, our main service must be transformative experiences through film.”Used to be film? Isn’t that like the Toronto Blue Jays saying their main product used to be baseball?What this means, say TIFF’s director/CEO Piers Handling and artistic director Cameron Bailey, is that in a diverse world rapidly moving online, it’s no longer enough to simply show movies at the fest’s September showcase and in its TIFF Bell Lightbox HQ at King and John Sts. Read more: A year after bringing us Moonlight, TIFF’s Platform has a few more stars: HowellNew films by Louis C.K., Aaron Sorkin added to TIFFBorg/McEnroe, starring Shia LaBeouf, to open TIFFFacing an industry-wide decline in traditional movie attendance, TIFF hopes to find new ways to engage people, especially millennials, in the digital as well as physical realms. Grabbing eyeballs for the art house and independent productions that are a big part of TIFF’s offerings gets harder by the day as the world spins at the speed of smartphones and social media.“It’s becoming increasingly more difficult,” Handling says, in an interview in his sunlit Lightbox office, which is decorated with his beloved collection of old movie posters.“I just think that people’s viewing habits change. You’ve got a physical building here, but of course younger audiences are used to seeing things on tablets and phones.”Adds Bailey: “There are so many more things calling our attention these days, whether it’s gaming, the rise of premium TV — all kinds of things.”The “transformative experiences” TIFF refers to in its makeover manifesto, which is entitled Audience ...
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