In a scene from Toronto painter Margaux Williamson’s first feature-length “movie” (the scare quotes are hers), Teenager Hamlet 2006, interviewer Sholem Krishtalka and one of a cast of Ophelias (York Lethbridge) discuss the potential virtues of vanity and suggest that appearing in Us Weekly is a form of celebrity penance. As the glossy gossip magazine flies into town this week to cover TIFF’s star-powered party circuit, Williamson’s playful, inventive and refreshing exploration of the ideas posed by Shakespeare’s most popular play presents a surreal counterpoint to the glamour of the mainstream movie industry. 

“I think the difference between my ‘movie’ and maybe a regular movie in a cinema is that what I was looking for was what was right in front of me,” says Williamson.

Shot mostly in the Queen West neighbourhood where it will be shown, the video and art installation is populated with Williamson’s close friends and collaborators, such as Sheila Heti, Lauren Bride, Misha Glouberman and Carl Wilson (all familiar to regulars at the lecture series Trampoline Hall). It also includes “screen tests” conducted at Tyler Clark Burke’s Santa Cruz party on Captain John’s Boat. The result operates both as an inquiry into modes of self-presentation and as an informal snapshot of a downtown scene at a particular period in time as the interviewers prod their subjects into revealing insights about themselves on camera. Both beautifully stylized — Toronto-based photographer Lee Towndrow is director of photography — and extremely casual, audience members will likely respond with either delight or annoyance based on their own reaction to the personalities on display.

“Though it was as heavily constructed as a reality TV show, absolutely nobody could have disappointed me with their performance,” Williamson says. “I was only looking for what the participants would naturally do in a constructed situation.”

For the Future Projections screening, Williamson will be exhibiting related materials — such as trailers and the screen tests — and selling popcorn. Other films in the program include When the Gods Came Down to Earth by Srinivas Krishna, a look at campy representations of Hindu gods and goddesses that will be projected on the Michael Lee Chin Crystal day and night throughout the festival, and The Butcher’s Shop by Philip Haas (Angels and Insects), which imagines the social and aesthetic world of 16th-century painter Annibale Carracci. Each of the program’s seven projects will be presented outside traditional screening rooms, with installations at the ROM, the Drake Hotel, MOCCA and other local gallery spaces.
Williamson remembers being initially confused by the degree of enthusiasm she encountered when she told a woman in the film industry she was making a movie. “Later, someone explained to me that in her world, when someone says they are making a movie, that means that the funding came in. She didn’t know that I was making a ‘movie.’”