FESTIVAL STREET: WHERE CINEMA MEETS THE SIDEWALK Film-Themed Free Programming takes over King Street from Sept. 10-13 TORONTO — The Toronto International Film Festival® invites audiences to step outside the theatre this year with the return of the hugely popular Festival Street initiative. From September 10 to 13, King Street West between Peter and University Streets will be closed to vehicular traffic and transformed into a pedestrian paradise free for all to enjoy.

 “We’re thrilled to be bringing back all the free Festival Street fun for another year,” said Cameron Bailey, Artistic Director, Toronto International Film Festival. “TIFF is informally known as the ‘people’s festival’ and Festival Street is one of our most accessible initiatives. Full of film-themed free programming, it’s an opportunity for everyone to have their own special Festival experience.”

In celebration of TIFFs 40th anniversary, Festival Street is literally reaching new heights with Questival, a walking interactive quiz designed by Frontier Design & Innovation.

A fleet of balloons with emblazoned with artwork, each representing a past Festival film, will float above King Street for four days only. The NewCanadianMusic.ca stage features one-of-a-kind presentations connected to film as well as a line-up of up-and-coming musical talent.

New this year, cinema-inspired installations explore everything from experimental film to stop-motion animation, the Slaight Family Zone welcomes even the littlest cinephiles to Festival Street, and Food Truck Village will leave no taste bud unsatisfied. “This year we wanted to incorporate more cinematic elements into the programming for Festival Street,” said Nobu Adilman, Festival Street Programmer for the Toronto International Film Festival. “From our on-stage presentations and interactive installations to our family zone, visitors can sit back and observe or they can jump in and be active participants."

Learn more and see the full schedule by visiting tiff.net/festivalstreet.

Questival

In the spirit of the 40th Festival, TIFF challenges audiences to ace the Questival walking quiz.

Look up along Festival Street and you will spot a fleet of balloons emblazoned with flashy icons, each one representing a past Festival film. Play the game online at tiff.net/questival to win free film tickets to this year’s Festival – competition ends 10pm Friday at 5pm. Created by Frontier Design & Innovation, a creative exploration company made up of a magazine, design studio and ventures group focused on design-driven ideas and idea-driven design.

NewCanadianMusic.ca Stage

Titicut Follies – The Ballet World Premiere Inspired by filmmaker Frederick Wiseman’s groundbreaking 1967 documentary, Titicut Follies –The Ballet is a cross-genre exploration integrating film, dance and music created by Wiseman, acclaimed choreographer James Sewell, and Saturday Night Live Music Director Lenny Picket. Over the course of an hour, the ballet will be performed three times, with Wiseman, Sewell and Picket in attendance. A newly restored 35mm print of Wiseman’s Titicut Follies screens in the TIFF Cinematheque programme and Wiseman’s latest film In Jackson Heights will screen in the TIFF Docs programme.

NARI

Making its world premiere, NARI is the unsung story of the lives of Lakshmi Shankar and her daughter Viji, two extraordinary artists who helped bring Indian music to the West in the 1970s through their close collaborations with Ravi Shankar and George Harrison. This arresting, multi-generational, multimedia mash-up was conceived by Gingger Shankar – singer, composer and the only woman in the world to play the double violin – in collaboration with producer Dave Liang and multidisciplinary artist Sun Yunfan.

Mohammed Assaf

Winner of the second season of Arab Idol, Mohammed Assaf makes his Canadian debut on Festival Street. Since winning Arab Idol, Assaf has toured the world, performing in a number of sold-out concerts to audiences in the Middle East, Europe and the Americas. Assaf met with the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, in New York in November 2013 and was named Goodwill Ambassador for Peace by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). The Idol, a film about Assaf’s journey, makes its world premiere in the Special Presentations programme.

Bruce Peninsula and the Sounds of Sleeping Giant

Bruce Peninsula recreates their booming soundtrack for Sleeping Giant, Andrew Cividino’s debut feature that screens in the Discovery programme, as soaring outtakes from the film transport you to the wilds of Northern Ontario.

Telefilm Canada presents Canada’s Got Game live!

Co-hosted by Ben Mulroney (etalk) and Teddy Wilson (InnerSpace), Telefilm Canada presents the second edition of its Canada’s Got Game live game show in collaboration with the Toronto Star. This year the public will have a chance to be contestants, alongside Canadian actors. Two teams, captained by Vinay Virmani (The Steps) and Michael Seater (Life With Derek), compete in hilarious games to test their knowledge of Canadian cinema. Come cheer on Amanda Brugel (Room), Jack Fulton (Closet Monster), Cara Gee (Empire of Dirt) and Pat Mills (Guidance).

Bookaboo on Festival Street Rock-’n’-read fun with puppets!

Don’t miss a rare opportunity to see Bookaboo, the internationally famous drumming rock puppy, share and read beautiful picture books with a host of celebrities live onstage! Bookaboo is a coproduction between UK's Happy Films and Canada's Sinking Ship Entertainment. Movie-Themed Uke Jam! Movie themes get anthemic makeovers by Toronto’s most virtuosic ukulele players! From the Looney Tunes Overture to The Bee Gees’ More Than A Woman (featured in Saturday Night Fever) — and a little Elvis in between — Steve McNie and his band of merrymakers will have the kids up and dancing in seconds!

River Tiber

As River Tiber, 25-year-old Toronto singer/multi-instrumentalist and producer Tommy Paxton-Beesley is unafraid to push his love for R&B and hip hop production into unusual places: pitching his vocals to sound like Mariah Carey, multi-tracking his voice into a dozen ghost choruses, and narrowing the gap in the soul spectrum between Jodeci and Flying Lotus. 2015 has been good to the rising artist, who found his voice notably sampled on Drake’s If You're Reading This It’s Too Late and performed on BADBADNOTGOOD and Ghostface Killah collaborative album, Sour Soul.

The Big Sound Festival Soul Revue Festival Street goes full-on Motown with The Big Sound, a 25+ super-group of local players from across all musical genres, and featuring hot soul singers Maylee Todd, Gary Beals, Wade O. Brown, Maya Killtron and Tanika Charles. From Aretha to Stevie, classic cuts from the greatest musical era of all time get the full sonic treatment that transformed Detroit into Hitsville, USA.

Ascot Royals

Formed in Canada, the Ascot Royals are two British-born brothers, Jimmy and Ben Chauveau, the Isreali-born Tal Vaisman, and a rural Ontario boy, Sam Stark. It is this cultural mosaic and shared devotion to music that gives the Ascot Royals their stand-alone sound.

Jillea

Jillea is the winner of Slaight Music’s 2013 It’s Your Shot song-writing and artist development competition. Known for her urban-tinged pop and emotive voice, Jillea has just completed writing and recording her debut EP with production by Andrew “Marty” Martino (of Down With Webster) and Adam Alexander.

Jessica Mitchell

Singer-songwriter Jessica Mitchell is country music’s best kept secret. After signing a publishing deal with Slaight Music Publishing, Mitchell embarked on several writing trips to Nashville where she found herself inspired by the raw honesty and storytelling nature of the country music genre. She has spent the last few years travelling between Toronto and Nashville, collaborating with top-notch songwriters including Stephen Kozmeniuk, Todd Clark and John Goodwin. Theo Tams Singer, songwriter, trumpet and piano player Theo Tams has just released a new six-song EP, Back Pocket, the follow-up to his 2009 debut album, Give It All Away. Theo is currently signed to Slaight Music/Warner Music Canada and is still fondly remembered for winning the sixth and final season of Canadian Idol.

DJ John Kong

Toronto-based DJ John Kong sets are a genre-bending mix of soul-jazz, funk, disco, boogie, house, and hip-hop where only the groove makes the rules.

DJ Chico

DJ Chico was one of the first DJs to bring vintage soul, R&B, and greasy garage punk to the rock ‘n’ roll clubs of Toronto including The El Mocambo, The Horseshoe Tavern, The Silver Dollar, and the near-mythic Lion Club. Sunclef Using an eclectic sonic palette, Toronto-based music producer and DJ Sunclef creates an underlying energy and mood that connects people and moments with sounds and rhythms that are, at once, both forward reaching and accessible.

Festival Street Installations

The Situated Cinema Project; in-camera This portable micro-cinema was commissioned by Toronto-based media-arts exhibition group Pleasure Dome, filmmaker Solomon Nagler, and Canadian architects Thomas Evans and Jonathan Mandeville. Step inside, or watch the film through peep holes on the outside, to catch the world premiere of Pilgrimage, an experimental 16mm film loop by Canadian filmmakers Nagler and Alexandre Larose. Pilgrimage draws on issues of memory, decay, palimpsest and the rubbing together of archive, fiction and situations, constructed from 8mm strips of found footage that the artists gleaned during a residency in Sydney, Australia. demi monde World Premiere A major new installation by experimental filmmaker and multimedia artist Richard Kerr, demi monde is a mesmerizing slow dissolve of Hollywood footage, which degrades and replenishes at a near imperceptible pace. Created from a dual projector slideshow of 160 handmade 35mm transparencies culled from an archive of Hollywood movies, which were digitized in a series of long dissolving sequences, demi monde is a painterly display of slow cinema writ large. Ebbing between abstraction and recognizable imagery, demi monde hints at cinema and life’s grander themes as it exhumes immersive, haunting and beautiful apparitions. demi monde will make its premiere on September 10 at the wall on the north-east corner of King and John, and will continue to be projected nightly until the end of the Festival.

Andy Warhol: Stars of the Silver Screen

Photo Booth Calling all Warhol Superstars! This photo booth transforms filmstrips into .GIFs you can share with friends on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, in anticipation of TIFF’s fall exhibition Andy Warhol: Stars of the Silver Screen, which opens October 30 at TIFF Bell Lightbox.

Food Truck Village

For the first time ever, TIFF launches Food Truck Village at Pearl and John St, a selection of the city's top mobile vendors with delicious offerings that range from tasty vegan and sweet treats to meaty paradise and savoury delights. Trucks include bgood’s hand crafted fast foods, Chimney Stax authentic Hungarian desserts, Heirloom’s local & sustainable snacks, Toronto's first BBQ themed truck – Hogtown Smoke, Koi Gourmet’s Korean fusion cuisine and Localista, the farm-to-street inspired food truck.

Slaight Family Zone

Pop and Lock Dance Machine Can't dance? Don't sweat it. Through the magic of stop-motion animation, the Pop and Lock Dance Machine gives dancers - of all ages - legit moves and the video evidence to prove it. Created by Catshrine, Toronto-based mixed-media artists Christopher F. and Irene A., who specialize in strange creatures, enviro-sculpture, portraiture, wearable art and animation. Colouring Book Grab a paintbrush and collaborate with local artist Jeff Blackburn on our epic, street-spanning colouring book, and check back daily to see the panels take shape with every new dab, stroke, and blob.

Hand Drawn Headshots Got two minutes?

Canadian comic artist and illustrator Steve Manale (Superslackers) will blow your mind with his lifelike, hand-drawn headshots that you can (and should) use to book your next audition! Magician Magic on the big screen is one thing; magic right before your eyes is something else! James Alan has spent the past 10 years creating magic and turning tricks and illusions into astonishing memories.

Sponsor & Partner Activations Airbnb Festival Insider

Discover Airbnb's best kept secrets for local living in Toronto. Enter to win $1,000 travel credit redeemable in 191 countries! Line and Cheese Party! Visit the All You Need Is Cheese booth for Canadian Cheese popcorn and a chance to win great prizes. Express Pop-Up Shop Stop by for free giveaways, a chance to win prizes and to see the Express Fall Collection.

Restaurant Row Patio Extensions

All 14 street-level eateries along Restaurant Row extend their patios along King Street, allowing more space for Festival-goers to enjoy all the Entertainment District has to offer — and recharge before their next screening.

City of Toronto INFOTOGO Visitor Information Centre

The City of Toronto's INFOTOGO Visitor Information Centre offers brochures, maps, guide books, and more to help visitors make the most of their time on Festival Street and Toronto.