The beginnings
The beginnings of Ontario cinema can be traced as early as 1896. That year, Ottawa brothers Andrew and George Holland introduced a projection device called the Vitascope (created by Charles F. Jenkins and purchased by Thomas Edison) in Ottawa's West End Park. That same year, the first film screening in Toronto took place at Robinson's Museum on Yonge Street. In the early 1910s, Toronto's Conness Till film Company made comedies and adventure films, and in Windsor, the All Red Feature Company released The War Pigeon, a work about the War of 1812. The year 1917 saw the creation of the Ontario Motion Picture Bureau (OMPB), a government-sponsored organization to develop the film industry in Ontario. However, Canadian production was almost non-existent from the 1920s to the mid-1960s. This was due to the domination of the film industry by big Hollywood. However, six English-language feature films were made during the 1950s. These included Sophocles' version ofOedipusRex (Oedipus Rex, 1956) by Tyrone Guthrie, one of the founders of the Stratford Shakespearean Theatre. Another young Canadian, Sidney Furie, made two excellent films, A Dangerous Age (1957) and A Cool Sound from Hell (1959), which attracted the attention of the British. In the face of Canadian indifference to his films, Furie emigrated to Great Britain for good. Furie's case is a typical example of the exodus of Canadian talent to Europe in the 1960s. In the 1960s, thanks to an Ottawa-born filmmaker and director, Crawley "Budge", Ontario cinema took a new turn. His feature films, including Amanita Pestilens (1963) and the story of a valiant immigrant, The Luck of Ginger Coffey (1964), appealed to Canadians. In the early 1960s, the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) also began producing films.
From the 1970s to the present day
From the end of the 1970s, a movement of young filmmakers defended the idea of auteur cinema. A new generation of talented filmmakers and producers began to emerge, including the famous Phillip Borsos and his film The Grey Fox (1982). It was also during this period that new government policies were introduced to promote film production and distribution. Ontario was home to some of the best-known English-Canadian filmmakers, including Norman Jewison (originally from Toronto), director of The Russians are coming (1967) and Fiddler on the roof (1971), among others, and David Cronenberg (originally from Toronto), who won audiences for his first films, Rage (Rabid, 1977), The Clinic of Terror (The Brood, 1979) and Scanners (1980). Also worthy of mention is the great James Cameron (originally from Kapuskasing), Oscar-winning director of Xenogenesis (1978), Terminator (1984), Titanic (1999) and Avatar (2009), to name but a few. During the 1990s, directors reflecting the ethnic diversity of the province emerged, including Srinivas Krishna with his films Masala (1991) and Lulu (1996), and Deepa Mehta with Sam and me (1990) and Fire (1996). John Greyson, particularly well known in the queer film world, directed The Making of Monsters (1991), Zero Patience (1993) and Lilies (1996). David Cronenberg continues to surprise us with very different works such as A Dangerous Method (2011), Cosmopolis (2012) or more recently Maps to the Stars (with Julianne Moore) in 2014. In 2017, Slovakian director Ingrid Veninger sets the plot of her film Porcupine Lake in Northern Ontario, which revolves around the transition to adulthood for a group of young girls. The film is shot in several locations in the region including Port Servern County and the City of Barrie.
Toronto in the spotlight
Thanks to its versatility, Toronto attracts many European and American directors. It is hard to tell, yet the city is often used as a backdrop for cities such as New York, Chicago or Boston. For example, Toronto's Casa Loma is one of the most popular film locations in the city, serving as a backdrop for successful works such as Bryan Singer's X-men (2000), Ridley Scott's Hannibal (2001) or Edgard Wright's Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010). The University of Toronto has Matt Damon in Gus Van Sant's Good Will Hunting (1997) and Lindsey Lohan and Rachel McAdams in Mark Waters' Lolita malgré moi(Mean Girls, 2004). Rob Marshall's Chicago (2002) and Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water (2017) have installed part of their sets in the prestigious Elgin and Winter Garden Theatre. In 2013, French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve will set the set for his film Enemy in Toronto, which he describes as "a city with many facets". This thriller, loosely adapted from the novel L'Autre comme moi (by José Saramago), transforms Toronto into a ghost town, dark and troubling. Fans of Stephen King should know that the horrific home of Pennywise, the clown in the recent version of Ça(It, 2017), is located at 450 Pape Avenue. More recently, it's the Lower Bay subway station that we see in several films, such as the blockbuster Suicide Squad (2016, David Ayer), whose plot revolves around the famous enemies of the Black Knight Batman. On the small screen, the station is also seen in the successful dystopian series The Handmaid's Tale (2017, still in production). Three successful Canadian series also place their plot in the Canadian city: Degrassi: New Generation (2001-2015), Blood Ties (2007) and Murdoch's Investigations (2008, still in production). As well, the Toronto City Hall can be seen in the science fiction series Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994) and the Bay Adelaide Centre in the Suits series (2011-2019).
