(Toronto, 4 October 2009)

A successful second annual Canadian Sport Film Festival was capped off with large, enthusiastic crowds on Saturday night at Toronto’s Bloor Cinema. The draw was two films in the CSFF “Focus on South Africa”. Both Comrades and More Than Just A Game were screening in Canada for the first time and they drew large crowds. Included among the audience was the the Consul-General of the South African Consulate in Toronto, Nicolaas Schoombie, who introduced More Than Just A Game. His heartfelt words touched on both the healing that has gone on in South Africa and the ways in which the upcoming World Cup is South Africa’s opportunity to demonstrate this progress to the world.

Nicolaas Schoombie, Consul-General for the Consulate of South Africa in Toronto, speaking to the audience at CSFF 2009 closing night

CSFF Executive Director, Russell Field, thanking the CSFF community for its continued support at closing night 2009

Earlier in the day, afternoon screenings at Innis Town Hall were the site of moving presentations by two special guests. The Cross Canada Project was filmmaker Mike Beauchamp’s chronicle of his cycle across Canada. While Mike was in New Zealand and unable to attend the festival, third-year University of Toronto student, Ben Verboom, was in the audience. After the screening, Ben spoke to the audience of his own ride across the country in the summer of 2009 and the charity he formed, Cycle To Help,  for which he was and is trying to raise money. You can learn more by clicking on the logo below.

Later in the afternoon, the moving Pink Paddlers was brought to life thanks to the presence in the audience of Darlene Prager. Darlene shared her own experiences as a breast cancer survivor and spoke of the importance to her of her dragon-boat racing team of survivors. Darlene continues to be active in this community and is busy organizing the 2010 Dragon Boat Festival for Breast Cancer Survivors in Peterborough. Again, learn more by clicking on the image below.

* Globe and Mail (3 October 2009)

Film Explores Sport’s Role in South Africa’s Political Power Shift

* “Metro Morning,” CBC Radio One (2 October 2009)

CSFF Executive Director, Russell Field, speaks with host Matt Galloway

* Torontoist (2 October 2009)

Urban Planner: October 2, 2009 (featuring opening night film, A Woman Among Boys)

* Toronto Star (2 October 2009)

Bosh ready for his close-up

* Windsor Star (1 October 2009)

Ex-Windsorite documents ride across Canada

* NOW Magazine (30 September 2009)

Critics Pick: CSFF Shorts Programme (Friday, Oct 2, 5pm)

* “Beyond the Classroom,” CIUT Radio (30 September 2009)

CSFF Executive Director, Russell Field, speaks with host Darcy Brioux

* T.O. Sports Magazine (29 September 2009)

Canadian Sport Film Festival

* I Bike T.O. (28 September 2009):

Bicycle Touring Movie @ Canadian Sport Film Fest Toronto

* Sport 4 Ontario (28 September 2009):

Newsletter

* Canadian Running (24 September 2009):

Running films featured in Canadian fest

Trailer for Opening Night

Tuesday, September 29

• 7:00 pm, National Film Board of Canada Mediatheque, Pre-festival screening

A No-Hit No-Run Summer (2008, 104 min, narrative, Canada, director: Francis LeClerc)
Availability limited. For more details, please contact sportfilmfestival@gmail.com

Friday, October 2

• 5:00 pm, Innis Town Hall

Sporting Shorts, European Style: 7 Short Films

• 7:00 pm, Isabel Bader Theatre (Opening Night Screening)

A Woman Among Boys: A Brooklyn Basketball Story (2008, 94 min, documentary, USA, directors: Jon Alpert, Matthew O’Neill)

with First Ink [trailer] (Trailer for the new documentary by Toronto’s Chris Bosh)

• 9:30 pm, Innis Town Hall

Klunkerz (2007, 84 min, documentary, USA, director: Billy Savage)

with Rollin’ On (2008, 8 min, documentary, UK, director: Paola Desiderio)

and Mental Block (2008, 3 min, documentary, UK, director: Karen Palmer)

Saturday, October 3

• 9:00 am, Faculty of Physical Education and Health, University of Toronto

Special children’s screening
Availability limited. For more details, please contact sportfilmfestival@gmail.com

• 1:30 pm, Innis Town Hall

The Cross-Canada Project (2009, 62 min, documentary, Canada, director: Mike Beauchamp)

with Punch Like a Girl (2008, 58 min, documentary, Canada, directors: Maya Gallus, Justine Pimlott)

• 4:00 pm, Innis Town Hall

Pink Paddlers (2006, 63 min, documentary, Singapore, director: Jasmine Ng Kin Kia)

with Long Distance (2009, 27 min, documentary, UK, director: Moritz Siebert)

• 7:00 pm, Bloor Cinema, Focus on South Africa

Comrades (2008, 86 min, documentary, UK, director: Poppy Simpson)

• 9:30 pm, Bloor Cinema, Focus on South Africa (Closing Night Screening)

More Than Just A Game (2007, 87 min, docudrama, South Africa, director: Junaid Ahmed)

(Toronto, 3 October 2009)

Thanks to our great partners at the National Film Board of Canada Mediatheque and the Faculty of Physical Education and Health, it was a great Saturday morning for 14 lucky Toronto kids.

With the Faculty of Physical Education and Health providing the space, volunteers Desmond Miller and Jaymie Sampa led a workshop that began with a spirited soccer game in U of T’s Field House. This was followed by a screening of the documentary film Kick Like A Girl, by US filmmaker Jenny Mackenzie. Educators from the National Film Board of Canada Mediatheque led a discussion of the film before taking our 14 young filmmakers through the mechanics of stop-motion animation. These aspiring filmmakers then got to work making their own films, planning stories and molding characters out of clay, before the NFB staff worked with the kids to capture their ideas on film.

Curious what our young, soccer-playing filmmakers were up to? Have a look at the films they created:

Get a CSFF 2009 t-shirt for only $10.

But here’s the great news: wear your t-shirt to any subsequent Canadian Sport Film Festival screening on October 2nd or October 3rd and you get in for half price. That’s right: a brand-new t-shirt and $5 movie tickets!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – Toronto, October 1, 2009

Hoops fans feast at film fest
The second annual Canadian Sport Film Festival starts tomorrow and opening night of the two-day event has plenty on tap for Toronto’s fervent basketball fans. We follow a season behind the scenes for the only female coach in Brooklyn men’s high school basketball. And we get the first glimpse of Chris Bosh’s new body art.

Buckets and Body Art
CSFF Opening night, sponsored by Maple Leafs Sports + Entertainment, presents the Canadian premiere of A Woman Among Boys: A Brooklyn Basketball Story. Meet coach Ruth Lovelace and the players of Boys and Girls High School in Bedford-Stuyvesant, for whom beating arch-rival Lincoln High is more important than anyone’s gender.

Before this, we’ll screen the premiere of the trailer for Chris Bosh’s brand-new documentary, First Ink. The Toronto star is contemplating an entirely new persona, embodied in a tattoo. The first look at a revealing new film.

>> Friday, October 2, 7 p.m., Isabel Bader Theatre: A Woman Among Boys, First Ink [trailer]

Crash and Learn
Later Friday night, Klunkerz explores the origins of mountain biking, from a group of denim-clad Californians out for a good ride in the hills of Marin County to a multi-million dollar industry and Olympic sport. Screening sponsored by Urbane Cyclist.

>> Friday, October 2, 9:30 p.m., Innis Town Hall: Klunkerz with Rollin’ On and Mental Block

Tickets on sale:

$10 for all screenings
$8 for students (at the door)
$40 all-screening pass

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For full schedule and more information: www.sportfilmfestival.ca

Media contact:

Russell Field
Executive Director, Canadian Sport Film Festival
sportfilmfestival@gmail.com
647-521-4978

(Toronto, 29 September) — The 2009 Canadian Sport Film Festival got off to a great start Tuesday night with a screening of the Canadian feature “A No-Hit, No-Run Summer” at the NFB Cinema. The CSFF community enjoyed the hospitality of festival partner, the National Film Board of Canada Mediatheque. Opening night of the second-annual Canadian Sport Film Festival is this Friday, October 2. Full details at www.sportfilmfestival.ca.

CSFF executive director Russell Field

In its latest issue, NOW Magazine has named the CSFF short film programme as a critics pick. They’re not wrong! Check out the best in European short cinema, Friday, Oct. 2, 5pm, Innis Town Hall.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – Toronto, September 29, 2009

Adversity is what you make of it at Sport Film Festival
The Canadian Sport Film Festival is proud to announce the inclusion in its 2009 programme of a number of films that highlight the individual challenge of athletic accomplishment.

Paddling for a Cure
A day before one of the most popular athletic breast cancer fundraisers, the Canadian Sport Film Festival is featuring a remarkable group of women, striving to be active while battling a terrible disease. Pink Paddlers profiles a group of women in Singapore who form their own dragon-boat racing team – on the basis of medical advice from a Canadian doctor – to build both physical strength and communal bonds. The women of Pink Paddlers end up competing in the first-ever Breast Cancer Survivor Dragon Boat World Championship. Screens with Long Distance.

>>  It is expected that a Canadian competitor will be in attendance and available to the media.

>>  Saturday, October 3, 4pm, Innis Town Hall: Pink Paddlers, Long Distance

Can-con: Two Canadian features presented in partnership with the National Film Board of Canada Mediatheque
From sea to shining sea, journeys across the breadth of Canada are the stuff of national mythology. For Mike Beauchamp it was one long bike ride, and far from romantic. The trials and tribulations of his journey are the subject of The Cross Canada Project, an intimate cinematic diary.

>> Director Mike Beauchamp is in New Zealand and unavailable, but another cyclist, Ben Verboom (www.cycletohelp.org), will be in attendance, talking about his experiences riding across the country for charity. He will available for media on Saturday.

Next, for a long time the only women in boxing rings were strutting around in bikinis announcing the next round. That isn’t true for Savoy Howe and the boxers at Toronto’s Newsgirls club. Punch Like A Girl profiles the variety of women who gravitate to the ring, from an amateur hoping for Olympic glory as a way to avoid deportation to the jazz pianist who claims to be Canada’s oldest amateur boxer.

>> The directors of Punch Like a Girl are tentatively scheduled to attend the screening.

>>  Saturday, October 3, 1:30pm, Innis Town Hall: The Cross Canada Project, Punch Like A Girl

Tickets on sale:

$10 for all screenings
$8 for students (at the door)
$40 all-screening pass

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For full schedule and more information: www.sportfilmfestival.ca

Media contact:

Russell Field
Executive Director, Canadian Sport Film Festival
sportfilmfestival@gmail.com
647-521-4978

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – Toronto, September 28, 2009

Basketball, Brooklyn, and Bosh open festival October 2
A WOMAN AMONG BOYS: A BROOKLYN BASKETBALL STORY. Friday, October 2, Isabel Bader Theatre, 7pm, $10

CSFF director Russell Field on the opening night pick: “There is something refreshing about Ruth Lovelace. The image of a woman succeeding in sport, in a man’s world, has become somewhat ubiquitous. Women still face many challenges in sport – just looking at the sports pages of most newspapers and websites would lead you to believe that few women even play sport. Yet the coverage of the Olympics and leagues like the WNBA have made women’s sport increasingly mainstream. But “Coach Love” isn’t blazing a trail for female athletes; she’s coaching men’s sport and her sex couldn’t seem less important. Not when the rivals at Lincoln High stand in the way of a city championship. And, no doubt, the opportunity to screen this film along with the trailer for the new documentary about Chris Bosh, First Ink, made this a perfect fit for our opening night.”

Interviews: Co-director Matt O’Neill is available in-person on Friday, October 2 (late afternoon), and in advance by phone (U.S.) and email.

It’s downhill from here: Mountain biking film ends festival’s first night
KLUNKERZ. Friday, October 2, Innis Town Hall, 9:30pm, $10

Russell Field on Klunkerz: “From the moment I started watching Klunkerz, I realized that Billy Savage has done for the mountain bike what Dogtown and Z-Boys did for the skateboard. We meet a bunch of guys and girls who didn’t set out to change the world or revolutionize the cycling industry. They were out to have a good time, do things that hadn’t been done before, enjoy the hills of Marin County, partying with their friends. And there they were, careening down mountains on bikes meant for suburban asphalt. When the bikes broke, they fixed them with whatever parts they had. There wasn’t money for new bikes and there weren’t bikes meant to be used in this way. Until these people invented them. And in the process, they created what is now called mountain biking, an Olympic sport and a million-dollar industry. And Klunkerz profiles all these folks, many of whom are still in Marin leading unassuming lives, while others, like Gary Fisher, have their names on the bike I’ll be riding to the Innis Town Hall to watch Klunkerz. ”

Screeners are available upon request by media. Other directors/participants will also be available during the festival.

Tickets on sale:
$10 for all screenings
$8 for students (at the door)
$40 all-screening pass

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For full schedule and more information: www.sportfilmfestival.ca

Media contact:

Russell Field
Executive Director, Canadian Sport Film Festival
sportfilmfestival@gmail.com
647-521-4978

From the fantastic folks at OneMethod.