My Suicide, a film by David Lee Miller, will be part of the 2010 Sprockets Festival, beginning this Saturday and running until April 23.

KIDS: The Toronto International Film Festival’s Sprockets festival (which we covered earlier this week) runs from Saturday until April 23. Its aim? To breed a whole new generation of cinemaniacs. The lineup features jaw-dropping animation, thoughtful documentaries, and even includes some more sophisticated offerings for older teens. Sprockets proves once and for all that film festivals are more than just forums for sleepy art films with subtitles. Cineplex Odeon Sheppard Centre Cinemas (4861 Yonge Street) and Famous Players Canada Square Cinemas (2190 Yonge Street); Saturday–April 23, various times; $6.60/kids (per film), $10.61/adults (per film).
MUSIC: Remember the party at the end of Empire Records? Well, Record Store Day is kind of like that, albeit with fewer faux-grunge ’90s tunes. The event celebrates the unique culture of the independent record store, and indie music shops all over Toronto will be participating. A sure bet is Sonic Boom, which will be holding a mini-festival with prizes, giveaways, performances by Sloan, Adam Green, Buck 65, Valery Gore, Meligrove Band, and Metz, and spins from DJ Shit La Merde and DJ jj. Sonic Boom (512 Bloor Street West), Saturday 3 p.m., FREE (with non-perishable food donation to the Daily Bread Food Bank).
FILM: This year’s Toronto Jewish Film Festival (running until April 25) features a special series about the important place Jews hold in the history of North American comic culture, from Superman to Maus. The festival starts Saturday, and on Sunday, comic book author Paul Buhle will kick off the People of the Comic Book series with a talk on Jews and comic art, with a special forum later the same day featuring Buhle, comic book writer Harvey Pekar (of American Splendor fame), and graphic novelist Ben Katchor. Al Green Theatre (750 Spadina Avenue); Paul Buhle talk: Sunday 11 a.m., Comic Art Forum: Sunday 4 p.m.; FREE.
MARKET: The sun is here to stay, the flowers are blooming, and the annual Drake Spring Market has returned to kick off the season. The market will transform the corner of Queen and Beaconsfield into a good old yard sale, with a twist: a FREEcycle table will offer early-comers the chance to take home free treasures from the Drake’s history. In addition, there will be baked goods, surprises, and antiques from the General Store, and a variety of goodies for sale from local merchants and organizations. The Drake Hotel (1150 Queen Street West), Saturday and Sunday 10 a.m.–4 p.m., FREE.
ART: The idea of a Toronto art biennial or triennial is picking up steam, and this Saturday, From the Ground Up, a free public platform, will be held by MOCCA and the Power Plant Gallery to address the possibility. Members of the city’s art community will speak and examine how the city might fund and curate such an event, why Toronto is the place to hold it, and how it would incorporate the local arts scene if it were to happen. Speakers include MOCCA and the Power Plant’s curators, David Liss and Gregory Burke, art critic Peggy Gale, AGO director Michael Teitelbaum, OCAD president Sara Diamond, and a variety of other personnel from both large and small local art hubs. Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (952 Queen Street West), Saturday 10:30 a.m.–5 p.m.; FREE.
TALK: This Sunday, the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113 will hold the second of its three LET’S TALK: TTC Riders & Workers public town hall meetings. Sunday’s session will be moderated by Diane O’Reggio, the president and CEO of Nelson Mandela’s Children’s Fund (Canada). Also present will be ATU Local 113 president Bob Kinnear and front-line TTC staff. Each audience member will get an electronic doohickey to vote on issues raised by the moderator and have an opportunity to ask the panellists questions. Stephen Leacock Collegiate Institute (2450 Birchmount Road), Sunday 1–3 p.m., FREE.

Still from Martin Koolhoven’s Winter in Wartime courtesy Alma Parvizian.

One of the misconceptions about TIFF (née the Toronto International Film Festival) is that it’s just some celebrity gawk-fest that lasts for a couple of weeks every September. Au contraire: TIFF, especially in recent years, has dedicated itself to strengthening local film culture year-round, with numerous subsidiary festivals and screening programs adding to the festival’s already robust presence in the city.
One of these supplementary TIFF programs is Sprockets. Not to be confused with those SNL bits from the ’90s where Mike Myers plays a humourless German stereotype who likes to boogie (though those were pretty great too), Sprockets is an annual film festival aimed at children. According to their mission statement, Sprockets (formally, the Sprockets Toronto International Film Festival For Children), “is an initiative of TIFF that offers children and youth the opportunity to learn about cultural perspectives from around the world through the power of the moving image.” According to Allen Braude, co-director of Sprockets, the aim is to bring the kind of comprehensive film-festival culture TIFF is known for to a younger demographic. “We have this outstanding festival in Toronto of international cinema geared towards adults,” says Braude. “But what about cinema that’s being produced internationally for younger audiences?”

Now in its thirteenth year, Sprockets’ growth is matching the pace set by its higher-profile big brother. Sprockets 2010 sees sixty-eight films (twenty-nine features and forty-one shorts), representing twenty-three countries and twenty languages, from Ireland to Indonesia, German to Farsi, screened at two Uptown cinemas—the Famous Players Canada Square (2190 Yonge Street) and the Cineplex Odeon Sheppard Centre Cinemas (4861 Yonge Street)—between April 17 and 23.
And if the idea of a film festival aimed at children three and up conjures images of a Land Before Time retrospective or those Movies For Mommies matinee screenings you might find at your local multiplex, well, fret not. While Sprockets does program kid-friendly fare (there’s plenty of goofy animated shorts on hand for viewers with shorter attention spans), the festival aims to outshine the usual after-school special moralizing that often bogs down more serious cinema aimed at children.

Still from David Lee Miller’s My Suicide courtesy Alma Parvizian.

“As children grow up, we want them to continue to enjoy a lot of the excellent work out there that’s about youth protagonists,” explains Braude. “These are films addressing common concerns to young people today.” Certainly, something like the award-winning My Suicide (recommended for ages 16+), grappling as it does with the forms of depression and angst endemic amongst teens, offers a welcome antidote to the wash of adolescent sex comedies that typically lay siege to the imaginations and hormones of teenage filmgoers. Ditto Winter in Wartime (Oorlogswinter), a co-produced coming-of-age story from the Netherlands and Belgium about a fourteen-year-old boy living in a small town under Nazi occupation.
Apart from its public screening program, Sprockets also works in conjunction with elementary and secondary schools to help facilitate thoughtful movie-going practices, while also helping educators meet media-literacy requirements. “It helps to broaden the horizons of the students,” says Braude. “And when you have broader horizons, you can accept more ideas. It just builds a more diverse world.”
Lofty and noble goals to be sure, but it is further proof for doubters that TIFF is about more than facilitating candid red-carpet photographs of George Clooney on an annual basis. And with younger talent emerging in Canadian film-—just look at Xavier Dolan, the twenty-one-year-old Quebecois wunderkind whose debut feature, J’ai tué ma mère (I Killed My Mother) received heaps of critical praise, only to be summarily snubbed at the Genies earlier this week—providing children and teenagers with comprehensive film studies education at an early age may help breed the next generation of Don McKellars, Bruce McDonalds, or David Cronenbergs that will shape the future of Canadian film production.
Tickets for the 13th annual Sprockets Toronto International Film Festival for Children are on sale now. For more info, tickets, and schedules, head to the Sprockets website.

Photo of Spacing‘s September 2008 release party by Yvonne Bambrick, courtesy of Spacing.

PARTY: In Spacing magazine’s newest issue, “Grey Spaces//Where the City Blurs,” contributors examine spaces like libraries, airports, community centres, and shopping malls: publicly accessible places with a set of societal or legal rules that apply upon entry. The release party takes place tonight at the Canadian Corps Hall, where games and door prizes await. DJ trio Track Meet—comprised of Eye editors and writers Ed Keenan, Dave Morris, and Paul Issacs—will spin the tunes. Canadian Corps Hall (201 Niagara Street), 7:30 p.m.–1 a.m., $10 with a copy of the magazine, $5 for subscribers.
WORDS: Author, commentator, and filmmaker Richard Poplak travelled to Egypt to observe the debut of Al Shamshoon, an Arabized version of The Simpsons. In his new book, The Sheikh’s Batmobile: In Pursuit of American Pop Culture in the Muslim World, Poplak examines how North American cultural obsessions, such as pop songs, sitcoms, Hollywood films, and shooter video games, make their way into contemporary Islamic culture. He delivers a multimedia presentation based on his findings at tonight’s This Is Not A Reading Series. Tattoo Rock Parlour (567 Queen Street West), 7:30 p.m., $5 or FREE with book purchase.
MUSIC: Juno Award–winning saxophonist Richard Underhill leads his jazz quintet and the electronic groove ensemble Astrogroove for a fundraising concert tonight. The funds will support Clay & Paper Theatre, a drama troupe specializing in productions with large-scale puppetry. The event also features fire-spinning by the New Model Circus Army, door prizes from This Ain’t the Rosedale Library, and a performance from the Clay & Paper Revolutionary Chorus. Supermarket (268 Augusta Avenue), 8 p.m., $15 advance, $20 at door.
FILM: Sprockets, the Toronto International Film Festival for Children, continues to April 24. Over a dozen films will be screened today, and the highlight is the award-winning The Wave. Based on a true story, the film recounts a high-school teacher’s unusual experiment: to help his students understand life under a dictatorship, he simulates fascist rule within the classroom. The experiment goes out of control as the students begin to accept and welcome the very ideology they denounced, and the social unit takes on a life of its own. A Q&A discussion follows. Cineplex Odeon Sheppard Grande (4861 Yonge Street), 10:15 a.m., $10.61 adults and $6.50 for children.
CHARITY: Erika Ritter hosts “Creature Comforts,” a benefit evening of readings and music about our relationship with animals. Participants include journalists Christie Blatchford and Joe Fiorito, CBC’s Andy Barrie, Soulpepper Theatre’s Nancy Palk, singer-songwriter Melanie Doane, and playwright Ted Dykstra. Proceeds from the event go to Fred Victor Centre’s pet-friendly homeless shelter. Theatre Passe Muraille (16 Ryerson Avenue), 8 p.m., $10 at artsboxoffice.ca.