The "I" in TIFF could just as well stand for "interactive" as it does "international." The Toronto International Film Festival has a long-standing reputation for being a truly public festival.
And this year it's truer than ever with the inclusion of new public touch screen computer terminals located at Yonge and Dundas Square.
The high-tech terminals allow even the most computer illiterate festival attendees a chance to create short videos of themselves documenting their TIFF experiences.
The terminals are equipped with a tiny video camera and touch screen commands. A few fingerprints later and the mini documentaries can be emailed to a friend across the globe or uploaded to popular social media websites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.
For those who wonder what it would be like to see themselves on the big screen, a selection of the videos will be streamed to the jumbo-screen located at Yonge and Dundas Square for TIFF fans and the hundreds of thousands of people who whiz by the square on any given day.
Twenty-nine-year-old mechanic and Scarborough native Eugene Peplinski has no ambition to see his face plastered up at Yonge and Dundas square but says the smart touch technology is "fun and easy." He made a mini doc with his friend Jihye Hong, a 26-year-old English language student from Korea.
Despite living in the city his entire life, Peplinski has never attended a TIFF screening.
He and Hong dropped by the TIFF atrium on Tuesday to inquire about getting passes for the first time, finally.
Hong is familiar with TIFF thanks to international media coverage of the event. Hong agrees her latest short is a great way to share the TIFF experience with family and friends back home.
The HP Business TouchSmart PCs will be available until the festival ends Sunday, at the TIFF atrium at Yonge and Dundas Square across from the AMC Theatres.
