Toronto INt.Film Festival- sept.4-14-2014 - Documentary on Lightfoot will air at the 2014 TIFF.
http://www.orilliapacket.com/2013/10...ary-in-orillia
ORILLIA - “Everything I did started here,” Gordon Lightfoot said Tuesday at St. Paul’s United Church.
It’s fitting, then, the storied folk singer/songwriter would choose the place that served as the genesis of his career to begin filming a documentary about his life and music.
In fact, if the directors with Insight Productions wanted to go back even further than Lightfoot’s days as a soprano at the church, it would be a bit of a balancing act.
“I was standing on my grandmother’s table, singing for my relatives,” Lightfoot recalled, noting he was three or four years old at the time. “I certainly wouldn’t stand on my grandmother’s table now.”
The idea of a documentary chronicling the Orillia-born musician’s life and career was conceived “a long time” ago, Lightfoot said, but the delay in beginning the project has come down to a matter of getting the time to do so.
Having just completed a string of 18 concerts, Lightfoot has a few weeks off before heading back on the road for a dozen more shows.
Tuesday was Day 1 of filming and St. Paul’s was an appropriate venue.
“This is a documentary about my life and my connection to the church and the training I got here,” he said of his early days with the choir.
The documentary, which is expected to be released in time for next year’s Toronto International Film Festival, will be the authoritative story of Lightfoot.
A biography was published in the ’70s, but a lot has happened since then and there are many stories to be told.
“This documentary is going to do that,” Lightfoot said. “We’ve got some talented people working on it.”
It’s an important project for the film’s directors, Martha Kehoe and Joan Tosoni, and they realize how important it will be to Lightfoot’s fans and his hometown, too.
“Gordon is a subject that a lot of people feel close to and you want to do justice from that point of view,” Kehoe said.
Covering a career that spans 50 years and a life of 75 is “a big undertaking,” Kehoe admitted. But she and Lightfoot are confident the film will become a special piece of music history.
The film will include footage that hasn’t been seen before, Lightfoot said.
Lightfoot, who performs about 70 shows per year, is touring the United States this year. Next year, he will tour Canada.
nathan.taylor@sunmedia.ca
T.I.F.F. runs sept.4-14,2014
http://tiff.net/