This morning felt like Christmas.  Woke up at 5:50 am, dragged my wife out of bed so she could drive me to the train station and now I’m typing on the train, bound for the Toronto International Film Festival.

This is going to be my 3^rd time attending TIFF.  My first year, in 2007, I attended the festival with a short film I had produced (The Colony, Dir Jeff Barnaby).  Last year I was selected to participate in Talent Lab.  This year, I’m attending TIFF as a blogger for the festival.

Well, that’s not entirely true.  I’ve got a number of projects in development that I’ll be pitching during the fest, so blogging is just my sideline for the week, but a TIFF industry pass is expensive.  So, quid pro quo, I save a little cash and have some fun writing about TIFF from an independent filmmaker’s point of view.

Over the next few days I’m going to write about some of the events going on around the festival, such as “Pitch This”, the Match Club Roundtables, the doc conference and various other Canadian Initiative events.  I’m also going to be shamelessly promoting my friends films, while sharing some stories about my various pitching experiences, drunken parties, and random encounters.

If you want, you can follow my adventures here at the TIFF website or you can follow me on Twitter @ProspectorFilms

John Christou is an independent filmmaker based in Montreal. His credits include Up The Yangtze, The Colony, Punk Le Vote! and more.  He’s currently producing films about David Lynch & Transcendental Meditation, the Clock of the Long Now, the Residential School system and a feature about a Zombie invasion of an aboriginal reserve.  To read more about these projects and others, check out www.ProspectorFilms.ca