christie pits film festival
sunday, august 14, 2022

cabaret

With the short film The Man That Got Away

Liza Minnelli earned an Oscar for one of cinema’s most magnetic performances as Sally Bowles in Cabaret, currently celebrating its 50th anniversary year. Directed by famed choreographer Bob Fosse, this quintessential modern musical masterpiece about Berlin’s vibrant 1930s performing arts scene against the backdrop of rising Nazism still feels uncomfortably relevant. This screening takes place on the anniversary weekend of Christie Pits Park’s 1933 race riots, the site of a neighbourhood-wide battle which saw Jewish and Italian immigrants fight fascist sympathizers who displayed a swastika at a baseball game in the park.

In this year’s Shorts Spotlight filmmaker Trevor Anderson’s brilliantly imaginative short film The Man That Got Away, the filmmaker reimagines the life of his eccentric great-uncle Jimmy as a musical. From a WWII stint in the U.S. Navy, to Broadway roles, to a rehab stint in the 60s where he allegedly befriended the one and only Judy Garland -- real-life mother to Liza Minelli – shortly before her death, Jimmy’s truth – or the version he recounted – was stranger than fiction.