SUMMER 2024

From June 19 through August 25, 2024, TOPS presented a 22-date open-air festival programme at our four home parks across Toronto: Fort York, Christie Pits, Corktown Common, and Bell Manor Park.

Our 14th annual programme, titled On the Job, highlighted a variety of workers and their backdrops on the big screen, all summer long.

Summer 2024 was another record breaking season, with 26,600+ community members joining for TOPS’ public programming. Attendance records were broken first at Fort York in June and then at Corktown Common in July, then at Christie Pits in August. Attendees showed so much enthusiasm and care for TOPS’ events!

SUMMER 2023

From June 22 to August 31, 2023, Toronto Outdoor Picture Show presented Another World, a 21-date open-air festival programme showcased in 5 public green spaces across the city. The big TOPS show once again travelled to Fort York, Corktown Common, Bell Manor Park, Christie Pits Park, and closed the summer with a 3-night pilot series at Evergreen Brick Works!

The Another World programme explored cinema’s ability to open otherworldly portals, from unique microcosms of the everyday to the imagination’s most fantastical spaces.

Growing substantially from our previous year, TOPS’ 2023 season saw record-breaking attendance at every park, welcoming over 24,000 guests this summer!

SUMMER 2022

From June 23 to August 28, 2022, Toronto Outdoor Picture Show proudly presented Curtains Up!, a 21-evening festival programme of performance-themed films. At long last, TOPS was thrilled to finally return to its four pre-pandemic home parks, with events taking place at Fort York, Corktown Common, Bell Manor Park, and its signature series, Christie Pits Film Festival. 

After two years of darkened stages, shuttered cinemas, and empty seats, this programme was a cinematic homage to the vitality of performers and performance in their many forms, including acting, music, dance, drag, pageants, sport, martial arts, circus acts, and more.

The festival saw record-breaking attendance figures across the summer, welcoming almost 18,000 guests!

SUMMER 2021

Over the course of Summer 2021, TOPS proudly presented TOPS & Friends, a five-week programme of film screenings celebrating community and cinema in the great outdoors, returning once again to the walls of Fort York National Historic Site.  TOPS invited our friends to join us, with select screenings guest-curated by a who’s who of Toronto’s local film festivals and arts organizations, including Inside Out, Vector Festival, Toronto Palestine Film Festival, Regent Park Film Festival, Breakthroughs Film Festival, Goethe-Institut Toronto, Sou Sou (by Bonjay’s Alanna Stuart), and Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival. Finally, TOPS wrapped up the summer with a bang: a jubilant closing weekend of movies, plus live music performances each night from local indie artists, curated by Wavelength Music Series.

Summer 2020

TOPS safely presented the city's very first in-person festival of the pandemic period, for ten consecutive evenings in August, 2020. Using Fort York's unique site elements, each screening welcomed 100 attendees onsite and allowed many hundred more audience members to tune in to the screenings' audio through their home speakers while watching the big screen from their windows and balconies. The 10 Years of Toronto Outdoor Picture Show programme was a truly memorable highlight for all who participated in 2020.

Summer 2019

Ahead of its 10th anniversary season TOPS made a major investment in its programming by purchasing a complete A/V outdoor cinema system so it could continue to show great films - better! - at all its parks, featured throughout the season-long Dynamic Duos programme. In anticipation of the festival’s 10th season, TOPS launched an ambitious milestone project - committing $90,000 in cash funding to 9 new Canadian short film productions.

Summer 2018

All summer long, TOPS presented its Cinematic Cities programme at four beautiful parks across Toronto, including its newest spot, Fort York.

Summer 2017

Toronto Outdoor Picture Show brought programming to three Toronto neighbourhoods in 2017: Corktown Common, Parkway Forest Park, and TOPS' signature series, Christie Pits Film Festival. Highlights included an original live-score production of The Freshman by musicians The Holy Gasp.

August 11, 2016

TOPS headed east to yet another Toronto neighbourhood, presenting its first screening at stunning Corktown Common Park.

June 18, 2016

Toronto Outdoor Picture Show presented its first event outside of Christie Pits, Vampires in the Outfield, a screening of the silent horror classic Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau, 1922) with a live-score performance in Queensway Park, Etobicoke. Local musicians Del Bel performed their original score for a second time, one year after they debuted it at Christie Pits Film Festival. Watch the full film score below! 

AUGUST 2, 2015

An epic storm brought down torrential rain and hail – and one of the park’s oldest trees – forcing a cancelled screening of Mean Girls. Undeterred, the rescheduled screening later that summer brought in a record 1400 attendees.

Summer 2015

For its fifth anniversary season, CPFF grew to a full summer of great movies, with seven screenings and an average attendance of 1000 people each night. The 2015 Great Villains theme opened with an epic presentation of the silent horror classic Nosferatu with live musical score by local musicians Del Bel.

JANUARY 2015

Toronto Outdoor Picture Show is legally incorporated as a not-for-profit organization, with plans to gradually expand beyond Christie Pits Film Festival.

Summer 2014

The 2014 Days of Summer programme knocked it out of the park! CPFF opened with the cult classic A League Of Their Own to a record 1200 film-lovers, completely filling Christie Pits’ natural amphitheatre.

SUMMER 2013

The 2013 programme, Hits in the Pits: The Rise and Fall of Great Bands, proved to be CPFF’s biggest hit yet. An average of 500 people came to the Pits each week.

July 29, 2012

CPFF’s screening of Cinema Paradiso – presented by annual sponsor Adrianne Parker, Re/Max – brought in a crowd of 500 attendees.

SUMMER 2012

CPFF presented a 3-night programme called When We Were Young: Cinematic Tales of Youth and Growing Up, Under the Stars.

August 28, 2011

Christie Pits Film Festival presented its first screening, the Spielberg gem Catch Me If You Can, to a 100-person neighbourhood audience.