Cameron Bailey doesn't make movies. He’s not a deep-pocketed investor. And he’s not an actor, although he’s got impeccable style and the kind of big-screen charisma that makes women swoon.

Short of being Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino or Peter Jackson, he’s got the sort of job movie geeks dream about: co-director of the Toronto International Film Festival, the world’s biggest, glitziest and most critically significant film fest.

After all, Toronto is where every great Oscar campaign begins. 

“We do get the best pick of films,” says Bailey. “The world industry comes here every September. If they want to sell [their films], want to reach international media, a really good place to start your life is in Toronto.”

Bailey should know. He’s been involved with TIFF as a programmer since he was an upstart movie critic almost two decades ago.

Some History

Born in London, England, and raised in Barbados and Toronto, Bailey has always had a passion for celluloid. After a degree in English lit and post-grad work in film studies, he became a film journalist and critic, writing for Toronto alt-weekly NOW magazine, among others.

It wasn’t long before he caught the attention of then-festival director Piers Handling, who offered him a job as a programmer for TIFF’s Perspectives Canada selection committee in 1990. Wanting to bring a broader array of world cinema to Toronto, he started the Planet Africa program five years later, introducing audiences to the films of Djibril Diop Mambety, Idrissa Ouedraogo and Cheick Oumar Sissoko. Planet Africa quickly became one of TIFF’s most popular attractions.

By 2000, Bailey had returned to being a journalist and critic, regularly writing for the Village Voice and various highbrow cinema journals with equal aplomb. He hosted a TV series on Independent Film Channel Canada and was a guest speaker at Harvard, New York University and the Smithsonian Institute. And he penned the screenplay for Clement Virgo’s The Planet of Junior Brown, which earned him a Gemini Award.

“I think it was important for TIFF to have someone with wide-ranging experience and taste,” says Bailey of his new charge, which is to be an ambassador for TIFF as much as it is to decide which films get screened. “The last several years I’ve been programming in Africa, India, Sri Lanka, Palestine—looking at films from up-and-coming film cultures.”

For all of its inclusion and success, TIFF has taken its fair share of criticism, primarily about becoming too Hollywood.

“It’s really a question of perception,” explains Bailey. “It’s true, we show a lot of movies from the U.S. But the U.S. also produces a lot of good cinema, especially lately. These films also star some of the biggest names in film. For better or for worse, if Brad Pitt is in a movie, if George Clooney is in a movie, if Angelina Jolie or Will Smith are in a movie and we show it, it’s almost like the world stops. Everybody—the audience, the press, the industry—turns their attention to the red carpet. It’s just human nature when someone is that famous, to turn our attention to them.

“We need to remind our audience that movie stars come from everywhere. There are not just Hollywood stars.”

And whether it’s a new film made by Brangelina or a complete unknown from Argentina, Bailey says the goal of TIFF selections is the same.

“You walk into a film you’ve never heard of before and you walk out completely transformed, even if only for that day,” says Bailey. “If it makes you look at people and the world a different way, if we can do that even every now and then with our audiences, then I’m a happy man.”

What’s the biggest opportunity in your field right now?

“The sky’s the limit. You can really start anywhere. I started as a programmer but you can even start as a volunteer.”

How do you unwind?

“I listen to music. Putting on my iPod or the car stereo and cranking it up.”

What is your favourite spot for a business lunch?

“For a film industry lunch, you cannot beat Bistro 990 in Toronto (990 Bay St.; 416-921-9990). It’s been associated with TIFF forever and you can count on meeting people in the industry there and it sets the right tone.”

Is there one film that you watch over and over again?

“You can develop a love for a movie that goes beyond what the movie actually is and if you watch it four or five times, the love for it—the magic that you saw in it—just evaporates. I used to watch the Wong Kar Wai film Chungking Express over and over again and then I felt I’d gotten too close to it. It used to be a girlfriend test—if she doesn’t like it, she can go.”