So today, in this small update to Cinema In Brief: TIFF Shorts, Ramses Madina and Claudia Morgado Escanilla share their experiences from the festival, and their thoughts on the support for short film in Canada.

Toronto is a city that has no shortage of film festivals, which is a great boon to the short film industry in Canada. After all, short films do not necessarily get the same kind of exposure and theatrical releases as their longer, feature counterparts, and so filmmakers are often dependent on the festival circuit in order to showcase their work.

Aside from the regular festival fare in the city such as Hot Docs and After Dark, Toronto also plays home to the Worldwide Short Film Festival — a festival completely dedicated to the art of the short. In the end, however, when people think of film festivals in Toronto, the first thing that comes to mind is the highly popular and world-renown Toronto International Film Festival (that just wrapped up a few weeks ago) because of the prestige that it holds in the greater global film community. Luckily for us, TIFF is also a fantastic place to catch Canadian short film.

Warner Bros. already took action against piracy and imposed an embargo on all preview screenings of their upcoming movies in Toronto, but are the pirates out there at TIFF as well? Well, according to Thomas Purves' video above, the pirates are not only out there, but vocal as well.

The public's radar, on the other hand, was front-and-centre for the Cadillac People's Choice Award, the founding father of all those godforsaken "Be an original" ads that preceded the feature films this year ("Death Shark!" "Dance Fight!"). First place in the popularity contest goes to David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises, with a runner-up prize to Jason Reitman's brilliant Juno.

blogTO's film crew was all over the fest this year with their coverage. Read on to find out what we picked as the best of the festival.

In light of this, I've decided to create the blogTO Toronto International Film Festival Most Awesome Awards (TIFF MAAs) which will highlight crowning achievements by people in the film industry — achievements that are often ignored by traditional award juries. Of course, I'll need your help to complete the list, so be sure to put your TIFF MAA winners in the comments below.

The filmmakers are French, and friends of last year's closing filmmaker, Kim Chapiron (who brought us Sheitan). There's no two ways about it: if their horror movies are to be believed, the French are a deeply disturbed people.

Day Ten

The Toronto International Film Festival is officially over; well, it will be at the end of the day today. It has been a crazy ten days, and I'm hoping everyone had a great time. I sure did. Of course, none of the fun and the folly of the festival could have been possible without the hard work of all the volunteers.

Before every film screening, there's an ad by NBC Universal thanking the volunteers for their support during the festival. Most people will lend their applause in thanks during the ad, but there was one P&I screening where I found myself being the only one clapping. The guy next to me glared and said: "Why are you clapping? They're only doing it for the free movie passes, so there's no real reason to thank them."

At that, I intensified my applause to make up for the idiots like the man next to me in the audience. What that man didn't realize is that without the hundreds of volunteers around us, TIFF would be a logistical nightmare and wouldn't be as successful as it is now. Free movies passes are definitely not thanks enough for the people who work tirelessly in order to bring the film festival to our city.

With DAINIPPONJIN, I'm not so sure. The flick is a subtle and sharp-minded comedy along the lines of Beat Takeshi's work (Takeshi is in the main body of the festival this year with Glory to the Filmmaker). DAINIPPONJIN is hilarious, a story of a low-key shlubb whose "job" is to serve Japan as a local superhero. Daisato (Hitoshi Matsumoto, who also directed) is having a documentary made about him, in which he describes his seemingly menial existence, while occasionally making detours to power plants to be "powered up" into a gigantic, Hulk-style monster-slayer in purple underwear.

It's a zesty piece of filmmaking, I'm just not sure it's right for this programme.

Day Nine

The Toronto International Film Festival has been around for as long as most of us can remember, but it is still young at 31 years old when compared to some festivals like Cannes. While Cannes is still noted as the premiere film festival in the world, Toronto comes a close second in they eyes of most cineastes, showing how quickly the Toronto festival has grown and evolved in a few years. Which brings me to wonder: what are we, in Toronto, going to do in less than 20 years when TIFF turns 50?

Yip was in attendance before the screaming, slathering crowd; he and Geddes had also received an e-mail from the movie's star and action choreographer, Donnie Yen, just prior to showtime, which they read to the audience before letting the mayhem unfold onscreen. Yen promised a new breed of MMA (mixed martial arts) action, and in this regard, he did not disappoint.

Day Eight

Sometimes, after watching a Canadian movie at the film festival, I wonder about films that have come before it: the director's previous work, the previous attempts at the same story, or just the obscure references that were made in the movie. And while some of us pretend to know it all when it comes to Canadian cinema, it is almost impossible to have seen every film that has graced every screen in our country. This is where the Film Reference Library comes in handy.

Day Seven

The Toronto International Film Festival is not only a place for big films to get bought and big filmmakers to gain prestige. It is, as evidenced by the films in the Canada First! programme, also a place for new and upcoming filmmakers to showcase their talents to a worldwide audience. One of those films, Richie Mehta's Amal, was also a previous winner of the Telefilm Canada Pitch This! competition in 2005, a competition where young aspiring filmmakers work with industry veterans to pitch their projects and vie to win $10,000 for the development of their new film.

I hate Takashi Miike. Hate, hate, hate. I've walked out of more of his films than I've stayed in. And yet, every time Colin Geddes programs one of his films for Midnight Madness, my ears perk up - each successive one sounds even more fun than the one before.

This time, it's SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO (capitalized to grab your attention, like most of the movie) - and for the first time, I don't hate Takeshi Miike.

Miike's long association with Midnight Madness packed the house at the Ryerson tonight; tickets for DJANGO sold better than the Argento or Romero offerings and were the fastest sellout for MM this year. Actors from the film were in attendance, and Miike, who was unable to hop over to Toronto for the screening, taped a welcome for the crowd and wished everyone well. He even gave us his e-mail address so we could comment on the film (miike@olm.co.jp).

Day Six

Clive Owen and Cate Blanchett may have been on the cover of Metro yesterday, but it is fitting that Ellen Page was on the cover of Screen Daily on the same day. Because while many people in Toronto may be abuzz about sightings of Jude Law and Angelina Jolie, the talk in the film world is buzzing about the quality of Canadian content at this year's film festival.

Tonight's Midnight Madness was the world premiere of Stuck, by Stuart Gordon. As soon as word got out among the Midnight Madness congnoscenti that Colin Geddes was bringing a movie to TIFF about a man stuck in the windshield of a young woman's car (based on a true story, no less), it became the dark horse ticket-to-have for this year's MM lineup - even as Mother of Tears, Diary of the Dead and tomorrow night's SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO garnered more of the attention. Stuck gets cred because it just sounds so darn cool - and you want to see if the director can pull this premise off.