TIFF presents - Mary Pickford Exhibit

The inaugural exhibition in TIFF’s new Canadian Film Gallery, Mary Pickford and the Invention of the Movie Star chronicles the life and career of one of the first and greatest stars of the silent cinema, Canada’s own Mary Pickford.

Amassed over a 30-year period by private collector Rob Brooks, this exhibition draws on his extraordinary collection of 1,900 items including photographs, posters, memorabilia, postcards, and products endorsed by Pickford. It illustrates the profound mark she left upon the film world: Pickford was one of the first film stars to use her stardom to cross the threshold from acting into writing, directing, producing and celebrity branding. Travel back to the era that created our celebrity obsessed culture through this personal view of America’s sweetheart – from her Canadian roots to her international celebrity status. The free exhibition is complemented by a screening programme that features four of Pickford’s greatest films including her first film as her own producer, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917), and her second collaboration with noted director Maurice Tourneur, The Poor Little Rich Girl (1917). The exhibition at the Canadian Film Gallery runs from January 13 until July 3, 2011 and is curated by Sylvia Frank, Director of TIFF’s Film Reference Library and Special Collections.

Items in the exhibition include:

Photographs, posters, memorabilia, postcards, and products endorsed by Mary Pickford

Photographs of Pickfair - home of Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks

A dress belonging to Pickford

Original film posters and lobby cards

The Pickford Hat

Pickford Cosmetics

Canadian Film Gallery hours of operation:

Tuesday to Saturday: 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Sunday: 12 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Closed Monday

Film Programme

Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm
Marshall Nielan
Saturday, January 15 at 11 a.m.
One of Pickford’s most popular features was also her first film as her own producer: she personally chose the material, hired noted screenwriter Frances Marion to write the adaptation and selected Marshall Neilan to direct.

Sparrows
William Beaudine
Sunday, January 16 at 12 p.m.
In the southern swamplands, a tyrant named Grimes (Gustav von Seyffertitz) maintains a farm for abandoned children, working their fingers to the bone.

Daddy-Long-Legs
Marshall Neilan
Saturday, January 22 at 11 a.m.
Based on Jean Webster’s 1912 epistolary romance—successively adapted into vehicles for Janet Gaynor, Shirley Temple, and Fred Astaire and Leslie Caron—Daddy-Long-Legs stars Pickford as foundling Judy Abbott, the resident spitfire at an orphanage run by cruel matron Mrs. Lippett (Milla Davenport).

Poor Little Rich Girl
Maurice Tourneur
Sunday, January 23 at 12 p.m.
Pickford’s “first truly fine film” (Scott Eyman), Poor Little Rich Girl marked her second collaboration with noted director Maurice Tourneur, who introduced an aestheticized, fairy-tale quality to Pickford’s hard-luck narrative world.