TIFF
Cameron Bailey is the Artistic Director & Co-Head of the Toronto International Film Festival® and the overall TIFF organization. He has been responsible for the direction of the Festival’s selection since 2008, and now oversees TIFF’s year-round programming as well. For seven consecutive years, Toronto Life has named him one of Toronto’s 50 Most Influential People (2012-2018).
Born in London, Bailey grew up in England and Barbados before migrating to Canada. He began programming for the organization in 1990, headed the organization’s Perspective Canada programme and founded its Planet Africa section, and worked both as a film programmer and film critic for 20 years before taking on his current role.
For many years, Bailey was a writer and broadcaster on film. He reviewed for Toronto’s NOW Magazine, CBC Radio One and CTV’s Canada AM. He presented international cinema nightly on Showcase TV’s national program The Showcase Revue, and produced and hosted the interview program Filmmaker on Independent Film Channel Canada. He has been published in The Globe and Mail, The Village Voice, CineAction! and Screen, among others.
As a programmer and curator, he has organized film series for local and international festivals and galleries including the National Gallery of Canada, Australia’s Sydney International Film Festival, Cinematheque Ontario and the National Film Board of Canada. He has also served on awards juries at festivals including Busan, Tokyo, Reykjavik, Zanzibar and Beijing, and has been a guest speaker at several Canadian universities, the Smithsonian Institution, Harvard University and the Banff Centre for the Arts.
Bailey has taught film curation at the University of Toronto, and sits on the Advisory Council for Western University’s School for Arts and Humanities and for Haiti’s Cine Institute film school. He is past co-chair of the Arts & Culture Working Group of Toronto’s CivicAction; in 2016 Bailey joined the board of CivicAction. In 2007, Bailey was a part of the delegation accompanying Canada’s Governor-General Michaëlle Jean on her state visit to Brazil. In 2018 he was made a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by France’s Ministry of Culture.