Piers Handling gets to rub shoulders with the biggest movie stars in the world as director and chief executive officer of the Toronto International Film Festival Group.

But meeting film directors is just as big a thrill, and none more so than France's legendary Jean-Luc Godard.

Handling says seeing Godard's 1967 film Week End as a university student started him on a course that now finds him heading what many people consider the second-most important, prestigious and famous film festival in the world after Cannes.

"It's fun to meet the major movie stars, but to me some of the superstars are the directors," Handling, 58, told The Hamilton Spectator in a recent interview. "It's hugely stimulating to meet some of the great practitioners of the art form."

And that definitely includes Godard, who has been to the Toronto festival a number of times.

"Weekend was the first film that I didn't understand at all," Handling said honestly. "And yet it completely excited me ... This guy was doing things that I had never seen before. He was the first filmmaker who made me think as opposed to feel. He shattered all the rules."

Handling will be bringing his respect for, and knowledge of, Godard's work to Hamilton on Wednesday when he hosts an Art Gallery of Hamilton screening of the director's earlier film, 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle (Two or Three Things I Know About Her), and a question and answer period at 7 p.m. at the Empire Jackson Square 6 Cinemas.

Tickets are $10 for AGH members, $12 for students and seniors and $15 for general admission. They can be purchased online at artgalleryofhamilton.com, at the AGH front desk or at the theatre starting at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday.

Handling called 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle an extraordinary piece of cinema that holds up well even after 40 years.

"It's such an incredible inquiry into so many things but especially into cinema -- how you create cinema, what cinema is, why this shot, why that shot, and I think at the end of the day it's an inquiry into Godard's relationship with the world in a very personal way."

Hosting film screenings is one of the many facets of the Calgary-born Handling's work as head of the Toronto film fest, a post he has held since 1994. He first went to work for TIFF as a programmer in 1982 after working at the Canadian Film Institute and teaching at Carleton and Queen's universities.

The Toronto festival has grown immensely since those early days, as has Handling's workload.

"We would have weeks of slow lunches in October and November and then we would be off to Havana and Rio for the film festivals and we didn't really start working until January," he recalled.

"Now, it's a completely different world. I take a week off after the festival (in mid-September) and then you are back into it. It's relentless, it really is."

But Handling is quick to add he's not complaining.

"At some point, you pinch yourself and hope no one finds out what I'm actually doing and blow the whistle on me," he said with a hearty laugh. "It's been too much fun, it really has."

Handling saw his first film -- Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush -- as a five-year-old.

The movie was memorable but so was the location of the screening -- projected on a sheet outdoors in Pakistan where his father was stationed with the Canadian military.

Handling was a movie buff as a philosophy student at Queen's in the '60s when he encountered Godard's Week End.

"Most of the films I had been used to seeing had been about emotion, feeling something, sadness, happiness, whatever," he said.

"Godard shattered all the rules and, when you are an 18-year-old, to see someone do that, just basically throw it all out and be funny and intelligent and vulnerable all at the same time ...

"A week later I saw (Godard's film) Pierrot le fou and that was it. That was the moment that got me totally excited about film.

"I found the film department at Queen's right away and just hung around and saw a lot films. It was exciting and stimulating and it was the '60s. It was one of the defining moments of my life."

It's too early for Handling to forecast what might be headlining this year's Toronto film festival, but he may have a better idea after next month's festivities in Cannes.

"Then things will really start going," he said. "There is a lot of travel (in his work), a lot of screenings and, from May to September, my time is not my own in any way.

"But I am passionate about film and, as a kid, I got to travel the world because my dad was in the military, so travelling is deep in my blood and this is a job that takes me everywhere. I love the international part of it, I really do.

"It's pretty great and the people you meet, it's a buzz."

dfoley@thespec.com

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