The Toronto International Film Festival is often deemed the best site in North America to screen an unsold film, given its hordes of sales agents, industry execs, and the press, as well as the large and lively local audience. But for American independents, it's also a great place to mix with films and filmmakers from around the world: the festival offers an auspicious transnational contamination.

The festival also continues to grow, and this is both good and bad news for independents. Good because it is unquestionably one of the most important shopping places in the world for distributors and exhibitors, second only to Cannes and Berlin. More than other North American festivals, Toronto brings U.S. and Canadian films to a world market. The bad part is that it gets harder every year for more unconventional American indies to garner attention amidst the huge number of films and industry hype.

Luckily, despite the accelerating attendance of head-hunters for mainstream features, there is still room for a strong showing of experimental work at Toronto. A case in point is the exquisite Institute Benjamenta, the first feature live-action film by the Brothers Quay. The film's minimal plot hangs on the catatonic routine of a school for servants; using close-ups and chiaroscuro, the Quays make the simplest objects and movements intensely erotic.

Two other experimental features take a radical approach to bodies in the age of AIDS, depicting a desire for intimacy that requires breaching the body's boundaries. Like Dennis Cooper's novel on which it is based, Todd Verow's Frisk takes the rather densely literal approach, suggesting that overwhelming desire, with just a little twist in logic, results in murder and dismemberment, and that this is the best route to visceral knowledge of a person. Verow has made some strong experimental shorts, and he brings techniques such as found footage and Pixelvision to the feature, but in the end, they don't contribute to a narrative of obsessive desire. In contrast, Mike Hoolboom's House of Pain uses the material of film itself to express the transformative quality of desire and subjection. The film is composed of four extremely scatological, ritualistic performances. Shot in high-contrast, black-and-white film printed on color stock, full of fetishistic closeups, House of Pain creates an intimacy that's less like getting inside a body than like turning the film itself into a giant, quivering skin.

The bio-pic had fine alternative treatments in two independent features "about" female stars of the '60s. More a film essay than a conventional documentary, Mark Rappaport's From the Journals of Jean Seberg is a buffet table of film theory, movies memorable and best forgotten, and deep-dish movie gossip. While some Seberg fans are offended by the liberties Rappaport takes with her character, the film is a trenchant feminist look at the conditions in which Seberg survived until her suicide at 39. Like Journals, Susanne Ofteringer's Nico-Icon takes a distance from its central figure and coolly surveys the era she shaped and represented. As a member of Warhol's Factory and later the Velvet Underground, Nico embodied mod and the darker side of '70s rock culture for a good decade. Told through recollections of family (including the son who Nico hooked on heroin), friends and former lovers (John Cale's interview is especially memorable), Nico's story is taut, ironic and yet compassionate.

American independents put in an unusually strong appearance this year. Hits included Todd Solondz's Welcome to the Dollhouse, which was so popular that even the press screening had to turn many away, and Gregg Araki's The Doom Generation. The festival always includes a number of fresh-out-of-film-school, big-budget boy's movies. The upside is that the influx of movies that mistake grade school sexual sickness, extravagant violence, and sledgehammer-subtle sound effects for hipness - like Gary Fleder's Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead - may convince the film world that Tarantino knockoffs should be left to Tarantino.

As global mixing becomes more the norm than the exception, some of the most interesting works in the fest were international coproductions. Many Asian, African and Latino makers and audiences are based in Europe and North America, and this cultural fusion is a volatile cinematic energy source. One of the most powerful films of the festival, Mathieu Kassovitz's La Haine (Hate) is set in the seething cultural stewpot of the Paris suburbs. And one of the sweetest delights of the fest, Mecnicas Celestes (Celestial Clockwork) by Fina Torres, is set in motion by a clutch of young Colombian women living in Paris. Wacky and surreal, Mecnicas Celestes is a transnational Cinderella tale.

This year's festival witnessed the launch of the program Planet Africa. As the title suggests, Planet Africa aspires to be not a token "third-world" section of the festival but a hand on the pulse of a global filmmaking movement. Some films in the program follow the routes of the African diaspora, others show how even the humblest home is crossed by international currents. One of the best works in the program was Guimba (The Tyrant) by Cheick Omar Sissoko, an allegory of political corruption set in pre-19th century Mali. Portraying a self-sufficient African community that takes on a moral conundrum with dignity, courage and absolutely stunning costumes, Sissoko says that the film has been a hit with African-diasporic audiences in Europe. Female characters are especially rich and complex, and sex is a serious and central issue. A very different flavor from Sissoko's full-bodied allegorical mode is the characteristic blend of slapstick and bittersweet magic in the work of Senegalese filmmaker Djibril Diop Mambety. Mambety's offering this year was Le Franc, a road movie that follows a broke musician's excruciating journey to redeem his winning lottery ticket.

If Planet Africa meant to portray African diasporic people as a worldwide family structure, the inclusion of Thomas Allen Harris' Vintage: Families of Value challenges audiences to respect gay and lesbian contributions to the family's variety. A refreshing personal documentary about African-American queer twins (including Harris and his brother, the photographer Lyle Ashton Harris), Vintage assembles a series of glances shot in a mix of low-end formats into a profound look at African-American family life.

Among some terrific short films in Planet Africa, What My Mother Told Me, by Frances-Anne Solomon stands out. Featuring electrifying performances by Adjoa Andoh and Leonie Forbes, the film evokes the almost unbearable pain of recovered memory when a young woman returns from England to confront her estranged mother.

Two very different works by young directors in the Perspective Canada program, Stephen Williams' Soul Survivor and Clement Virgo's Rude, focused on another node of the African diaspora, namely Toronto's Jamaican communities. Rude is an especially standout first feature - stylized, economical and lush.

I have to mention three surprise personal favorites, starting with Carlos Saura's new dance flick, Flamenco. The extremely simple movie showcases dozens of flamenco groups, from sleek professionals to neighborhood clubs, the only concession to mise-en-scene being the use of dramatic lighting and scrims. Even the notoriously surly industry audience broke into spontaneous applause for one shirtless young man's taut and sweaty solo. Marleen Gorris' Antonia's Line pursues the Dutch filmmaker's attempt (evident in earlier films such as A Question of Silence) to evoke an alternative world created by women. A large-hearted film, Antonia's Line follows four generations of women with a cool sense of the passing of time, as though individual lives are not as important as the flow of life itself. And finally there was an ironic 100th birthday present to the movies - Mohsen Makhmalbaf's Salaam Cinema. To make this quirky documentary, the Iranian director advertised an audition in Teheran and a riot of 5,000 would-be actors ensued. Selected at random from the melee, rows of young women try to cry for the camera; roomfuls of men launch themselves in all directions on command, as if a grenade had landed among them. Makhmalbaf's salaam to cinema is nothing but these screen tests, a cross-section of a country of dreamers. It is an uncategorizable, oddly memorable film.

International Thessaloniki Film Festival
Festival Internazionale Giovanni
Toronto International Film Festival
Montreal World Film Festival
V'iennale