John Rosser of the Gasparilla Film Festival is attending the Toronto Film festival this week, and offered to send dispatches for posting on this blog.
Here are his observations, edited for length (John can be as wordy as I, which is why we get along):

"Toronto is the biggest and most important North American film festival. Close to 400,000 people will be attending films over a 10 day period- including well over 100 World and North American Premieres.
But also thousands of industry personnel will be present- from big-name actors, directors, producers but also buyers and sellers of film.

That's the marketplace aspect of film festivals that often goes unnoticed and often happens behind the scenes.
And the deals do fly at Toronto, often done in hotel rooms at 3am in the morning, at the end of some pretty intensive bidding wars after a strong premiere!.

Toronto is really 3 separate film festivals in one:

(1) A star-packed, Hollywood marketing machine for big budget, star-laden fall film releases- launching well in Toronto can create some serious buzz and sales in other cities during release. Coupled with these strictly commercial films are big budget, art house Hollywood fare starting their months-long campaign for an Oscar.

(2) A regular ol' independent film festival with full-length features and shorts from around the world.

(3) A giant lovefest + promotional vehicle for Canadian film.

So, why am I here?

Toronto's festival is the de facto annual convention and get together for everyone who's anyone in the industry, including Festival Directors. We meet, swap notes, contacts, information, experiences and basically learn from each other and expand our base of contacts. We also screen film, and hope to find some golden nuggets for our own film festivals (or in the case of distribution companies, films they can sell).

Its a pretty efficient process actually. There is also great opportunity to meet stars and maybe have that one or two unusual meetings which will lead to a great idea, concept or attract someone to your Festival (that you would otherwise not attract)

OK (and until tomorrow) I leave you with some of the bigger stars of the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival:
George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton, Kate Beckinsale, Colin Farrell, Edward Norton, Scarlett Johansson, Natalie Portman,  Andy Garcia, Ethan Hawke, Julie Christie, Orlando Bloom, Shia LaBeouf, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, Danny Glover, Renee Zellweger, Viggo Mortensen, Mark Ruffalo and Julianne Moore."

(Nice work, John. Thanks, and we look forward to more Toronto info.)