My name is Eric Veillette and I am a Toronto-based freelance journalist and television correspondent.

As a journalist, my reports on film culture appear regularly in the Toronto Star‘s Entertainment section. In the Living pages, I cover the booze beat, examining trends in the spirits and cocktail world. I also pen the weekly “A drink with…” column, gabbing with GTA notables in the city’s most interesting beverages houses.

My freelancing career at the Star began in 2009 as a contributor to the Sunday Insight section, musing on culture, censorship and ephemera.

I also cover film, TV, tech and sports for Rogers Connected and film and history in the Globe & Mail’s Globe TO section. In the past, I have contributed to The Grid, CBC Music, Rue Morgue Magazine, Open File, the Canadian Encyclopedia and the NFB. I have also penned obituaries for CBC Music and Rue Morgue.

On television, I have produced reports and appeared as a film correspondent for France 24, most recently during the Toronto International Film Festival.

In the world of silent film, I am a member of Domitor, an international association devoted to the study of early cinema and was a collegian at the 2011 edition of the Giornate del cinema muto, the world’s most important silent film festival, held annually in Pordenone, Italy. As a reporter, I regularly attend various silent cinema events around the world, like the San Francisco Silent Film Festival.

In 2009 I founded Silent Sundays, a semi-monthly celebration of the silent arts. Accompanied by acclaimed silent pianist William O’Meara, the series is held at the Revue Cinema on Roncesvalles Ave. — an authentic silent film house — and caters to the Revue’s neighbourhood base, offering an assortment of slapstick, adventure and melodrama from a time when silence was still golden. I was its head programmer until 2013.

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Contact

Feel free to contact me at eric@silenttoronto.com.

Media: I am available for interviews and to comment on all matters relating to early cinema, the history of Canadian film exhibition, theatre architecture and horror films from all corners of the globe.

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Toronto Star film, culture and spirits articles

A drink with… Charles Ketchabaw and Lisa Marie DiLiberto, storytellers [Column - April 2013]
A drink with… Ed Conroy, curator, Retrontario [Column - April 2013]
A drink with… Shirley Hughes, festival programmer [Column - April 2013]
A drink with… Thom Ernst, TV host [Column - March, 2013]
Master mixologists compete over Toronto’s best cocktail [Made With Love - March 2013]
Corn shortage worries some whisky connoisseurs [A chat with Fred Noe - March 2013]
The green fairy is making a come-back [Absinthe in the news - February 2013]
Vermouth: LCBO’s narrow selections makes aficionados bitter [Vermouth, sweet or dry - February 2013]
A history of Canadian whisky [Davin de Kegormmeaux's new whisky tell-all - January 2013]
Craft bitters spice up Toronto’s cocktail scene [Cocktail bitters - December 2012]
Jerry Lewis shows sensitive side in The Jazz Singer [Toronto Jewish Film Festival screening - April 2013]
Buster Keaton’s final word [The Scribe shot in Toronto - February 2013]
Eight Dickens shorts from the silent era in rare screening [Silent Dickens at Lightbox - December 2012]
Birth of a villain series resurrects horror icons [Horror films at Lightbox - November 2012]
Interview with Jason Lapeyre, director of I Declare War [TIFF - September 2012]
Interview with Kate Melville, director of Picture Day [TIFF - September 2012]
Interview with Dylan Reibling, director of Model [TIFF - September 2012]
Interview with Kazik Radwanski, director of Tower [TIFF - September 2012]
City of Toronto archives: Where past meets the future [New city archivist - August 2012]
The three Jeans of French cinema [French films at TIFF Cinematheque - July 2012]
Film festival celebrates famous jewish composers [David Shire at the Toronto Jewish Film Fest - May 2012]
Is cinema facing a digital dark age? [Film preservation in the post-35mm era - January 2012]
Act of preservation keeps Toronto’s past alive on film [Column - June 2011]
Historian’s app puts old Toronto photos at your fingertips [ZeitagTO mobile app - May 2011]
Drive-ins: Movies on wheels [Drive-in theatres in and around the GTA - May 2011]
Underground for a year [Toronto Underground Cinema one year later - May 2011]
Reviving the sound of silents [Toronto Silent Film Festival - March 2011]
Toronto’s buried history [Five Toronto museums you never knew existed - March 2011]
The Polka Dot time machine [TVO launches online public archive - February 2011]
Momma, they took our Kodachrome away [Kodachrome in Toronto Project - February 2011]
Buster Keaton, all scratched up [Sherlock Jr. in Concert at TIFF - February 2011]
Exhibit puts Toronto’s sweetheart back in the spotlight [Mary Pickford exhibit at TIFF - January 2011]
Bans on escort ads may erode free speech rights [Censorship in Ontario - October 2010]
Toronto Film Club: A not-so-secret society [Toronto Film Society - October 2010]
Handsome Ned haunts rockabilly fest [East End Rockabilly Riot - September 2010]
They don’t wear black hats, but they do wear red suspenders [Board room villains, September 2010]
Alfresco film viewing: who needs a movie theatre, anyway? [Outdoor and rooftop screenings, September 2010]
Relive that ‘end of summer’ feeling with CNE archives [CNE Archives digitization project - August 2010]
The day Shakespeare was banned [Ontario film censorship, then and now - August 2010]
Burlesque Festival — less sleaze, more tease [The Victory Burlesque - July 2010]
Tintin’s sins: Belgium reckons with comic hero’s racist past [Tintin au Congo in the news - May 2010]
Urban renewal for the body and soul [Marwencol at Hot Docs - May 2010]
The Feds’ new grant that’s actually a cut [Taddle Creek and the Canada Periodical Fund - April 2010]
Sharing a Hong Kong treasure trove [Colin Geddes Hong Kong film donation - April 2010]
Festival celebrates lost art of silent films [Toronto Silent Film Festival - March 2010]
In a digital age, why is our visual history being lost? [Found footage of Toronto's past - February 2010]
I deem her innocent [Ambrose Small 90 years later - December 2009]
The man who let the Littlest Hobo run Off-leash [Naish McHugh, Toronto's first film commissioner - September 2009]
TTC screens offer better way to film fest [Toronto Urban Film Festival - September 2009]
A night at the theatorium [Danforth Music Hall's 90th Anniversary - August 2009]
Still sexy after all these years [Karen Black performs - July 2009]
Trashy filmathon a throwback to old Yonge St. [Yonge St. grindhouses of the 1970s - June 2009]
When a creaking stair was talk of the town [The arrival of talking pictures in Toronto - January 2009]

Globe & Mail Film & Culture Articles

Actor, filmmaker Eli Roth’s favourite Toronto spots [Globe TO Q&A - July 2012]
360 Screenings are so much bigger than surround sound [Film - May 2012]
Shhh! We’re having a silent film festival [Film - March 2012]
Lights out for film projectionists [Film - November 2011]
Campy Can-con classic rides again [Film - November 2011]
Home movie day puts amateurs on the silver screen [Film - October 2011]
Fixt Point Theatre puts neighbourhoods in the spotlight [Theatre - September 2011]
John Waters: Filmmaker, bad-taste monger [GlobeTO Q&A - August 2011]
Paul Butler’s Collage Party [GlobeTO Insider - August 2011]
Luis Ceriz: Owner, Suspect Video [GlobeTO Q&A - August 2011]
Disgraceland art show offers a parade of Presleys [Dead Elvis art show - August 2011]

Obituaries

Whitney Houston dies on eve of Grammy Awards [CBC Music - February 2011]
Hammer screenwriter Jimmy Sangster dead at 83 [Rue Morgue Magazine #116 - PDF]
Famed Hammer director Roy Ward Baker dead at age 93 [Rue Morgue Magazine #107 - PDF]
Monster mask pioneer Verne Langdon dead at 69 [Rue Morgue Magazine #109 - PDF]