4 DAYS OF BRAZILIAN MULTICULTURALISM For more than 500 years, Brazil has been melting cultures, skin colours, races, traditions, tastes, flavours, histories and everything else into a very large and welcoming pot, and this year the hottest film festival in Toronto will bring this diversity to the Royal Theatre, at the heart of the vibrant and artistic Portuguese/Italian community in the central-west side of the city. Brazil and Canada have more in common than you can imagine. They are both relatively young nations where immigration played, and still plays! -- a very important role. Did you know that Brazil has the highest population of people of African descent outside the African continent? As with the Japanese community established there; it?s the biggest outside Japan. And there was also a time when there were more people speaking Italian on the streets of São Paulo than Portuguese, the official Brazilian language. Everywhere in Toronto, you can feel, see, hear and taste this same multicultural atmosphere. You can sit in a Vietnamese restaurant in the heart of the Caribbean area, reading a European newspaper and overhearing conversations in three or four different languages at the same time, while the radio plays songs from the Middle East... And this is why we decided to have Multiculturalism as our theme for this year, in our screenings as well as the business networking we promote during the festival. So come and celebrate with us the great and diverse Brazilian new wave of cinema. It's our third year and we will love to have you with us!

Soaring from the success of their crossover collaborative album Givin’ It Up,George Benson and Al Jarreau kick-off the Soulful Sounds of The City Concert Series on April 14th.