Seeing Black Swan with an audience was one of citizen contributor Chris Berube's favourite TIFF moments. (TIFF)

By Chris Berube, citizen contributor

Following a week of intense TIFFing, I feel thoroughly exhausted, to say the least. Of course, I haven't been working in a coal mine or manually plowing snow during this time. Being worn out from attending a film festival is, all in all, a pretty good problem to have.

That being said, hopefully my dispatches from the trenches of TIFF 2010 have given you the impression of the hectic pace this festival demands of anyone trying to "keep up."

I think the festival mood was somewhat dampened by the relative dearth of high profile quality films this year -- The AV Club's Scott Tobias called it "the worst crop at TIFF" in his 11 years of attendance -- but there was still plenty for those willing to look hard enough, running from the sublime (the very moving settler story Meek's Cutoff) to the ridiculous (Thai film Uncle Boonmee, which prominently features a man-sized ape with lasers for eyes -- don't ask).
Here are my personal highlights!

1. Finding out that, in fact, the Lightbox is real! It seems as though the festival had been talking about the Lightbox for so long that it couldn't possibly live up to the high expectations they had created. Now that it's open, I think most people are in agreement that the new TIFF headquarters and year-round film centre has beautiful facilities and the potential to become a fixture in Toronto's artistic landscape.

2. Seeing Tabloid and Black Swan with an audience. My personal favourite part of TIFF is seeing films for the first time with an audience. Since many of these movies are having world or North American premieres, the audience responses are completely genuine and not tainted by the film having been ruined by internet spoilers. As a result, seeing Errol Morris's new documentary about the too-good-to-be-true story of a beauty queen turned kidnapper and Darren Aronofsky's surreal retelling of Swan Lake were particular delights, if just for the audible gasps, winces and moments of surprised laughter from the packed house at each screening.

3. Seeing Roger Ebert around the city. While I didn't have a chance to meet the dean of film critics, it was inspiring to see Ebert back in town for the festival. After losing his distinctive voice to cancer a couple of years ago, Ebert has maintained a busy public schedule and shown that there is life after such a terrible illness. His omnipresence at TIFF this year was inspiring.