Albert Nerenberg

Nerenberg moved to Toronto, "like many young Montreal anglo filmmakers before him," where he would eventually achieve even greater acclaim with higher-budget, more entertaining documentaries.[3] First, he founded Trailervision, with the premise that film trailers are a form of artistic expression in their own right. CNN called it an "international cult phenomenon."[4] Nerenberg directed over 70 trailers for it.

In 2000, he performed a widely publicized prank at the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival. The director orchestrated the red carpet entry of a group of Trailervision actors as major movie stars. This was done by planting actors among the paparazzi who screamed the names of the fictional stars as they arrived by limo. The paparazzi responded by flashing their cameras frantically. The fake stars were rushed into the green room along with the real stars, "where they got drunk like showbiz kings".[5] The prank is described in the online Museum of Hoaxes as The Toronto Film Festival Hoax.[6]

In 2003, Nerenberg's breakthrough film Stupidity was released, and he organized the first annual World Stupidity Awards in Toronto a month later, a satirical awards show which went on to be sponsored by the Just for Laughs festival and took place in Montréal from 2004 to 2007, honouring the Stupidest Statement of the Year.[7]

Nerenberg's Escape to Canada (2005) examines the results of Canada's brief relaxation of its marijuana laws at the same time that same-sex marriage became legal, along with Canada's abstention from the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq having made the country a perceived haven for progressive Americans.[8]

In 2007's Let's All Hate Toronto, Mr. Toronto (Nerenberg's eye-patched co-director Rob Spence) embarks on a coast-to-coast Canadian tour to promote "the centre of the universe" by waving a banner that reads "Toronto Appreciation Day." Not long after, Nerenberg moved from Toronto with his significant other and child to take up residence in the Eastern Townships burgh of West Bolton, "where he does much hiking and laughing when not lecturing or making movies elsewhere."[3]

His next two films, Laughology (2009) and Boredom (2012), both discuss aspects of phenomena as they are related to health and happiness which have gone relatively unexplored by science. Nerenberg organized the first Montreal Laughing Championships after attending a UFC fight were two fighters unintentionally started laughing during a stare down. "Punching people in the face is a sport. Poking people with sticks is a sport. Why not have a sport about the pursuit of joy?" Nerenberg told The Pacific Standard.[9] Using stare-downs and laughing fits, 12 competitors would compete to see who was the champion. The laughers would be judged for their contagiousness effect on the audience. After that event, laughing championships would be organized worldwide. Nerenberg frequently tours and speaks as a Laughologist, an expert on laughter. After traveling to India and studying the benefits of Laughter Yoga with Dr. Madan Kataria, Nerenberg invented Laughtercize, a system of joy-inducing exercise that works off natural human contagious laughter. This technique has been used in a number of Canadian alcohol and drug rehab centres. He also invented the Laughter Party, which creates the same atmosphere as a wild party, without the need of drugs and alcohol.[10]

You Are What You Act (2018) points out how film actors often become their roles and suggests these principles apply to ordinary people in terms of actualizing confidence, heroism, health and love. It won the Jury Prize at the Illuminate Film Festival in Sedona, Arizona, in June 2018.