Toronto's Images Festival presents its 24th edition with 10 days of thought-provoking and inspiring film screenings, live performances and media art installations in the Greater Toronto Area beginning Thursday, March 31 and running until Saturday, April 9, 2011. Tickets for the festival are now available online at imagesfestival.com. Events fall into three main categories of programming:
• On Screen: 100 films and videos from 23 countries
• Off Screen: 28 installations at 14 local galleries, artist-run centres and public locations
• Live Images: 7 live performances that relate to the moving image
HIGHLIGHTS: CURRENT AFFAIRS. MUSIC. POP CULTURE.
Opening Night brings back Hamilton-based filmmaker Luo Li with his second feature length film, Rivers and My Father in its North American Premiere. This remarkable film is inspired by Li's father's childhood and is set along the Yangtze River in China. Li presented his first feature length film, I Went To The Zoo The Other Day at last year's festival. Rivers and My Father premiered at the China Independent Film Festival where it was awarded the Jury Prize.
New to the Images Festival this year is Radical Recess: A Screening of Avant-Garde Films for Children of all ages. Inspired by the Belgian Courtisane Festival's Baby Matinee, Radical Recess, curated by local filmmaker Larissa Fan, seeks to engage children with experimental film and contemporary art in nine shorts, a playful, colourful and lyrical alternative to mainstream children's entertainment.
CURRENT AFFAIRS
Special guest curator, award winning documentary filmmaker Jean-Marie Teno (Cameroon) crafts the two-part series, Reframing Africa, creating a context for Africans to tell their own stories at a time when many African countries are struggling to keep their cinemas open, while in mainstream films the continent serves as a backdrop for Eurocentric concerns. Reframing Africa surveys over 20 years of African film from science-fiction to autobiography to avant-garde and includes Teno's first film, the 1985 poetic autobiographical essay Hommage as well as legendary Senegalese filmmaker Djibril Diop Mambety's classic Le Franc, an allegory of the lottery of life in urban Africa.
Especially relevant as issues of military involvement and escalation pervade the international news, the program And Again features a trio of films that look at military actions and conflicts from Afghanistan during the British Colonial Empire of India (Why Colonel Bunny was Killed) to the Vietnam war (History Minor) and the on-going war on terror (And Again.) In a similar vein, Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters filmmaker John Gianvito, presents his documentary essay, Vapor Trail (Clark), examining U.S. colonialism and imperialism in the Philippines and the toxic contamination left in the wake of decommissioned U.S. military Air Force Base, Clark. Artist Chen Chieh-jen's installation Empire's Borders II – Western Enterprises, Inc. looks at a period of cold war secrecy in the 1950`s where the CIA worked with the Taiwanese Government to orchestrate a surprise attack on communists in Mainland China. Another related offering in the Off Screen section is Rabih Mroue's: The Inhabitants of Images, which, like much of Mroue's work, is deeply informed by the Lebanese Civil War and its aftermath.
MUSIC
The Images Festival Closing Night Gala in collaboration with Wavelength, presents the award-winning Toronto hardcore band Fucked Up performing live to cult favourite director Tod Browning's silent film West of Zanzibar (1928), which tells the twisted story of a magician cuckolded and crippled in the same night seeking revenge in a dystopic jungle.
Colombian artist, Icaro Zorbar in association with the Art Gallery of York University present a special series of mini concerts entitled Assisted Installations that will act as interventions in the space between screenings. The performance Poco a Poco (Little by Little) sets the needles of two turntables to play on the same record, bringing the needles together and then apart, attempting a mechanical embrace. Toronto composer Allison Cameron and San Francisco filmmaker Paul Clipson, presented in collaboration with The Music Gallery partner for the first time on a film projection and live music performance created especially for this year's event.
POP CULTURE
For the contemporary culture buffs, Dear Steve by Herman Asselberghs, part of the Guided Tours program witnesses the meticulous and complete dismantling of a MacBook Pro in an extreme YouTube-esque unboxing that also unpacks the role of the laptop in modern culture. In the Reconsidering the New program, filmmaker Duncan Campbell's Make It New John tells the story of the ambitious and charismatic John DeLorean and the end of the line for his infamous car.
Pine, an installation by Toronto artist Jon Sasaki reinterprets iconic images of the Canadian landscape in the works of Tom Thompson and the Group of Seven in ways that both celebrate and question the way we understand that genre.
In Cinema is Not Celluloid New York archivist, Andrew Lampert, presents three films: Am I From Brooklyn, a hysterical autobiographical guided tour of Brooklyn, followed by Rigamarole Reversal an out of sync account of lost sound; and lastly Caroline Golum As, about an actress playing herself auditioning to play the filmmaker's great, great, great, great, great aunt.
ABOUT THE IMAGES FESTIVAL
The Images Festival is the largest festival in North America for experimental and independent moving image culture, showcasing the innovative edge of international contemporary media art both on and off the screen through film, video, installation, music and performance. The 24th edition of the festival runs from March 31-April 9, 2011 throughout Toronto.
ACCREDITATION AVAILABLE FOR FESTIVAL PROGRAMMERS, CURATORS, ETC:
The Images Festival is happy to welcome curators, festival programmers and distributors from Canada and around the world to our annual festival. Accreditation is available to these qualified members of the industry.
Please fill out the following form:
www.imagesfestival.com/2011/industry
For more information, including high resolution stills and press releases, please visit www.imagesfestival.com
Toronto's Images Festival presents its 24th edition with 10 days of thought-provoking and inspiring film screenings, live performances and media art installations in the Greater Toronto Area beginning Thursday, March 31 and running until Saturday, April 9, 2011. Tickets for the festival are now available online at imagesfestival.com. Events fall into three main categories of programming:
• On Screen: 100 films and videos from 23 countries
• Off Screen: 28 installations at 14 local galleries, artist-run centres and public locations
• Live Images: 7 live performances that relate to the moving image
HIGHLIGHTS: CURRENT AFFAIRS. MUSIC. POP CULTURE.
Opening Night brings back Hamilton-based filmmaker Luo Li with his second feature length film, Rivers and My Father in its North American Premiere. This remarkable film is inspired by Li's father's childhood and is set along the Yangtze River in China. Li presented his first feature length film, I Went To The Zoo The Other Day at last year's festival. Rivers and My Father premiered at the China Independent Film Festival where it was awarded the Jury Prize.
New to the Images Festival this year is Radical Recess: A Screening of Avant-Garde Films for Children of all ages. Inspired by the Belgian Courtisane Festival's Baby Matinee, Radical Recess, curated by local filmmaker Larissa Fan, seeks to engage children with experimental film and contemporary art in nine shorts, a playful, colourful and lyrical alternative to mainstream children's entertainment.
CURRENT AFFAIRS
Special guest curator, award winning documentary filmmaker Jean-Marie Teno (Cameroon) crafts the two-part series, Reframing Africa, creating a context for Africans to tell their own stories at a time when many African countries are struggling to keep their cinemas open, while in mainstream films the continent serves as a backdrop for Eurocentric concerns. Reframing Africa surveys over 20 years of African film from science-fiction to autobiography to avant-garde and includes Teno's first film, the 1985 poetic autobiographical essay Hommage as well as legendary Senegalese filmmaker Djibril Diop Mambety's classic Le Franc, an allegory of the lottery of life in urban Africa.
Especially relevant as issues of military involvement and escalation pervade the international news, the program And Again features a trio of films that look at military actions and conflicts from Afghanistan during the British Colonial Empire of India (Why Colonel Bunny was Killed) to the Vietnam war (History Minor) and the on-going war on terror (And Again.) In a similar vein, Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters filmmaker John Gianvito, presents his documentary essay, Vapor Trail (Clark), examining U.S. colonialism and imperialism in the Philippines and the toxic contamination left in the wake of decommissioned U.S. military Air Force Base, Clark. Artist Chen Chieh-jen's installation Empire's Borders II – Western Enterprises, Inc. looks at a period of cold war secrecy in the 1950`s where the CIA worked with the Taiwanese Government to orchestrate a surprise attack on communists in Mainland China. Another related offering in the Off Screen section is Rabih Mroue's: The Inhabitants of Images, which, like much of Mroue's work, is deeply informed by the Lebanese Civil War and its aftermath.
MUSIC
The Images Festival Closing Night Gala in collaboration with Wavelength, presents the award-winning Toronto hardcore band Fucked Up performing live to cult favourite director Tod Browning's silent film West of Zanzibar (1928), which tells the twisted story of a magician cuckolded and crippled in the same night seeking revenge in a dystopic jungle.
Colombian artist, Icaro Zorbar in association with the Art Gallery of York University present a special series of mini concerts entitled Assisted Installations that will act as interventions in the space between screenings. The performance Poco a Poco (Little by Little) sets the needles of two turntables to play on the same record, bringing the needles together and then apart, attempting a mechanical embrace. Toronto composer Allison Cameron and San Francisco filmmaker Paul Clipson, presented in collaboration with The Music Gallery partner for the first time on a film projection and live music performance created especially for this year's event.
POP CULTURE
For the contemporary culture buffs, Dear Steve by Herman Asselberghs, part of the Guided Tours program witnesses the meticulous and complete dismantling of a MacBook Pro in an extreme YouTube-esque unboxing that also unpacks the role of the laptop in modern culture. In the Reconsidering the New program, filmmaker Duncan Campbell's Make It New John tells the story of the ambitious and charismatic John DeLorean and the end of the line for his infamous car.
Pine, an installation by Toronto artist Jon Sasaki reinterprets iconic images of the Canadian landscape in the works of Tom Thompson and the Group of Seven in ways that both celebrate and question the way we understand that genre.
In Cinema is Not Celluloid New York archivist, Andrew Lampert, presents three films: Am I From Brooklyn, a hysterical autobiographical guided tour of Brooklyn, followed by Rigamarole Reversal an out of sync account of lost sound; and lastly Caroline Golum As, about an actress playing herself auditioning to play the filmmaker's great, great, great, great, great aunt.
ABOUT THE IMAGES FESTIVAL
The Images Festival is the largest festival in North America for experimental and independent moving image culture, showcasing the innovative edge of international contemporary media art both on and off the screen through film, video, installation, music and performance. The 24th edition of the festival runs from March 31-April 9, 2011 throughout Toronto.
ACCREDITATION AVAILABLE FOR FESTIVAL PROGRAMMERS, CURATORS, ETC:
The Images Festival is happy to welcome curators, festival programmers and distributors from Canada and around the world to our annual festival. Accreditation is available to these qualified members of the industry.
Please fill out the following form:
www.imagesfestival.com/2011/industry
For more information, including high resolution stills and press releases, please visit www.imagesfestival.com
Thanks for the info, Scott!
Add new comment