the8fest small-gauge film festival proudly presents the launch of: John Porter’s CineScenes: Documentary Portraits of Alternative Film Scenes Toronto and Beyond, 1978-2015

About the book:John Porter’s CineScenes is the first volume to spotlight Toronto native John Porter’s legendary photographs of alternative film culture – its “celebrities,” places, and rituals – taken across a span of nearly 40 years. This soft-cover, 144-page book features over 200 beautifully reproduced b&w and colour photos by Porter, and includes essays by Scott MacDonald, Nicole Gingras, Dot Tuer, and Tess Takahashi.

8X8 is a new initiative from The 8 Fest, Toronto’s small-gauge film festival, to do year-round programming in support of our annual festival. 8 films for $8!

In the films of Barbara Sternberg, the artist’s material inquiries manifest alongside social concerns around perception and reality. The figure, the landscape, and the memorial inscription are made archetypal and mythic. Since the mid-1970s, Sternberg has worked across media in her studies of these themes, often in super 8 and 16mm film as well as video, and her 2011 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts is only one of many achievements for her artistic work, alongside which her work as a teacher and curator had a significant impact on the Toronto film and media arts community for the past three decades. The 8 fest is proud to present this rare opportunity to see Barbara Sternberg’s early works, including several not in distribution, alongside a number of her more recent films, all in the context of small gauge film, a material that she has used in exhibition and in her process since her earliest films.