Friday, April 3, 2015

28th Images Festival, April 9-18, 2015


The 28th Images Festival is right around the corner, with 10 days of groundbreaking film screenings, live performances and media-based installations taking place throughout Toronto April 9 - 18, 2015. The Images Festival showcases the innovative edge of international contemporary media art through its ON SCREEN, OFF SCREEN and LIVE IMAGES programming.

The Images Festival continues to embrace new modes of creativity for a radical and unforgettable extravaganza of contemporary moving image culture. More than ever, Images engages audiences through our expanded public programming with more talks, tours, guest writers on our iFBLOG, as well as web-based projects and online screenings on our video player iFPOD. Find out more at www.imagesfestival.com

OPENING and CLOSING NIGHT EVENTS!

The 2015 Images Festival kicks off April 9 at The Royal Cinema (608 College St.) with a channel surfing city symphony for the twenty first century, Tomorrow is Always Too Long. Turner Prize nominee Phil Collins (UK) brings Glasgow to life in his first feature film scored by Mogwai’s Barry Burns with six songs by Welsh singer-songwriter Cate Le Bon. Join us afterwards at Workman Arts where Brooklyn-based Peter Burr’s immersive four-channel multimedia installation Cave Exits will premiere at our Opening Night Party!

Closing Night brings together a variety of LIVE acts at Workman Arts (651 Dufferin Street), including a scoring of several seminal Joyce Wieland 16mm classics by Montréal-based band 10,000 Horses (Alexis O'Hara and Stephen Lawson), as well as a special screening of Erik Van Lieshout's Basement (an ode to the cats living below St Petersburg's Hermitage Museum.) Walter Scott brings to life his fictional character Wendy, whose dreams of contemporary art stardom are perpetually derailed and Stephanie Comilang re-imagines iconic music videos in Karaoke Karaoke with some very special guests. 


Images’ ON SCREEN program brings together local and international artists, with screenings of feature length works, curated shorts, and one 8 hour epic. We are delighted to inhabit the AGO’s Jackman Hall as our main screening venue once again this year. Join us for the movies and stay for conversations and Q & A’s with filmmakers and curators scheduled throughout the festival.

Mga Anak Ng Unos (Storm Children, Book One) – Lav Diaz – April 17 @ 8 PM
Internationally-acclaimed and award winning filmmaker Lav Diaz tells the story of typhoon Yolanda, by following children as they play in the aftermath of one of the most powerful and destructive typhoons in recorded history.

Li Wen at East Lake – Luo Li – April 15 @ 9 PM
In this fascinating documentary fiction hybrid, director Luo Li (Emperor Visits the Hell, Rivers and My Father) takes us on a tour of the rapidly dwindling shores of East Lake in the ever-expanding megacity of Wuhan in Li Wen at East Lake.

2015 Canadian Artist Spotlight – Iris Ng – April 11 @ 7:30 PM
What do Sarah Polley, Jean Paul Kelly, Min Sook Lee, and Luis Jacob all have in common? The answer is cinematographer Iris Ng. With more than fifty productions over the last decade, Iris has been behind the lens for some of the most influential Canadian artists and we are proud to highlight her work as the 2015 Canadian Artist Spotlight.

Park Lanes – Kevin Jerome Everson – April 18 @ 11-7 PM
In March 2014 Kevin Jerome Everson and his crew spent three days shooting in a Virginian factory that produces all the components needed to build bowling alleys. The resulting work consists of a full shift, an 8-hour long portrait of a day in the life of the factory. To be screened at the new Gallery TPW (170 St. Helens Ave)

Wanda – Barbara Loden – April 11 @ 5 PM
One of the great enigmas of American independent cinema, Wanda is written and directed by Barbara Loden, who also starred in the titular role. Wanda was largely ignored after winning the International Critics Award at the 1970 Venice Film Festival. We are thrilled to present a new 35mm print for the first time in Canada.

The Kalampag Tracking Agency – April 10 @ 7 PM
Curated by Merv Espina and Shireen Seno, this program presents some of the most striking moving image works from the Philippines and its diaspora over the past thirty years. With a variety of formats, techniques and textures, The Kalampag Tracking Agency gives attention to the works of John Torres, Miko Revereza, Raya Martin, Rox Lee and many more.

Seeing the Past – Monday April 13 @ 9 PM
Reflecting on the disappearance of agrarian existence, award winning diary filmmaker Philip Hoffman collages inter-connected Ontario histories Slaughterhouse. Bolivian filmmaker Miguel Hilari’s cinematic observations of a remote Bolivian village point to a longing for a deeper connection with the culture of his Indigenous ancestors in The Corral and the Wind.

Answering the Call - April 12 @ 9 PM
La Providence by Emmanuelle Léonard is a series of interviews with retired members of the Sisters of Charity of Montréal, and is followed by Amanda Berg's documentation of a women's tackle football team in Every Body Hit Somebody. The two films in this program offer more than a portrait of nuns and football, exploring issues and expectations around gender, identity, passion and belief.

Peeling Back the Layers – April 14 @ 7 PM
The films and videos in this program look at transformation and documentation, including a remarkably raw and moving video diary of three years in the life of a young migrant worker Guo Lifen (aka, Fenfen). Filmmaker Leslie Tai broadcasts Fenfen’s footage on television monitors in a variety of public contexts, where the intimate and personal become universal as we all share in The Private Life of Fenfen.

The Influence of Anxiety – April 10 @ 9 PM
Every year the Images showcases local talent and this year is no exception as Paulette Phillips and Robert Lee program recent works by Toronto artists including Clint Enns, Eval Kocze, Dona Arbabzadeh, Jean Paul Kelly, Annie MacDonnell, and Blake Williams.


Out of the cinema and into the galleries! Our OFF SCREEN program presents media-based installations by Canadian and international artists at local galleries, artist-run centres and public locations by Isabell Spengler, Luis Jacob, Chris Curreri, Jacqueline Hoang Nguyen and many more.

Rashaad Newsome (USA) - Silence please, the show is about to begin @ AGYU
Rashaad Newsome’s first Canadian solo exhibition brings together a selection of recent video, performance and collage works. Sampling classical music compositions, hip-hop rhythms, and vogue beats, Newsome constructs a bold operatic encounter that challenges what it means to be black and queer. Culminating in a live performance the night of the opening Wednesday April 8 @ 6 - 9PM, there is FREE Performance Bus departing from OCADU at 6 PM for AGYU and returning downtown at 9 PM.

Samuel Beckett, Chris Curreri, Luis Jacob - Phantom Limbs @ Scrap Metal
Imagine the body from outside to inside and you might get Phantom Limbs. This exhibition brings together three distinct artworks by Chris Curreri, Luis Jacob and Samuel Beckett that collectively create an elliptical passage through the human body. The works point to the limits of our bodies, and the ways we transcend these limits through communication.

Postcommodity - A Non-Place in A Space @ ASpace Gallery
New Mexico based collective Postcommodity (Raven Chacon, Cristóbal Martínez, Kade L. Twist and Nathan Young) reconsider our understanding of communities and geographies by connecting Indigenous narratives with the rights of cultural self-determination. Challenging the notion of what “non-place” has historically meant for settlers and colonizers, this exhibition asks what is the connection between land, culture, and community.

Isabell Spengler – Two Days at the Falls @ Trinity Square Video
For over a century Niagara Falls has captured the imaginations of tourists and artists, and the same can be said for Isabell Spengler. Part of Images Festival and Trinity Square Video’s European Media Artists in Residence Exchange (EMARE), this immersive installation presents two panoramic depictions of the iconic Falls–one constructed in her Berlin studio before having visited the Falls, and the other shot over Two Days at the Falls.

Live Images embraces and explores different traditions of performance that relate to the moving image. From happenings at the Chinatown Centre Mall with Casey Wei, to documenting How Many Performance Artists Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb with Jess Dobkin, these programs redefine the live experience.

Casey Wei - Chinatown Happenings @ 222 Spadina Avenue
Taking up residence inside Chinatown Centre Mall, Vancouver-based artist, filmmaker and musician Casey Wei will be the Images Festival’s first-ever artist-in-mall residence. Wei will be activating and filming the lower level mezzanine and stage area with different daily free activities from ballroom dancing, daily screenings, open mics, live music, mah jong tables, tarot card readings, karaoke and much more. All events are free and open to the public.

Jess Dobkin - How Many Performance Artists Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb (For Martha Wilson) @ Enoch Turner Schoolhouse
Jess Dobkin’s newest work, How Many Performance Artists Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb (For Martha Wilson), is at once a question, a joke, and a reflection on the ways we see. Made in response and as an ode to Martha Wilson, one of America’s foremost groundbreaking performance artists and founder of the legendary New York artist run Franklin Furnace, this four hour durational performance takes on the complex and riddled history of performance art, by while changing a light bulb with at least forty people documenting the piece.

No comments:

Post a Comment