Wednesday, March 21, 2012

The Free Screen – Spring 2012, TIFF Bell Lightbox


Recently, TIFF Bell Lightbox announced the appointment of Chris Kennedy as their new programmer for The Free Screen, TIFF Cinematheque’s renowned ongoing free series featuring independent and avant-garde works. He launches his first season of programming with tonight's screening of works by Governor General's Award-winner Jan Peacock, Jan Peacock: Using Clouds for Words.

The featured works will be Bystander; California Freeze-Out; This Walk, These Step; Wallace & Theresa; therethere; Reader by the Window; Current Details; (Bliss) (Dread) The Road Rises to Meet You; and Soaring with Dogs. The screening will be preceded by a looped version of her latest work touch 1.0. The works vary in length from 1.5 to 16 minutes.

She uses a wide range of techniques – using computer scanners, overlapping images and sounds, focus, and many different kinds of visual text. Her work is hypnotic and thoughtful, and frequently personal and touching too, as with Wallace & Theresa, her tribute to her late friend and fellow artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha.

The Free Screen continues on April 11 with a co-presentation with the Images Festival of Lewis Klahr's The Pettifogger, a witty feature-length noir drama using his collage technique and found radio dialogue.

http://tiff.net/filmsandschedules/tiffbelllightbox/2012/4400001484

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New Season of The Free Screen begins March 21 with Jan Peacock

Kennedy’s first season as The Free Screen programmer will launch on March 21 with a salute to Jan Peacock. One of Canada's most important video artists and one of the winners of this year’s Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts, Peacock has influenced and guided successive generations of artists in their explorations of the video medium. Jan Peacock: Using Clouds for Words is a survey of her oeuvre that includes gems that includes gems such as her early video, California Freeze-Out (1980), made while a graduate student at UC San Diego and included the influential California Video show curated by Kathy Rae Huff for the 1980 Paris Biennial; Wallace & Theresa (1985), in which she memorializes her friend Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, an artist and writer whose life was cut brutally short; and (Bliss) (Dread) The Road Rises to Meet You (1987), a key piece made during the maelstrom of the AIDS epidemic. The screening will be preceded by a looped version of her most recent work, touch 1.0 (2012). Peacock will be attendance to introduce the film and for a Q&A session.

On April 11, The Free Screen, in co-presentation with the Images Festival, will feature the Toronto premiere of American collage-artist and filmmaker Lewis Klahr's The Pettifogger (2011). A narcotic mixture of noir-driven intrigue and brooding, contemplative passages driven by strong mood music and found dialogue from radio potboilers, Klahr’s longest piece to date is an elliptical narrative of a year in the life of an American gambler and con man (the "petty fugger" of the title), circa 1963. The filmmaker will be in attendance to introduce the film and to do a Q&A session after the screening.

About TIFF
TIFF is a charitable cultural organization whose mission is to transform the way people see the world through film. An international leader in film culture, TIFF projects include the annual Toronto International Film Festival in September; TIFF Bell Lightbox, which features five cinemas, major exhibitions, and learning and entertainment facilities; and innovative national distribution program Film Circuit. The organization generates an annual economic impact of $170 million CAD. TIFF Bell Lightbox is generously supported by contributors including Founding Sponsor Bell, the Province of Ontario, the Government of Canada, the City of Toronto, the Reitman family (Ivan Reitman, Agi Mandel and Susan Michaels), The Daniels Corporation, Major Sponsor and official bank RBC, and BlackBerry. For more information, visit tiff.net.

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