Enjoy Your Favourite Spring Festival at Home

Today we have rounded up a shortlist of Canadian festivals who have made the tough but exciting decision to share some of their programming online so you can continue to enjoy fresh content at home. Many of these festivals kick off tonight so tune in this evening for some new documentaries, art films and more!

Image source: CBC

Hot Docs at Home on CBC

When: Thursday nights starting on April 16th 2020.

Watch Hot Docs at Home on CBC, a multiplatform festival-at-home experience providing Canadians with front-row access to select titles from the 2020 Hot Docs Festival premiering Thursday nights starting April 16.

Following the postponement of the 2020 Hot Docs Festival due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a small selection of exclusive first-run feature documentaries that would have debuted at the Festival will now premiere on CBC, the free CBC Gem streaming service and documentary Channel. CBC will also partner with Hot Docs to expand the at-home audience experience with interactive, livestreamed Q&As with filmmakers and other original digital content at CBC Docs.

Image source: Images Festival. Sky Hopinka, maɬni — towards the ocean, towards the shore, 2020

Images Festival

Images Festival invites audiences to experience new and independent voices from Canada and across the globe at its 33rd edition, taking place online.

When: April 16-22, 2020

As one of the most enduring and respected platforms in the world for the exhibition and discourse of independent film and media art, Images continues to explore how moving image works are created, exhibited, and received in the current socio-political moment. Responding to the Covid-19 crisis, Images’ ON SCREEN program will be presented via live-stream at imagesfestival.com. Over 75 extraordinary works from some of the world’s most innovative and daring filmmakers and video artists will be available to stream, starting April 16th.

Silvia Kolbowski, That Monster: An Allegory, B+W film projection, 18 minutes (9 mins with sound, 9 mins silent), 2018.

Gallery 44 & Images Festival Present Silvia Kolbowski Digital Screening and Artist Talk

When: Saturday, April 18 at 12:00PM

Join Gallery 44 for an online screening of Silvia Kolbowski’s 2018 video That Monster: An Allegory, followed by a conversation between Kolbowski and co-curator Jared Quinton. That Monster is part of the artist’s solo exhibition A Few Howls Again, currently set to open in Gallery 44’s main space and vitrines, later this year.

“That Monster: An Allegory addresses the projections and identifications at play in today’s mass politics. The film was developed out of a desire to elucidate the riddle of mass enthrallment to demagogic power that does not serve its interests. That Monster features remixed images and sequences from the classic horror film The Bride of Frankenstein, (1935; James Whale). The film plays once with sound and once in silence.”
—Silvia Kolbowski

Please email heather@gallery44.org if you would like to attend. Registered attendees will receive a link to join the event.

Remote Control: an AGYU Live Instagram Performance Series

When: Tuesdays beginning on April 14th, 2020. 7-8PM.

Starting Tuesday April 14, at 7 pm, join the AGYU live on Instagram @a_g_y_u for Remote Control—a spoken word, dance, and music performance series curated by Randell Adjei and Nathan Baya. The series continues each Tuesday evening for the next four weeks.

AGYU is excited to launch a new Instagram takeover, featuring two influential performance scenes of spoken word poets, singers, rappers, and dancers. Working in partnership with cultural visionaries—Scarborough-based R.I.S.E. Edutainment Director, Randell Adjei and Jane Street Speaks Founder, Nathan Baya—AGYU presents Remote Control, an online social media forum for performance that builds virtual communities and creative solidarity in a difficult and unprecedented period of social distancing and cultural isolation.

Call for OFF Screen, LIVE, and Guest Programs now open!

Images Festival is pleased to open their call for OFF SCREEN and LIVE submissions that accepts program and exhibition proposals for cinema screenings and gallery exhibitions on a rolling basis. 

Proposals will be reviewed in the summer and early fall over an extended period of planning as the festival’s program and presenting partnerships begin to take form.

Submission deadline: Ongoing

Proposals received in one review cycle may not be conceptually complementary or logistically possible for the upcoming festival year. However, the removal of a fixed submission deadline allows Images to consider proposals in greater depth, assess capacity, and prepare to seek funding and partnerships to meaningfully support the realization of the presentations. 

ABOUT IMAGES FESTIVAL

Images Festival annually exhibits film and video installations, media-based performances, and online work alongside its ON SCREEN program of film and video works. For the OFF SCREEN and LIVE segments of the festival, Images partners with GTA-based galleries, production centres, and other organizations.

Images presents work that counters dominant mainstream narratives and provides alternative ways of thinking and seeing that expands the understanding of media art through our programming and education-based initiatives. 

Images Festival does not select films based on any particular themes, genres or aesthetic categories but selects moving image works that share formal and political sensibilities which emerge from recent critical discourses between contemporary art, cinema and media arts. 

33rd Images Festival Call for ON SCREEN Submissions

Established in 1987, IMAGES FESTIVAL is the longest running and most influential moving image festival in Canada. Our ON SCREEN program is an annual survey dedicated to contemporary artist’s film and video presented in a cinema context and to moving image in all its forms.

Images presents work that counters dominant mainstream narratives and provides alternative ways of thinking and seeing that expands the understanding of media art through our programming and education-based initiatives. 

Images Festival does not select films based on any particular themes, genres or aesthetic categories but selects moving image works that share formal and political sensibilities which emerge from recent critical discourses between contemporary art, cinema and media arts. 

DATES

The 33rd edition of Images Festival will take place between April 16 to 22, 2020.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE

Monday, October 14, 2019. 

GENERAL SUBMISSION ELIGIBILITY

Images Festival will consider works that have been completed in the last three years, including short, mid-length and feature films. Artists maintain final edit and copyright control. 

If you submit an incomplete film (rough cuts, works-in-progress), the picture must be locked. We do not offer funds for the completion of works, or take on commissions.

STUDENT SUBMISSION ELIGIBILITY

Images Festival will accept student works that have been completed in the last academic year (2019/2020) for consideration in our annual International Student Showcase program, which is programmed by students and/or recent graduates. The work must not exceed 20 minutes in length in order to qualify.

Student artists and filmmakers can submit a maximum of two submissions/works. If there are multiple submissions, only the first two works submitted by each student will be reviewed. 

If students elect to submit to the general On Screen Competition program (rather than in the student category), the entry fee requirement applies. 

PLEASE NOTE: Student works may NOT be entered into both the Student and On Screen Competition programs.

2019 Images Festival is Almost Here!

The Images Festival is one of the most enduring and respected platforms in the world for the exhibition and dissemination of independent film and media art. The festival takes place annually in Toronto, Ontario, and has been attended by more than 25,000 people each year. The 2019 edition will take place from April 11 – 18th and will include approximately 16 in-cinema programs, 14 gallery exhibitions, 10 public program events, and five live performances. Images has spent the last 31 years presenting media works that range from the formally and aesthetically challenging, to the personal and lyrical and is committed to cultivating a passionate arts community who see moving image culture as a means or understanding our contemporary context.

Opening Night: Software Garden by Rory Pilgrim
Thursday April 11, 7:00PM
The Royal Cinema, 608 College St.

Nurtured over two years of collaboration, workshops, and live concerts, artist and musician Rory Pilgrim premieres his debut music video album Software Garden in Canada. In contrast to a recent fascination with technology’s dystopian impact on public and private life, Software Garden asks how we meet from both behind and beyond our screens. Over the course of 11 tracks and performances, we encounter proposals for tenderness with digital and robotic entities in tow. Without cynicism, irony, or repudiation, the enmeshing of lyrical, cinematic, and choreographed sequences pour between stage, studio, and screen.

Opening night will be followed by Opening Night Party featuring Korea Town Acid at The Baby G.

HEAT (a work-in-progress) by Aisha Sasha John
Saturday April 13, 10:00PM
The Costume House, 165 Geary Ave.

Aisha Sasha John’s medium is energy. Her solo dance show the aisha of is premiered at the Whitney museum in 2017; in 2018 it was presented by the mai and Toronto’s 2018 summerworks festival. I have to live. (McClelland & Stewart) was a finalist for the 2018 Griffin Poetry Prize.

Keynote Lecture: Visions of Black Secret Technology by Charles Mudede
Saturday April 13, 3:00PM
Innis Town Hall, 2 Sussex Ave.

This talk will begin by closely examining the movie Black Panther to determine not only how black technology is visualized, but, more importantly, what this visualization tells us about our understanding, manner of coding, and modes of experiencing technology as a whole.

401 Richmond Gallery Tour with Geneviève Wallen
Saturday April 13, 12:00PM
The Commons, 401 Richmond St. W.

Join curator and writer Geneviève Wallen on tour of the exhibitions at 401 Richmond.

Meet at the lobby of 401 Richmond for a walking tour of Outliers on Tour at Tangled Art + Disability, Sharona Franklin’s installation in the Gallery 44 Vitrines, New Psychedelia of Industrial Healing, Sarah Pupo’s solo exhibition burning through the body, Emilija Škarnulytė’s video work Sirenomelia at VTape.

The tour will conclude at Pamila Matharu’s solo exhibition One of These Things is Not Like The Other, at A Space. Followed by an artist talk by Matharu at 1:00pm.

Artist Talk: KC Wei
Sunday April 14, 3:00PM
Small World Museum, 101-180 Shaw St.

Canadian Spotlight artist KC Wei will deliver a talk about her music, publishing and community driven projects, as well as her latest film, art rock? The Popular Esoteric (2018) — a recent document of overlaps in Vancouver's underground music and art scenes. Her talk with be followed by a conversation with journalist and critic Merray Gerges.

Wei's first feature film, Murky Colours (2016) will screen on April 13.

IMAGES FESTIVAL: VOLUNTEER MANAGER

The Images Festival is seeking a Volunteer Manager! North America’s largest exhibitor of independent and experimental moving image culture is currently seeking a Volunteer Manager. The person in this position will work in a collaborative environment to plan and execute a successful 2014 festival involving multiple exhibition sites and events, and public, corporate and community partners. Images is a dynamic workplace and annual forum for excellence and innovation in contemporary media art. The Images Festival, based in Toronto and in its 27th year, features artist-made Canadian and international film and video and related new media, installations and live performances. This 10-day festival combines theatrical screenings with gallery-based media art installations and live performances. Images also features symposia, artists’ talks, special curated programs, touring programs, year-round programming and publications alongside its annual competition selection of moving image artworks. For more info, have a look at the posting here!