Opening Tomorrow at MOCA: The Honest Shop & Last Chance to View Films by Chantal Akerman

Tomorrow, Friday, May 10th 2019, MOCA presents the fourth project in our Art in Use series, the Honest Shop. A self-service store that showcases and sells products handmade by people in the Junction area, the Honest Shop relies on a system of trust and generosity, where customers must record their purchases and leave cash in the ‘honesty box’ for collection. There are no salesclerks; no Air Miles; and no receipts given.

Rather than have a special selection process for what can be included in the Honest Shop, the products are only those made locally by hand. The disparate array of handcrafted items on display in the shop brings attention to the individual efforts and hidden talents of makers in the community. This unregulated model for trading offers an alternative to commercial mass consumerism—one that is driven by individuals, enthusiasm, and goodwill.

Last chance to view In the Mirror (2007) and NOW (2015) by renowned filmmaker Chantal Akerman at MOCA - these two films speak to the issues that Akerman has explored throughout her career: trauma, gender, belonging and identity.

This is the first Canadian presentation of NOW, which was originally produced for the Venice Biennale in 2015. It creates a sense of being immersed in an arid landscape. The content and controlled point of view make us very aware of the passage of time and the many-layered stories and histories of human occupation.

NOW, is set in stark contrast to the slow and gentle sense of exploration of In the Mirror. Yet both are reflections of and meditations on how we, as individuals, confront and experience our position in society and the world at large.

This exhibition is the first time that Akerman’s work is being shown in a museum in Toronto. The project was introduced to MOCA by curatorial consultant Andréa Picard who invited Akerman to exhibit in Toronto before she passed away in 2015. The opening of MOCA created an opportunity to give space and attention to this important artist. As a companion piece to this exhibition, Picard is curating a retrospective survey of Akerman’s films at TIFF Cinematheque in fall 2019.

Collective City Free Documentary Screening at MOCA - May 10th

Looking for something to do this Friday, May 10th? Drop by MOCA from 7-9pm for free screenings of 3 documentaries that chronicle the rich and vibrant history of Toronto-based visual arts collectives.

SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION
Spontaneous Combustion was a collective of contemporary visual artists, many who had graduated from the Ontario College of Art in the early-to-mid 1980’s. These artists worked in a variety of media ranging from large format printmaking to holography and almost all presented their work in installation format.

In interviews supported by archival film and photography, Spontaneous Combustion founders b.h. yael, Gwen MacGregor and Caroline Langill discuss the collective’s origins, the role of the artist as curator and how few opportunities existed for installation artists – particularly for artists who were working with kinetic work or electronics.

COLD CITY GALLERY
“The brainchild of Toronto artist Dyan Marie, Cold City was formed as a new way to exhibit and sell work. While many hybrid galleries similar to the Cold City model have flourished since, Cold City was arguably the first of its kind in Toronto.” The Cold City Years: Power Plant

Through interviews with Cold City founder Dyan Marie and artists Peter Bowyer and Eldon Garnett, as well as archival photos and videos, this film chronicles this collectives’ ties to literary and critical journals of the day - the name Cold City was adapted from the “Cold City Fiction” issue of Impulse magazine. The artists also discuss the operational philosophy of the gallery and the devastating effect that the AIDS crisis had on the gallery and Toronto’s visual arts community.

PAINTING DISORDERS
Painting Disorders launched their celebrated inaugural show in November 1994 in a rough space on King West. Eye Magazine called the show “a focused, strategic view of the place of painting in the information age” and Canadian Art magazine wrote that it was “one of those tight-as-a-drum shows where each artist carefully reins in his or her work to create an impression of unity and purpose.”

In interviews with Painting Disorders founding members Eric Glavin, Angela Leach and Mark Bell we delve into this collective’s desire to explore the diversity of expression to be found in contemporary non-representational painting. The artists also discuss their influences as well as the challenge in finding opportunities to show their work in an artist-run or commercial gallery scene that had little capacity to exhibit emerging artists.

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 - Full Schedule Announced!

Images Festival is excited to announce the full program schedule for its 32nd edition. Images Festival showcases artistic excellence in contemporary moving image culture through 14 gallery exhibitions, 73 on-screen works, and eight live performances happening throughout the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). The 2019 program features works that elaborate the textures of communities and embody alternative, discursive models of moving image presentation. The curated lineup calls attention to our histories, solidarities, and collaborations, providing vivid perspectives that further challenge and uproot the dialogue surrounding experimental media art.

Images festival from from April 11-18th 2019.

Images Festival’s OPENING NIGHT film on Thursday, April 11 will be the Canadian premiere of Software Garden, a music video album by Rory Pilgrim at The Royal Cinema. In contrast to a recent fascination with technology’s dystopian impact on public and private life, the film asks how we meet from both behind and beyond our screens. Software Garden is preceded by Marnie Ellen Hertzler’s, Hi I Need To Be Loved and Andrés Baron’s Printed Sunset.

On Thursday, April 18 the CLOSING NIGHT program titled Outer Worlds is curated by Janine Marchessault, featuring five new large-format digital film shorts in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the invention of IMAX. Taking place at the historic Cinesphere Theatre at Ontario Place, Outer Worlds include works by Oliver Husain, Lisa Jackson, Kelly Richardson, Michael Snow, and Leila Sujir.

This year’s CANADIAN ARTIST SPOTLIGHT is Vancouver-based filmmaker KC Wei whose work explores the liminal space of music, video and writing, with romance, euphoria and dissolution coursing throughout her narratives. Wei’s first film Murky Colours, draws from the made-for-Hollywood spy novel first written by her father, Menjin Wei, and applies a particular collage aesthetic to account for the work’s fragmented storylines and hybridized, cinematic genre. In calling to this agglomerate execution, Wei selected Hito Steryl’s In Free Fall to accompany the Spotlight Feature.

The Images Festival was established by the Northern Visions Collective to look closely at the dynamics of accessibility. Images began as Toronto’s only alternative to the Toronto International Film Festival, integrating film and video from its inception, and later expanding to include installations, performances and new media.

Akin's Winter Art Crawl at 401 Richmond

Akin Projects invites you to join us for special tours of current creative spaces and resources in 401 Richmond- an Akin Art Crawl focused on organizations providing services and supports for artists!

Come along as creative directors, curators and staff provide special walkthroughs and tours of their current exhibits, projects and spaces.

Crawl Schedule
12:45PM - Meet at 401 Richmond Street West (northeast corner of the building)
1:00PM - Visit Vtape
1:30PM - Visit Akimbo
2:00PM - Visit GALLERY 44
2:30PM - Visit Open Studio
3:00PM - End the crawl with visit to Tangled Art + Disability

Free to attend. All are welcome, open to the public. The more the merrier!

Any attendees who wish to explore other parts of the building after the art crawl are free to do so. Please be advised that not all areas of the building are open to the public.

Our route will take us all over 401 Richmond. Should you lose the group at any point or will be joining us late please see the directory in the lobby for each organization's location within the building.

Accessibility Information:

401 Richmond is an accessible venue. It has a step free access to the building at it's northeast entrance and each floor is level throughout. Elevators are available on site to provide access to all floors.

There are fully accessible washrooms on the 1st and 4th floors.

Please let us know of any other accessibility needs so that we can do our best to assist you. Please email janet@akincollective.com at least one week before the event and we will do our best to accommodate. Thank you!

Poisoned Earth a new Documentary by Andrew Budziak

In early 2018, documentary filmmaker and Akin King member Andrew Budziak received a tip that something bad was happening to wolves in Alberta so he went to investigate. What he found was horrifying. He discovered that the Alberta government has been using a highly lethal poison to kill wolves. The reasoning for doing this? It is said that they want to help caribou numbers which are in decline. All of the conservation experts Budziak’s team spoke to told them something similar. Budziak notes that wolves are not the biggest danger to caribou - habitat destruction from oil and logging is the real threat.  He says that “in order to keep oil and gas happy, the Alberta government has decided to quietly kill wolves instead.” 

This discovery sparked an idea to delve deeper into the issue through a new documentary, Poisoned Earth, a film that takes a serious look at Alberta’s wolf cull practices.

Grey wolves like this are the target of the poison program.

“We really needed people to see what was going on here, what was happening with this program.”

— Budziak on CBC Radio's Edmonton AM.

Through his Kickstarter campaign, Budziak more than doubled the amount needed to finish the film. It’s because of everyone’s generous support that Budziak and team now have the ability to do a number of things to strengthen this story. Learn more about the film and the kickstarter campaign here.

In early December 2018, Budziak was interviewed by CBC’s Wallis Snowdon and Madeleine Cummings about his new film. They discussed this issue in more detail, exploring the use of strychnine in Alberta, a nasty poison used in the wolf culling, and its drastic effects on the surrounding wildlife and ecosystem overall.

Read the full article here.

Andrew is a documentary film maker based in Toronto. He has produced stories on polar bears, wolves, moose, peregrine falcons and the people who fight to keep those animals safe.  Andrew is a former CBC television and radio producer and reporter. His storytelling has taken him around the world from Pakistan to Japan and from Hinton, Alberta to Etobicoke, Ontario.  Andrew lives in Toronto with his wife and their one and a half year old son who proudly makes over ten different animal noises. 

Reelworld Film Festival: Call for Submissions →

Do you know of any Indigenous or racially diverse filmmakers, who would like to be eligible for $125,000 of funding towards their first feature film or web-based narrative work?

Reelworld Film Festival is a recognized partner of Telefilm's Talent To Watch program, and offers access to this funding.  Through our Emerging 20 program (E20), twenty applicants are chosen each year to pitch their projects to industry professionals.  Reelworld provides professional development in September with two days of workshops, and one day during the festival October 11 to actively pitch their projects one-on-one to several industry executives. 

Deadline:  August 17th, 2018 at midnight EST.

Reelworld Film Festival Dates:  October 10-14, 2018

After the festival, participants garner an opportunity to submit their projects to Reelworld for consideration in submission of the Talent to Watch program in March 2019, where they could be chosen by Telefilm to receive $125,000 in funding!

After last year's festival, E20's Lulu Wei and Nayani Thiyagarajah had their projects submitted to Telefilm and both received $125,000 each towards their project.  Who will it be next year?

The Emerging 20 program is supported by the Inspirit Foundation and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

New work by filmmaker and photographer Andrew Budziak of Akin Lansdowne on the Algonquin Wolf

Andrew Budziak is a filmmaker and photographer and owner of the video production company 8 String Media. Andrew has worked in media production and story telling for over a decade and has shot and produced video around the world including Pakistan, India, Philippines, Bosnia, and Japan. His most recent work focuses on species threatened by human-wildlife conflict.

In his recent article for Earth Island Journal, Andrew follows Hannah Barron, a wolf researcher and director of Wildlife Conservation Campaigns for Earthroots, and her research assistant Adrienne Chalaturnyk in Ontario’s Killarney Provincial Park as they as they hunt for DNA samples of Algonquin wolves in and around the park to help better understand the population distribution of the threatened species of canid. 

Read the full article and view the photo slideshow to learn more about Algonquin wolf research in Ontario by clicking the link below:

Want to learn more about Ontario's efforts to save the Algonquin wolf? Andrew and his team have also produced a video for CBC Radio's Quirks and Quarks series on the subject. Click the link below to check it out: 

Follow Andrew on Instagram to keep up with his latest projects: @andrew_budziak

BLURRED LINES: INSIDE THE ART WORLD theatrical release today at Hot Docs!

BLURRED LINES: INSIDE THE ART WORLD is a documentary that explores the art world - from production to circulation, and delineates every integral player in the game of art-making, including curators, gallerists, collectors, donors, auction houses, and artists. Catch it while it's in Toronto - airing at the Hot Docs Cinema starting today through to next Wednesday! 

DAVID LYNCH: THE ART LIFE - opening today at TIFF Bell Lightbox!

DAVID LYNCH: THE ART LIFE a new film from Pacific Northwest Pictures opens today at TIFF Bell Lightbox!

In this new documentary, David Lynch takes us on an intimate journey through the formative years of his life. From the artist, director and musician's idyllic upbringing in small-town America to the streets of Philadelphia, David Lynch: The Art Life shines a light into the dark worlds that gave birth to one of cinema's most enigmatic and fascinating filmmakers.

Polar bears on the brink - New video by 8 String Media for TVO

TVO just released a beautiful new short film by 8 String Media of Akin Lansdowne. It was shot in Polar Bear Provincial Park on Hudson Bay.

AKIN X DRAKE: FREE FILM SCREENING NIGHT

Join the event on Facebook

May 12: 7:00-10:00pm
The Drake Hotel- 1150 Queen Street West
North Lounge

AKIN Collective and The Drake Hotel are pleased to present a free night of short films and documentaries!

Following each screening there will be a short Q&A with the directors and then stick around for drinks!

TRAILERS:

Simone Estrin's A Shift in the Landscape sheds light on the controversy surrounding the endangered Richard Serra sculpture in nearby King City, Ontario.https://vimeo.com/113177970

Caitlin Durlak's Persistence of Vision tells the collaborative story of experimental film maker Lorne Marin, who began to lose his sight.
https://vimeo.com/107265664

Matt Greenwood's stunning short, All Your Changes Have Been Lost explores multiple realities through manipulated Akira Kurosawa film footage.
http://wearepersonnel.com/ALL-YOUR-CHANGES-HAVE-BEEN-LOST

Randall Okita's Portrait as a Random Act of Violence reflects the varying dimensions of our own personalities.
http://www.brooklynfilmfestival.org/films/detail.asp?fid=1470

UbuWeb

UbuWeb: An absolutely outstanding resource for art/film/fashion/culture/documentaries.

Type anything into the search bar.

Check it HERE BABY

Gerhard Richter Painting (2011)

A 2011 film about painting by every good painter's favourite painter, Gerhard Richter.