Images Festival 2019 Full Program is Here!

IMAGES FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES THE FULL 2019 SCHEDULE 11 – 18 April, 2019

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 perstpectives that further challenge and uproot the dialogue surrounding experimental media art.

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 will 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 2019 lineup includes an impressive roster of features and mid-length films by national and international artists and filmmakers such as Karolina Breguła presenting the world premiere of Squere (廣場), Anton Vidokle's latest film on Russian Cosmism Citizens of the Cosmos (宇宙市民), award-winning experimental filmmaker Christopher Harris, Adam Khalil and Bayley Sweitzer’s Empty Metal that premiered at the Film Society Lincoln Center in 2018, Lily Jue Sheng with the international premiere of Five Movements (五種流行之氣), Filipa César and Louis Henderson presenting the North American premiere of Sunstone, Simon Mercer (Gary), and Byron Peters (Anti-Racist Mathematics and Other Stories: Episode 1-3).

Images Festival will present short form works by a number of renowned international artists including Cauleen Smith (Sojourner), Sky Hopinka (Dislocation Blues), Ja'Tovia Gary (Giverny I (Négresse Impériale)), Abigail Child (Mutiny), Kevin Jerome Everson (Aquarius), Laura Huertas Millán (jeny303), Elisabeth Molin (Myrmex), Colectivo Los Ingrávidos (Altares). The festival will showcase many outstanding Canadian artists counting Dana Claxton (The Patient Storm), Life of a Craphead (King Edward VII Equestrian Statue Floating Down The Don River), Charlotte Zhang (The Lining), Gabi Dao (The Protagonists), Paz Ramirez Larrain and Laura Acosta (A-5H1) and Ryan Ermacora and Jessica Johnson (Labour/Leisure).

The 2019 Live program features two exciting performances by 2017 Polaris Music Prize winner Lido Pimienta at MOCA and Griffin Poetry Prize 2018 Canadian Shortlist poet and artist Aisha Sasha John at The Costume House. On Saturday, April 13, Images Festival is thrilled to announce the annual Keynote Lecture by filmmaker and critic Charles Mudede titled Visions of Black Secret Technology.

In addition to Images Festival ON Screen programs, the festival is pleased to announce its co-presentation of 14 original exhibitions across the GTA, including Basma AlSharif (Basma AlSharif) at MOCA, Michael Keshane, Christine Negus, Michael Dumont and Eugene Lefrancois, Chris Binkowski (Outliers on Tour) at Tangled Art + Disability, Jonas Blume, Manja Ebert, Ornella Fieres, Aron Lesnik, Lorna Mills, Sarah Oh-Mock, Julia Charlotte Richter, Anna Ridler, The Swan Collective, Tina Wilke (Touching From A Distance II: Transmediations in the Digital Age) at Goethe-Institut Toronto, Sharona Franklin (New Psychedelia of Industrial Healing) at Gallery 44 — Vitrines, Zhizi Wang (We become aware of the void as we fill it) at Support, Nevet Yitzhak (WarCraft) at Koffler Gallery, Sarah Pupo (burning through the body) at Trinity Square Video, Pamila Matharu (One of These Things is Not Like The Other) at A Space, Emilija Škarnulytė (Sirenomelia) at Vtape, Nicole Kelly Westman (a slight space amidst) at Critical Distance,Beatrice Gibson at Mercer Union, Arnait Video Collective (Arnait Ikajurtigiit: Women helping each other) at Art Gallery of York University, Denise Ferreira da Silva and Arjuna Neuman (4 Waters: Deep Implicancy) at Gallery TPW, Public Studio (Wood between Worlds) at TD Art Wall – Bay And Queen.

Images Festival is also excited to announce the 2019 jury: artist and lecturer Michèle Pearson Clarke, filmmaker Priya Sen, and critic and TIFF festival programmer Lydia Ogwang.

SEE THE FULL PRESS RELEASE HERE.

Image credit: Cauleen Smith, Sojourner, 2018.