The Ontario Arts Council (OAC) and TVOntario
have partnered to fund the production and broadcast of 40 one-to-two minute films. These shorts highlight the extraordinary creativity of various Ontario artists who have been funded by OAC over its 40-year history. They reflect the astonishing range of artistic activity that takes place daily throughout our province. Award-winning filmmakers Jennifer Baichwal and Nick de Pencier were commissioned to create cinematic impressions that would draw the viewer into the artists’ work. TVO will air the shorts throughout its broadcast schedule starting this month. A 50-minute compilation of the films will air in the new year on TVO’s Masterworks series, seen Thursdays at 10 p.m. To encourage those interested in pursuing a career in the arts, the films will also be incorporated into CareerMatters, a Web site offered by TVOntario's Independent Learning Centre.
ARTISTS
Kiran Ahluwalia performs “Bechain,” a ghazal that she composed herself. Literally meaning “to talk to women,” the ghazal is a song form that originated in Persia and India. The songs are traditionally about love.
Eleanor Albanese has been writing plays for young people for more than 20 years. She reads from Rosa and the Pocket Window, her newest play. Eleanor is often inspired to write by drawing and painting. She does her best work at a remote cabin outside Thunder Bay that can only be reached in winter by snowshoe.
Alex Bulmer wrote about her impending loss of vision in her celebrated play Smudge. Her reading of a scene describing the soundscape of a café is filmed in context.
Edward Burtynsky is a fine-art photographer who focuses on industrial waste and environmental degradation. “Nature transformed through industry is a predominant theme in my work,” he writes. The shipbreaking footage here was filmed by photographer Jeff Powis, who accompanied Burtynsky on a shoot in Bangladesh.
Kai Chan works with fabrics and various natural materials. His fragile, complex pieces are exhibited in galleries and museums around the world. “Chan's work distinguishes itself through the minimal use of unexpected and modest materials” (award selection committee’s statement, Bronfman Collection Virtual Gallery).
Choreographer Marie-Josée Chartier has choreographed and performed dance internationally for 25 years. She is entranced by the body and strives to concentrate on works that study and celebrate the human form. She is shown in rehearsal with dancers on her newest creation, Screaming Popes.
Peter Chin dances to his own choreography in an excerpt from the dance film Streetcar, filmed in Toronto. He is a multiple Dora award winner as well as a composer, designer, musician, and performance artist.
Renowned filmmaker Atom Egoyan is in the edit suite working on a personal documentary that explores memory, truth and cultural identity. His ruminations on editing give insight into the filmmaking process.
Eve Egoyan is a classically trained pianist who focuses on the works of contemporary Canadian composers. From her rehearsal studio in a Toronto warehouse, she performs Nuevas Monodías Españolas by Montreal-based José Evangelista.
Robert Fones is equally celebrated for his poetry and his visual art, using graphics and everyday objects to draw attention to complex cultural relationships. The installation of his floating heads/Chinese lantern series is filmed as is the opening of the show at the Olga Korper Gallery in Toronto.
Vera Frenkel is a renowned multimedia artist, whose latest installation, The Institute, tests the boundaries of satire and explores the inner life of a dysfunctional cultural institution. We filmed the piece at the Justina A. Barnicke Gallery at Hart House, University of Toronto, with live links to the Web site.
Richard Fung has been making cutting-edge video art that combines drama, documentary, and essay since the 1980s. He calls the award-winning Sea in the Blood, the story of his sister’s failed battle with a rare blood disorder, thalassemia, his most personal film.
Steven Heighton, a Kingston-based poet, sits at his desk reading “Address Book” from his collection of the same name. He is also the author of the best-selling novel The Shadow Boxer.
Philip Hoffman, an experimental “diarist” filmmaker, generously allowed us to use an excerpt from his stunning film what these ashes wanted, which explores his life with writer Marian McMahon, who died in 1996.
Bill James, choreographer, dancer, and artistic director of Atlas Moves Watching, concentrates on site-specific work that gracefully combines many disparate elements. This dance is the last movement of a longer piece, Flux, and was filmed at dawn in Georgian Bay, Ontario.
Rukhsana Khan is a children’s book author who wrote The Roses in My Carpets (with illustrations by Ronald Himler) after visiting a refugee camp in Afghanistan. She regularly visits schools to share her work and promote better understanding of the Muslim faith. She is shown reading from her work to a Grade 7 class at Stella Maris Catholic School in Toronto.
George Leach is a self-taught blues guitarist. Many of his lyrics are inspired by long talks with his father, who told him that if he spoke to the lake, it would speak back. Leach found an eagle feather one day after a swim, and said he knew then that despite the challenges of a musician’s life, he was on the right track. He plays to an appreciative audience at a roadhouse in Milton, Ontario.
Dennis Lee, former poet laureate of Toronto, reads from his latest collection of poems, Un. The exterior snowstorm shots are of Mr. Lee walking home in Toronto’s Annex neighbourhood.
Sarah Link is a ceramics artist who lives and works in Thunder Bay. Her sculptural work has evolved over the years into complex vessels that echo natural forms. “My concerns are with the environment, the conservation and health of the planet, and consequently the health of the earth's inhabitants.”
Daniel MacIvor, writer/actor/director, performs a monologue from Here Lies Henry, which he wrote with long-time collaborator Daniel Brooks. The piece is filmed in the main concourse of Union Station in Toronto.
Ron Martin is shown installing an exhibition of his work at the Christopher Cutts Gallery in Toronto.
Kent Monkman’s latest work is a series of 15 paintings that emerges from his study of the 19th-century Hudson River school’s romantic, colonial vision of the North American landscape. Monkman says he is stealing the landscape back and exploring sexuality and power, mostly in connection with the imposition of Christianity on aboriginal peoples. He is filmed in his Toronto studio in character as his alterego, Miss Share Eagle Testickle.
Marjan Mozetich, a frequently performed contemporary Canadian composer, lives in Kingston and teaches at Queen’s University. The piece “Unfolding Sky” is from his compilation Affairs of the Heart. The upright piano in his living room is the one he’s been composing on since he was a teenager.
Yvonne Ng dances a solo from Bill James’ production of Flux set in a warehouse. She is also a celebrated choreographer and artistic director of her own company, Princess Productions.
Jeff Nolte, who teaches photography at Emory Collegiate, stumbled upon the notion of “fabulous fakes” many years ago to teach his students the value of good lighting and composition. Every year his students replicate the workof a famous photograph as closely as possible, with their own aesthetic twist thrown in.
Charles Officer is an up-and-coming Toronto filmmaker. His Short Hymn–Silent War won a special jury citation at the 2002 Toronto International Film Festival for best work by a young filmmaker.
Michael Ondaatje, internationally celebrated author and poet, reads from his Toronto-based novel In the Skin of a Lion. The archival photographs documenting the construction of the Bloor Street Viaduct are part of an extensive collection housed online at the Toronto Reference Library.
Lata Pada is artistic director of Sampradaya Dance Creations. She is both a choreographer and performer of classical Bharatanatyam, as well as intercultural dance compositions. Here, she dances among the shrines and idols of the Ganesh Temple north of Toronto.
Juliet Palmer is a composer and sound artist originally from New Zealand who now calls Canada home. Her composition Swerve was performed by the Windsor Symphony Orchestra and was inspired by Michael Ondaatje’s collection of poems, Handwriting.
Patricia Rozema got her start as a filmmaker with OAC grants. Her first feature film was I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing, which won awards around the world. We see an excerpt from This Might Be Good, made as part of the Preludes series produced by Rhombus Media and commissioned by the Toronto International Film Festival to celebrate it’s 25th anniversary. The film features actors Sarah Polley and Don McKellar.
R. Murray Schafer is a world-renowned composer. He is shown participating in a workshop organised by Soundstreams Canada, inspiring a younger generation of composers and musicians.
Michael Snow, perhaps Canada’s best-known living artist, is a senior statesman of conceptual art. His work encompasses everything from painting to sculpture to photography to film to computer work to music. He speaks to us against the backdrop of a looped photographic slide installation entitled Slidelength based on images from his 1967 seminal film Wavelength at the Goethe Institut. A solo piano piece by Snow was added after the fact.
Martin Tielli is best known as lead guitar and voice of the Rheostatics, but also has a thriving solo career. He sings “From the Reel” at home in Toronto. He is a gifted painter, and the large canvas behind him is the artwork for the album cover of The Blue Hysteria.
Roy Thomas, a self-taught aboriginal painter from Longlac, was inspired as a child by the rock paintings at Sandy Lake Reserve. His grandmother encouraged him as he drew pictures on the ground while she told him stories. He fretted that these pictures would disappear, but his grandparents told him not to worry; one day they would come back to him as paintings. The scenes here are filmed in Thunder Bay, where Thomas lives, and the paintings were shot at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery, which houses many of his works.
Judith Thompson, award-winning playwright, sits in her kitchen, where she often writes, reading a monologue from her play Capture Me, which premiered at the Tarragon Theatre in Toronto.
ARTS ORGANIZATIONS
Coach House Press was started in 1979 by Stan Bevington, and continues in the world today as Coach House Books. It is one of only three Canadian publishers to print its books in house. Canadian authors Michael Ondaatje, Ann-Marie MacDonald, and Anne Michaels all published their first books with Coach House and many of those first books were typeset on the Linotype machine in the front doorway.
The Stratford Festival of Canada has been in operation for more than 50 years. Filmmakers were given backstage access to witness Bottom and Titania (Thom Marriott and Dana Green) prepare for a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The play’s music was composed by Bruce Gaston.
The Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra plays on period instruments and has an international reputation. We see them in final rehearsal of “Winter” from a unique multicultural interpretation of Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons that they are about to take on tour.
The Windsor Symphony Orchestra, celebrating more than 55 years, presented the world premiere of commissions from five Canadian composers in January 2004. Under the direction of John Morris Russell, the 43-member orchestra plays Like Breath, written by their composer-in-residence, Brent Lee.
The Woodland Cultural Centre, on the Six Nations reserve in Brantford, celebrates Aboriginal heritage. In the snow snake competition held each winter, wooden javelins are carved by hand and launched down a track made of snow. The objective is to see who can throw the farthest. Through its museum and various diverse cultural events, the Centre’s hope is to provide a First Nations perspective on the world.
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For more information:
Kirsten Gunter
OAC Communications Manager
416-969-7403
kgunter@arts.on.ca
Rosanne Meandro
TVO Publicity
416-484-2600 ext.2389 or 1-800-613-0513
rmeandro@tvo.org
The Ontario Arts Council is an agency of the Government of Ontario.
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