Toronto, August 22, 2002—The cutting edge work of Ontario film and video artists will find new audiences thanks to a pilot project between TVO and the Ontario Arts Council (OAC).
Masterworks, TVO's popular arts documentary series, will air
Exposures: The Art of Film and Video, seven OAC-supported short works September 5 and 12, starting each night at 10:00 p.m.
With additional funding from the OAC, but still shot on shoestring budgets, these short experimental and non-traditional films deal with a range of themes from loss, memory, and passion, to the struggle for cultural identity, coming of age, and living with illness.
The lineup for Thursday, September 5 starts with The Little Black Dress (90 seconds), by Cathy Daley, an animated visual poem featuring an elusive black gown that transforms at will into various shapes and sizes. Charles Officer’s When Morning Comes (17 minutes) explores family love and family dynamics, following a young father who struggles through addiction as he works to meet the expectations of his seven-year-old son. Filmed in Toronto and Berlin, Dizzy (19 minutes), by Andrew Hall, is a love story told through flashbacks triggered by dizziness. It tells of the search for sexual and personal identity in the modern world. The Last Split Second (7 minutes) from acclaimed filmmaker Judith Doyle, is a visceral account of a car crash and the days after. The film is an adaptation of the words of Toronto artist Andy Patton, who survived a broken back as the result of a car accident, and layers stock footage, digital effects, computer animation, optical printing, and film chemistry to convey shock and the effects of trauma.
Thursday, September 12 features Wide-Eyed (9 minutes) by Jane Kim recounting the story of a young Korean-Canadian desperate to adhere to Western standards of beauty. Mike Hoolboom’s Letters From Home (15 minutes) is a much-lauded piece cut with the words of AIDS victim and activist Vito Russo and the filmmaker himself. The film takes an impassioned and autobiographical look at life with the disease, using interesting cinematic techniques and a diversity of images. Concluding the series is Richard Fung’s Sea in the Blood (26 minutes), an examination of love and loss in a personal tale about family. The film, which uses slides, photographs, and old home movies, takes Fung from Trinidad to England with an invalid sister, and later overland across two continents with a lover infected with HIV.
Viewers will also have an opportunity to hear the filmmakers through short interviews.
Exposures: The Art of Film and Video is a co-production of TVO and the Ontario Arts Council. TVO's Rudy Buttignol is executive producer; Naomi Boxer is associate producer. Producers for the OAC include Annette Mangaard, Associate Visual and Media Arts Officer; and Carolyn Vesely, Visual and Media Arts Officer. Executive director of the OAC is John Brotman.
TVO Media Contact: Rosanne Meandro
Tel: (416) 484-2600 ext. 2389. Toll-free 1-800-613-0513
E-mail: rosanne_meandro@tvo.org
OAC Media Contact: Kirsten Gunter, Manager of Communications
Tel: (416) 969-7403. Toll-free outside of Toronto: 1-800-387-0058, ext. 7403.
E-mail: kgunter@arts.on.ca