As part of the North American premiere of Leipzig photographer Ricarda Roggan's series KINO at the Goethe Media Space Toronto, we asked two former Goethe-Institut projectionists to talk us through the images of 16mm and 35mm machines in the show from their "user" perspective. The exhibition, part of the Images Festival and the Contact Photography Festival, is on view until 19 September 2020 with a forthcoming commissioned video essay by the artist called "Ricarda Roggan: The Moviegoer". Here is TIFF technical manager Andrei Gravelle pondering a projectionist's reflexes and East German industrial design:I was a professional film projectionist for 13 years and one of the things I miss most about that hands-on period of time were the exciting opportunities that presented themselves when working in a new cinema to try to figure out the operation of unfamiliar equipment. My relationship to the projector “Weimar 3” in Ricarda Roggan’s show “Kino” at the Goethe Media Space is virtual rather than tactile, but the challenge to understand the projector itself is such an ingrained reflex that studying it from images alone feels no different than handling it in person. Continue reading "KINO: An appreciation of the Weimar 3 8mm..." »
As part of the North American premiere of Leipzig photographer
Love is a business at "Family Romance, LLC”, Werner Herzog's latest film as well as the (real) company that offers a human substitute rental service, inventing absent fathers or stand-in companions as needed. Founder Yuichi Ishii helps fulfill the dreams and emotional needs of his clients. Like the mother of the 12-year-old girl Mahiro who hires Ishii to impersonate the absent father. Soon, reality begins to blur around the #fakefeels.
Take a break from streaming films with some “cinema for your ears” as Goethe-Institut Toronto Program Curator Jutta Brendemühl introduces you to the best & brightest film composers in an ongoing video series called "The Sound Of Filmmusik" (
In cooperation with Berlin film production and distribution house Filmgalerie 451, the Goethe-Institut is launching an online streaming program called 
MUBI has become one of the most intriguing international platforms for rotating, hand-picked global cinema, including a steady stream of German films such as Edgar Reitz' historical family epic "Heimat" or one of my favourite Berlin Wall films, Hans Stoehr's "Berlin is in Germany". On the occasion of MUBI's e-release of 
The Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre, TJFF, and the Goethe-Institut Toronto just hosted a screening of Herbert Rappaport & Adolf Minkin’s 1938 Russian antifascist film “Professor Mamlock”, based on the German 1933 play by Friedrich Wolf. It is one of the earliest works dealing with violent Nazi antisemitism and foreshadows the mass murder of Europe’s Jews. In 1961, Friedrich Wolf’s son Konrad Wolf adapted the drama again as a successful DEFA film.
Hello World. Microsoft’s gender-neutral AI “Tay” says they are stoked to meet me. "The more humans share with me the more I learn.” And there’s the rub. Who teaches these new artificial kids? And what do they teach them? Shalini Kantayya's documentary “Coded Bias,” which premiered at Sundance in January and just screened at Toronto’s Hot Docs Festival (the largest in North America) is getting a lot of deserved attention as it doesn’t need two minutes to go for the jugular: Shockingly pervasive, all-encompassing image bias built into algorithm-based tech is stealthily governing our day-to-day lives, from Amazon to Alexa. Snapchat filters. Gendered shopping suggestions. Spotify playlists. Credit checks. Resume key wording. AI recruiting. All algorithm-based. 
