German Film @ Canada - Goethe-Institut

Hopeful & exciting news in times of dark cinemas: The 33rd Images Festival is happening --live, free & online-- including our joint program with Berlin video essayist Kevin B. Lee as a guest of the Goethe-Institut.

The Images Festival team has spent the past month adapting their programming to the ever-changing conditions of the social and economic crisis that we are collectively facing. From April 16-22, all Images On Screen presentations—along with selections from their planned Off Screen, Live, and Education programs—will be available to stream live, free of charge, at www.imagesfestival.com, where you can find the full digital festival catalogue and program. Continue reading "Kevin B. Lee @ Images Festival, live, free..." »

On 7 November 2008 Tanztheater Wuppertal celebrated a special premiere: Teenagers perform "Kontakthof", a piece by near-mythical dancer-choreographer Pina Bausch. For nearly a year, 40 local high school students had worked towards that day, practicising every week. Writers-directors Anne Linsel and Rainer Hoffmann accompanied these rehearsals as well as the premiere with their camera.

Their moving documentary "Dancing Dreams", which screened at Berlinale and won the Special Jury Prize at New York's Festival Dance on Camera as well as Best Documentary at the Cinedans Festival Amsterdam, delves into the lifes of these young people and their first encounter with the world of dance --and shows some of the last footage of and last taped interview with Pina before her untimely death.

On the occasion of Tanztheater Wuppertal's guest performances of "Kontakthof" at the Luminato Festival this June and the company's 40th anniversary, we bring arts journalist Anne Linsel to Toronto to screen and discuss her film and collaboration with Pina Bausch:

“Dancing Dreams” (2010) by Anne Linsel & Rainer Hoffmann
June 13, 4pm DVD screening, followed at 5.30pm by a conversation between Linsel and Christopher House, AD of Toronto Dance Theatre
Free admission at the Goethe-Institut Toronto

In the accompanying book, Anne Linsel engaged Pina Bausch and the young students about their process and goals: Continue reading "Pina Bausch's "Dancing Dreams" -..." »

Landing in Osnabrueck can be a culture "shock" for North Americans. A pretty medieval town in the middle of Germany, sadly bombed and sadly reconstructed, it proudly hosts the European Media Arts Festival -- a great example of what I love about the German arts scene: Despite international perception, Berlin is not the be all and end all. The centres of art production, academic research, and presentation are thoroughly decentralised, with not-always-perfect but gutsy places like Oberhausen or Hof sporting major international events and meeting points. Thus for 5 days, you see Asian and European guest artists navigating their way from the alternative backyard theatre to the "Warehouse" along the old fortified town wall of Osnabrueck in amazement or puzzlement or both.

EMAF is as old as Toronto's Images Festival (26), born out of a time when video was already an established art form but going into technological overdrive with the arrival of the internet. DEceleration in an accelerating media age was one of this year's points of discussion, Continue reading "Decelerating EMAF" »