Jes Sachse’s erotic photos revealed

CONTACT Annual Toronto Photography Festival

By Adriana Rolston

A stream of customers and artistic admirers wandered amid vibrators, porn and Alleviate, Jes Sachse’s erotic photography series, which hung inside Come as You Are (CAYA) on May 7, as part of Toronto’s CONTACT photography festival.

In a jean vest, with a blonde fringed faux hawk and a silver lightning bolt dangling from her ear, Sachse publicly addressed the negative reactions her debut Contact show received during its initial week of exposure. “If work is self- representative we often take the hit,” she said to the crowd on opening night.

Her collection will be featured at CAYA until June 15th, and focuses on visible disability and self portraiture through the lens of the subject, in an attempt to transcend the stereotypical gaze of disability. From freak shows to the medical text narrative, Sachse uses her own body to juxtapose clichéd imagery in playful and provocative ways.

She plays with gender ambiguity in a series entitled “Hair.” Standing at the foot of a basement with her breasts covered in tin foil and a surgical mask over her face or a pylon grasped between her legs, wearing a moustache.

Sachse was born with a rare condition known as Freeman-Sheldon Syndrome and has scoliosis which curves the spine.

Sarah-Forbes Roberts, one of the co-owners of CAYA said that last spring she invited Sachse to participate in CONTACT 2009 at their venue because she feels there needs to be a place to showcase diverse artistic images of bodies that aren’t mainstream.

“It’s sort of this moment that throws open the door to what is beautiful,” said Roberts, who feels Sachse’s work ties in with the store’s mandate of accessible sexuality.

Her eclectic hodgepodge of photography dates from 2006 up until this past December when she decided to invite viewers into the private space of the bathroom, as opposed to the “yes we can” public image of the wheelchair roving individual. One photograph in particular has generated quite a response.

Sachse stands nude in the shower, grasping the edge of a white plastic curtain as hair dye runs in between her breasts, over her short torso and in between her long legs. A heart reading “crooked” is etched on her chest as tattooed squid tentacles wrap around her arm. Her head is tilted, mouth open, eyes challenging the camera.

“It makes you uncomfortable because I’m naked but I’m also not looking at you in this very renaissance-woman-naked-on-a-couch kind of passive stare, I’m engaging you,” she said.

Audience reactions ranged from “Is that attractive?” to “Why would anyone want to see that?” Sachse worked with Cory Silverberg, part co-owner of CAYA to print an educational Q&A response to be posted in the store with copies available for visitors to take.

She realizes that feedback has less to do with her and more to do with the viewers. “You kind of plant a seed. In that act I’ve done my job.”

But backlash has erupted from more than one source. After submitting a blurb about her show to CONTACT organizers in December, which was published on the webpage and printed in distributed magazines, Sachse noticed it was altered without her notification.

The updated version indicated that observers of Alleviate would be extended an invitation to take a “fresh look” at physical disabilities.

“I felt like it really fucked with everything else I wrote because the whole point is to replicate the most tired archetypes that are associated with disability and to self represent and make new ones,” said Sachse, who felt the word “fresh” was a huge contradiction.

“Here I am trying to sell disability. Disability like you’ve never seen it before kind of deal,” she said in a mocking tone. “I was so mad.”

Last year during the Erotic Blender Art Exhibit at the Gladstone Hotel an Eye Weekly reporter who interviewed her commented on how articulate she was before remarking that “disability is so en vogue,” said Sachse.

This is the type of vibe she has received from the Toronto art scene. “Any media attention has had to do with the fact that disability is, I don’t now, the new black or something.”

But Sachse plans to incorporate these experiences into her art in a variety of different media. Currently in the works, a collaborative documentary will follow the responses her work has received over the years and include other politically like-minded artists. She will continue exploring ways to photograph the medical narrative, infantalization, iconography and censorship associated with disability.

“My method of dealing with stuff is tongue and cheek kind of humour. I’ve come to realize doing the work itself is enough in terms of addressing it. Adding to the dialogue is enough.”

What TIFF is to film, CONTACT is to photography

Snapshots from CONTACT annual photography festival

By Elli Stuhler

The thirteenth annual month-long photography festival usurped the galleries of Toronto this May, celebrating the impact this modern medium has on our perception of visual representation. With over 220 venues and 1000 artists, it may have been hard to keep track of what was where. Here are some highlights:

 

Salt and Earth
Jonathan Taggart
Ryerson Gallery

 

About an hour north of Toronto, near the town of Caledon lies Whole Village, an ecovillage where Taggart lived, worked and documented. An ecovillage is, as the artist statement explains, “a response to concerns over a lack of community in our society and the urbanization and impoverishment of farmland.” His photographs depict life in the village with rich black and white imagery of leafy crops, rotting wooden plank fences and the humble gazes of its inhabitants.

 

Iran Revisited
Sanaz Mazinani
Toronto Image Works

 

Thirty years after the revolution in Iran, Mazinani aims to reveal life in Iran with the complexity of Western influence in a traditionalist country and the identity crisis that ensued. The exhibit juxtaposed women in traditional headscarves and women in Western dress talking on cell phones, and of beach patios overshadowed by Armani billboards.

 

All Present and Accounted For
Beverly Owens
The Beverly Owens Project

 

Beverly Owens acknowledges that photography reaches beyond the shutter button and that image modification reaches beyond photoshop. She does this with her exhibit of vintage photographs that she has manipulated through layers of encaustic, pastels, oils and sculpture. The photos she uses range from turn of the century to mid forties and explore the dynamics of the individual within a group, how one stands out or blends in through their posture, expression or mere radiance.

 

Still Motions
Various Artists
Gladstone Hotel

 

While the second floor of the hotel boasted exhibits of over 30 photographers, the third and fourth floor of the historic Gladstone Hotel in Parkdale was reserved for something which, like the Beverly Owens project, stretches our idea of what a photograph is. The images here consisted of different media (from clicking vintage projectors to blu-ray) and were projected onto the wall or played on flat screen video screens. Instead of being portrayed in a single frame, these pieces were actually video loops, but had enough stillness to them to blur the lines between photo and film. Too bad for the artists however, who had their thunder stolen when the Gladstone also offered an open house for their exquisite artist-designed hotel rooms.

 

Jeff Bark
Nicholas Metivier Galler
(Part of Various exhibits)

 

Named one of the 50 best bets by Toronto Life magazine, New York dwelling photographer Jeff Bark’s exhibit for CONTACT is his first on this side of the border. With his smooth fleshy tones and soft shadows, his dreamy nudes are an Ingres painting come to life. His surreal Flesh Rainbow series consists of nude bodies drenched in vibrant colours, but where the bodies are naked, the faces are concealed be it by plants, twisted towels or pillows.

Tamils mourn, the Sinhalese celebrate

With new death counts totalling in the tens of thousands, Tamil-Canadians are left to wonder if real peace will ever be possible in their homeland

By Lakshine Sathiyanathan

Unity in Sri Lanka is inconceivable. The “end” of the war posits extreme and indefensible polar positions. While the Sinhalese majority burst into jubilation in the capital city, the end held different implications for Tamils in the war-torn north.

The declaration of an emphatic military “victory” in the humbly dubbed “war on terror” is deceiving. The defeat of the Tamil Tigers becomes the false belief that with the Tigers, Tamil aspirations for an independent state have been squashed. Worse, the catastrophic civilian causalities that have been ignored and revered as a victory is indicative of the abhorrent nature present in Sinhalese nationalism.

Once a civil war, for some a liberation struggle, the labels have become polarized since. The recent escalation in violence and the end to the war has dwindled the conflict into a two-way race – war on terror versus genocide. Many Sinhalese adopt the former.

They are the ones who engage in moral hypocrisy – supporting a stance for no more legitimate a reason than denouncing the other, in mere efforts to fulfill an untold obligation to their ethnicity. The rationale behind their position is clear; in some cases, it comes down to their last name. Morality should not be tied to family trees. Such blind support is the product of contrived ethnic loyalty, moral idiocy and the perversion of the global “war on terror.”

They are indoctrinated with extreme Sinhalese nationalism, evident in the determination by successive Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lankan governments to transform multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-lingual, multicultural Sri Lanka into a Sinhalese-Buddhist state. Sri Lanka strives for uniformity, not unity.

The desire to destroy the Tamil national identity carries over to some in the Sinhalese community in Canada. Fitted with Sri Lankan government-prescribed blinders, Sinhalese-Canadian protestors condemned the Tamil Tigers in counter-protests, blanket-branding Tamil-Canadian protestors as “terrorists.” They use the terrorist rhetoric as a guise to divert attention from the Sri Lankan government’s own grave humanitarian abuses and blatant disregard for “its people” in its military offensive.

They make no distinction between Tamils and the Tamil Tigers. We are terrorists. We are Tiger-sympathizers. We support a ruthless terrorist organization. Condemn the Tigers, if you must. But save the Tamils.

They refuse to acknowledge the Tamil Eelam flag, or what they call the Tamil Tiger terrorist flag, as the symbol of our national identity. We do not identify with the orange strip meant to represent us in the periphery of the Sri Lankan flag. We will not raise the flag of the country that has oppressed us and pushed us to the peripherals of its society.

Attacks on a Toronto-area Sinhalese-Buddhist Temple and a Sinhalese restaurant have been conveniently exploited to further alienate the Tamil community. These attacks have been incorrectly pinned on rising Tamil fervour and so-called Tamil Tiger tactics. Tamils continue to be the easily accessible scapegoat for some.

Sri Lanka’s Consul General Bandula Jayasekara claimed the restaurant fire as an act of Tamil Tiger militancy. But the Sinhalese family who owned the restaurant did not wish to speculate or point fingers at Tamils or Tamil Tigers without evidence. His statement as a diplomat deliberately perpetrates communal animosities in his bid to hold power and strike fear. His sentiment is anti-Tamil under the front of anti-Tamil Tiger.

The unity and triumphant rejoicing that the Sri Lankan government speaks of is yet another ploy in the self-satisfying narrative it continues to write. A united Sri Lanka is indeed a bold-faced lie, when thousands of Tamils are living in dire conditions, segregated from the rest of this rejoicing society. Confined to tarpaulin tents and surrounded by barbed wire and armed soldiers, they have fled the war zone, only to be bombarded by the frighteningly familiar images of war yet again. Tamils mourn, the Sinhalese celebrate.

RECORD REVIEWS

By Stephen Carlick

 

Dirty Projectors
Bitte Orca
Past meets present, digital meets organic and genres merge on this complex pop masterpiece.

RATING: A

The Dirty Projectors’ front-man Dave Longstreth studied music at Yale University and it shows. Bitte Orca can only be classified as pop music in that there is no other real way to describe it. There are handclaps, chipper guitar strums, taut rhythms and the like, but the constant shifting of tempo, rhythm, key and instrumentation expose a musical complexity not often seen in the genre. The album’s nine tracks are stuffed with enough ideas to satiate any listener, and the songs’ occasional lengthiness never feels overbearing or emotionally overwrought. Longstreth has found a way to make music that is at once involving and deep without getting angsty or dramatic, a feat that today is too seldom seen in music. He has created something definitely romantic that never resorts to tired clichés and sappy ballads to convey intense feelings, relying on emotionally evocative potential of music, rather than the bluntness of lyrics, to do so. Bitte Orca is a well of positivity, full of sunny melodies and falsetto split between Longstreth and singer Amber Coffman, whose back-and-forth singing structure is conversational and pleasant. Their exuberance is consistently apparent. Their singing range impressively vast, especially on first single “Stillness is the Move.” The single showcases the band’s strengths at once: the ability to meld the digital (electronic beats) with organic music (plucked guitar, string swells); the incredible singing range (Coffman is all over the scales here); the sheer enthusiasm and melodic complexity of musicians playing with technical ability and musical creativity in equal measure. The album bounces around from genre to genre, making “pop” the only umbrella-term under which the music can be collected. The album almost sounds worldly in its scope. The classical-sounding guitar of “Temecula Sunrise” sounds almost Spanish due to the use of scales, “Remade Horizon” borders on the tropical between its gently strummed guitar and rhythmic bass plucks, and songs like “The Bride” and “Two Doves” remind the listener of American musical theatre and opera. However, even to make these remarks is slightly reductive, as the songs on Bitte Orca never stay in the same place for very long. Album centrepiece and title-track (albeit in English rather than what I believe must be Latin) “Useful Chamber” is perhaps the best example of this as well as the best song on the album. At six-and-a-half minutes, it travels the most territory. Beginning with a hip-hop-esque opening that later moves through guitar plucked verses with stabs of distortion, a minimalistic and rhythmic pre-chorus and finally, an explosive and triumphant chorus. Only six songs into the album, this track ensures the words “Bitte Orca” will stick in the listener’s mind - As if they hadn’t been already.

 

 

 

Grizzly Bear
Veckatimest
Inconsistency and musical apathy mar the third Grizzly Bear LP

 

RATING: C-

This album might be the most highly-anticipated “indie” album of the summer. As details and tracks leaked onto the internet steadily, hype surrounding the album grew to outrageous proportions. I never got around to Grizzly Bear’s 2006 breakout album Yellow House and saw Veckatimest as my opportunity to see what the fuss was about. As it turns out, I was underwhelmed. On Veckatimest, the band seems to have all the right ingredients, they just can’t seem to get the recipe right all the time. This is surprising, since the opening two tracks, “Southern Point” and “Two Weeks” are very promising. The former boasts a bouncy beginning that later opens up to interesting chord changes accentuated by call and response vocals and thundering drums; the latter is the first single, a stomper of a song that chimes with piano and guitar triplets that, along with the choral voices, lend the song an epic and atmospheric quality. Quickly, though, the album spirals into a seven song slump starting with “All We Ask” and ending with the lazy “Hold Still.” The songs sound terribly lethargic, as though the band had come up with a few fleeting moments of quirky melody and interesting chord changes and then surrounded them with the sound of musicians half-falling asleep, awakening only intermittently to provide sparkles of musical potential. The closest to success of this batch comes at the end of “Ready,” when the voices and guitar in the song are whipped into a frenzy that sounds like they’re stuck in a carousel. The moment is spooky and engaging, but amongst such a blur of musical banality, it only briefly captures the listener’s attention. In an attempt at fairness and thinking that perhaps I was just missing something and the album might be a grower, I listened to it over and over for weeks, sure that I was just missing something but every time I was left uninspired and finding it hard to pay attention for long. The wait for something magical arrives with “While You Wait for the others,” surely the best song on the album. Finally, Grizzly Bear seem to have managed what they achieved on the opening tracks, but it’s too late; one beautifully sung and melodically powerful epic can’t make up for seven songs worth of boredom and two more mediocre tracks following. Their C+ mark, if you’re puzzled, is earned only by the interesting (though half-baked) ideas throughout the album and how great it would have been had Grizzly Bear simply had more of them.

 

St. Vincent
Actor
Proving that the individual is still relevant through sheer melody and musical fearlessness

RATING: A-

First, a disclaimer: the last thing the musical landscape needs are more Feist impersonators. As far as I’m concerned, the guitar singer-songwriter is inching ever nearer to obsoleteness. There’s only so much one person can do without co-operation and the bouncing of ideas off of peers, and as every singer from every band (and their mother) have begun to deem it necessary to record a solo LP, the field has grown increasingly more crowded. However, records like Actor come along every so often to demonstrate why the singer-songwriter still has a relevant role to play in music. Annie Clark (St. Vincent is her stage name) wrote her album in a very unconventional way. Since the musical compositions of singer-songwriters are limited to their technical ability, (ie. Though you can dream up anything to be played on a guitar at any speed, it doesn’t necessarily mean you can also play it; your mind might be a better composer than your fingers can keep up with), she decided first to record the whole thing on “Garageband” (a free composition program on Macs) to satisfaction. When she was finished, she forced herself to learn all the parts, thereby challenging herself to play a composition that she had first imagined without the confines of her technical ability. The result is a creative and dynamic album that feels cohesive despite never staying in the same place long. As her haunting voice fades into album opener “The Strangers,” gentle strings and plucked acoustic guitars delicately push the song towards an ending that veers through flute tremolos and wildly strummed distortion-drenched guitars, a move that immediately demonstrates Clark’s musical fearlessness and establishes her as a creative songwriter willing to flout the boundaries seemingly surrounding the singer-songwriter (females in particular). The albums floats effortlessly through electronica, folk, trip-hop, rock and musical theatre without once sounding contrived, largely due to her interesting sense of melody and elegant voice. Though her music is dynamic and interesting, it’s on the tracks where her melodies are most intriguing that Clark sounds her best. Tracks like “The Neighbors” and “The Party” seem at once mysterious and engaging, as her melody draws the listener into the songs and keeps them intrigued by jumping from one melodic phrase to the next and then introducing instrumentals that bring the songs to territory that Clark’s peers never reach. Thus, Actor is suitably titled: it’s an album by a woman with many hats whose sense of melody and drama, coupled with her sense of adventure, makes for an album that demonstrates the continued relevance of the solo musician in an age where too many are sacrificing it for commercial gain.

De La Soul
Are You In?
Hip hop’s elder statesmen maintain their artistic integrity, increase demand for proper LP

RATING: B-

De La Soul has never released anything deserving of less than a B-. They’re the unsung heroes of hip-hop, three fearless individuals who never sacrificed their ethics or artistic integrity for sales and remain, 20 years after their classic debut (3 Feet High and Rising), one of hip hop’s most consistent icons. Their latest, Are You In? may tread dangerously close to sell-out territory, (what with Nike commissioning their album for its “Run” series, with forty-five-minute albums designed to soundtrack a workout by gradually building up tempo until the last five minutes, at which point the album “cools down.”) But aside from making various references to running, they never sacrifice their vision. In short, this is a De La joint, not a Nike one. The album is one non-stop track, meaning that it is divided into about nine five-minute movements that make up an album that is essentially a dance-hop epic. Posdnuos, Trugoy, and Maseo misstep only once, on a four-minute long distorted-guitar cheese-fest that begins around the twenty-first minute and ends at the beginning of the twenty-sixth, when the song kicks back into groovy gear. The album begins with a slow, soulful and positive introduction that wishes the listener a “good morning” before slipping fluidly into a more fleshed-out version of the intro, where a trumpet quietly foreshadows where the album might be going. However, in the twelfth minute the instruments fade out quickly to an old school drum groove that eventually transitions to a distorted and crackly Posdnuos flipping rhymes. The rhyming continues as the aforementioned guitar part, accentuated by jazzy interludes, raises the tempo and gives way to a ten minute electro-jam that buzzes, blips, and bumps like a DJ’s techno set. At the forty-minute mark, the album settles back into a slinky, soul-sampled groove, allowing De La to close out the epic on terms they are familiar with. Lyrically, the album has moments of vapidity (see every time they mention running), but overall, it’s an effort full of the questions that make De La Soul some of the most intelligent rappers still going, as they interrogate society’s materialism, narcissism and obsession with money. Musically, the album is fun and flowing and MC’s Pos and Trugoy sound surprisingly engaged, coming in between the various instrumental breaks to drop lines that prove both that they’ve still got it and that the next proper De La Soul LP might just be worth waiting more than five years for.

Passion Pit
Manners
Jittery teen-pop is too novel, shallow and irritating

RATING: C

Chances are you’re already annoyed by Passion Pit without even knowing it. If you’ve seen that irritating PSP ad on television where the game console floats across Canada against a white background while a shrill voice sings against an even shriller background sample, you and Passion Pit are already well-acquainted. If you happen to like that song, you’re in luck, because the rest of Manners sounds the same way. It’s a bouncy electronic ride through adolescence sung by a man with a voice so high and nasal he makes the children often singing backup on tracks sound intimidating. The album is catchy, certainly, but catchiness does not a good album make. It might be too catchy: my first time around listening, I already found myself able to sing along to choruses, rendering my listening experience boring. Needless to say, my second listen through the album was excruciating, as each song sounded like one that I’d already heard too many times before, like they’d all been jingles for ads that play too often. In this way, Manners comes to sound novel, like a joke album that while perhaps mildly funny the first time, suddenly loses its effect when you’re expecting the punch-line. The only mildly successful songs on the album are “Moth’s Wings” and “Swimming in the Flood,” which use more mature instrumentation and subtler use of melody, but even then, “Moth’s Wings” sounds uncomfortably close to a teenage, electronic version of U2’s epic simplicity. Only the latter song, which expresses mood and emotion more subtly than its surrounding tracks, comes close to affecting the listener in a real way. In short, the album sounds juvenile and like so many albums before it, may soon find itself without fans once they’ve grown up and moved on to more compelling music that adheres to the sympathetic contract. This album would have blown me away when I was young, and I expect it will do quite well both critically and commercially on the back of its catchiness and melodic repetition, but today, it fails to challenge me and sounds tired and novel already. What will blow me away is if, five years down the road, I don’t find a copy or two in every second-hand store in Toronto.

Bi-vailable. Pansexual. Bicurious. Heteroflexible.

Film Review: Bi the Way, at Toronto’s Inside Out LGBT Film Festival

By Adriana Rolston

“Is this just another bisexual chic moment or is this generation having its own bisexual revolution?” asked directors Brittany Blockman and Josephine Decker in their documentary Bi the Way, which was featured at Toronto’s Inside Out Film Festival on Sunday May 17th at the Royal Ontario Museum.

The director duo traveled across America, from New Orleans to Nevada to New York to Utah in order to find out if falling somewhere between gay and straight is possible or just a passing trend. They followed the stories of five individuals while interviewing a slew of teens, adults, media professionals, sexual researchers and psychologists about whether being attracted to both sexes can be normal.

“I think they’re just half foot in the closet and half foot out,” said one woman on camera, laughing and widening her stance for emphasis.

Many interviewees agreed with this point of view, noting that popular culture practically began endorsing bisexuality with titillating same-sex moments on the programs like the O.C., and even more visibly when Britney Spears and Madonna kissed.

“MTV was holding a mirror up to their audience and giving their audience a blowjob,” said Dan Savage, The Stranger’s “Savage Love” sex columnist. Savage noted that youth who believe they are bisexual might realize otherwise in 10 years.

There are some examples in the film of youth who identify as bisexual but leave the audience unsure if they just haven’t figured out their identity.

David is one of those individuals. The 24-year-old had girlfriends in the past and now casually dates Kevin, but wants a stable relationship with him. His bisexuality is questioned by his parents, who accept him but don’t understand him.

Then there’s Pam, a former cheerleader who was expelled for getting caught kissing a female classmate and had to face the wrath of her conservative father when he discovered her bisexuality. “Girls are catty bitches and guys are pigs…Can’t get along with any of them but you can’t live without them either,” she said.

The film mentioned a study done at Northwestern University in the U.S. which tested how sexual responses to pornography factored into women’s sexual orientation. Those tested viewed both heterosexual and lesbian porn clips, interspersed with landscape scenes. A tampon-shaped probe in their vaginas measured arousal and found that regardless of the type of erotic videos, women responded similarly.

A related study was conducted the following year with men and showed that they were predominantly turned on by either straight or gay porn, but not both.

“My question is, what kind of films did they show them? Was it good porn?” asked a middle-aged, bisexual man, incredulously. “That study showed that I don’t exist.”

One thing the study may have revealed is that bisexuality, at least in the mainstream, is more common among women, said a female sex researcher at Northwestern. Or maybe they just prefer the scenery. “Watching a naked man walk on the beach is about as stimulating as watching a landscape,” she said.

Although there are those in the film who dispute it, Bi the Way showed that a new generation of young people have redrawn the map of sexuality and for many bisexuality is more than a roadside attraction.

“Why can’t I have my cake and eat it too?” asked Tahj, a bisexual 18-year-old from New York.

Dan Savage summed it up best, “Do what turns you on, because you can’t run away from yourself.”

Our Lives on Screen

By Dylan Franks

Summer is a busy season for Toronto homos. Pride Week waits just around the corner with plenty of rainbow flags and ripped abs, but before the parties of Pride Week roll around the LGBT community rolls out the red carpet for the Inside Out Film Festival. This year the festival turns 19 years old and marks its growth with more parties, venues and films than ever.

The Inside Out Film Festival was conceived in 1991 by Torontonians looking for an event to celebrate the work of the LGBT community both in front of and behind the lens. Since its earnest beginnings, the festival has grown annually to attract crowds of 32,000 people strong from every artistic and sexual background.

The festival still serves in bringing together flmmakers and their audiences. But above all the Inside Out Film Festival showcases the LGBT community’s inextinguishable creative force and talent.

This year the festival screened 250 films making use of some of Toronto’s numerous beautiful theatres like the Bloor Theatre as well as famous city landmarks like the Royal Ontario Museum. Thousands of men and women, gay and straight, filmmakers, actors and their appreciators had access to some of the world’s boldest and bravest queer cinema. Queer voices from around the world hit the screen in works from countries like China, Spain and Germany. The festival programming includes films that touch on a wide range of social issues that address the young and old and those in between.

The festival is a breeding ground for talent and innovation in film. Films including Were the World Mine and Ian Iqbal Rashid’s Touch of Pink, which screened at Inside Out, later moved on to critical and commercial success. While the veterans of the gay film scene shine, Inside Out also provides opportunities for young queer artists to express themselves as people and expose their work as directors, producers, actors and writers, making the festival a great place for networking for film students and film buffs alike.

At the festval, after the films screen, fans fete at gala events that highlight the city’s queer artist community and their diverse talents, ranging from performance art to more mainstream fare like a concert featuring queer musicians Gentleman Reg. Some of the city’s coolest hotspots like the Bata Shoe Museum were used, where this year’s opening gala was held, or the more downscale venue, Cinecycle.

Nineteen years ago the Inside Out Film Festival came out to Toronto and the world, announcing its presence. A mix of fearless fun and artistic and sexual rebellion sparked the beginning of what has grown into the largest Canadian festival of its kind and it shows no signs of letting up. The festival serves to bring people together behind the films and their audiences but above all, the Inside Out Film Festival showcases the inextinguishable creative force and talent with which the LGTB community infuses life.

Dane Cook comedy matures, losing its edge

Cook’s performance overshadowed by opening acts

By Amanda Cupido

Dane Cook has changed his style of comedy for the “Isolated Incident” tour.

After performing live at the Air Canada Centre on May 8, the packed stadium witnessed a darker side of the comedian. This included several jokes being about the recent death of his parents, which made the atmosphere awkward and unnerving.

Cook’s energy was high and his delivery was solid, but the content was lacking. He was commentating instead of story-telling. For instance, a classic story he performs from his “Vicious Circle” tour outlined his itch to perform a “B&E.” He took the audience every step of the way up until the moment he breaks down the door. Instead of this signature style, he spent a lot of time describing his perspective on specific celebrities - like Britney Spears.

He also spent a large part of the act talking about a homemade porn that he saw on the internet.

It sounded like a conversation amongst prepubescent boys rather than a comedian charging over $200 for one seat at the lower level.

Nevertheless, Cook got laughs and was encouraged to come out for an encore. His closing bit revolved around hate mail he received stating, “Your parents died of cancer so they could get away from your bad jokes.” No matter what is said after a statement like that, it is hard to let out a genuine chuckle.

Opening acts included Al Del Bene and Robert Kelly. Both had the audience in hysterics, especially Kelly. He talked about his weight loss experience and how when people ask him “How did you do it?” he is always tempted to make up abstract solutions such as only drinking “turtle juice.”

Expect to see both of their names in the future. Dane Cook is growing up and with that comes a different point of view from the comedian who invented the Super Finger.

Toronto’s Jazz Festival brings jazz to diverse audiences

With the big-names of jazz performing at Nathan Phillips Square downtown, TD Jazz Festival announces a diverse line-up, including neighbourhood pub gigs across the city

By Angela Walcott

An exciting line-up for the 2009 TD Jazz Festival was announced in April at the Jazz 91 FM radio headquarters in downtown Toronto. This year’s acts include talented artists from the US, Japan as well as some homegrown artists. The festival is known for its ability to pull in the big names in jazz music, and the 22nd annual event is shaping up to be no different.

The festival which has generated $250 million for the GTA economy in recent years will welcome jazz crooner Tony Bennett, who will play the Canon Theatre on July 5. Iconic saxophonist Sonny Rollins will also play an exclusive show at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. Meanwhile, old-time darling Dave Brubeck will be back once again to wow the crowds on Canada Day and American-born and Canadian-based singer Jackie Richardson will perform with Joe Sealy on June 28. The multi-talented energetic crowd-pleaser Joshua Redman, who has been performing at the festival for over a decade, will make another appearance this year as well. Redman, who once received a perfect score on a law school entrance exam and was subsequently accepted into Harvard law school, decided that music was for him and has played the saxophone ever since.

The Nathan Philips Square Mainstage will be graced by one of jazz music’s all-time greats, Branford Marsalis. This year, the three-time Grammy winning artist marked the tenth anniversary of his quartet with the release of his new CD, Metamorphosen. He is set to perform a double-bill with the Dave Holland Quintet at Nathan Philips Square on July 3. Another notable performer, Freddy Cole, brother of the late Nat King Cole, will appear at the Fleck Dance Theatre on June 26.

A nice feature about the TD Jazz Festival, which continues to be a long-standing tradition keeping fans coming back year after year, are the series of free events that are on offer. Exactly 1,500 free public events have been performed since the festival began back in 1987. This is something that is especially appealing to many, particularly due to the tough economic times that people are experiencing. This year’s free events include performances from the Shuffle Demons and Jane Bunnett.

Popular venues apart from Nathan Philips Square include The Rex and the Enwave Theatre at Harbourfront. What makes the festival attractive to a larger audience is the fact that it is spread across town, providing a diverse selection of performers for Toronto residents to choose from. The Late Night Jams in neighborhood pubs and bars ensure the festival is accessible, even to people in search of jazz who won’t have to go far from home to find it.

Festival-goers purchasing a three-day pass receive a 15 per cent discount while those purchasing a five day pass receive a 20 per cent discount. Both are available through Ticket Master. To see a full event listing, visit the TD Jazz Festival website at www.torontojazz.com. The festival runs from June 23- July 5.

 

DOORS OPEN…NOBODY HOME

Behind the scenes of the Canadian literature scene

By James Howick

After spending a lot of years working in events I can honestly say that the success of an event is made or broken by the quality of the venue. It seems odd that so much will hinge on an inanimate object - something that doesn’t talk or serve drinks, something that hasn’t put in the hours to bring everything together and pull in a crowd. But it’s true.

You may not think that having an author reading in a brewery would be an ideal location, and you’d be right. Literature and alcohol mix in all kinds of beautiful and mysterious ways (just ask any writer to elaborate), but having a reading series in a brewery is the worst kind of insult. Not only do the tinny vats of mash and abundance of brick walls make the readers’ voices utterly disappear, but their attention is being superseded by a thing which they love almost as much as the craft itself.

I went to the Steam Whistle Brewery to see a friend and accomplished local author read from her latest short story collection. She’d come prepared to read five or six of her stories, be up for maybe half an hour with an attentive, appreciative crowd. She is an accomplished writer and spoken word artist, and has been at it for twenty years. After two stories she thanked the crowd and sheepishly stepped down from the stage.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said.

She was compensated with two cases of Steam Whistle Pilsner and we retired with some of her writer friends to a sunny backyard to conduct a post mortem. What became apparent in almost no time was that this day was part of the broader pattern in Canadian literature - the failure of the hype machine.

The writers in this round table discussion, as it were, are all accomplished, each with multiple published works. They all have works that were critically acclaimed, which is the polite way of saying nobody bought it. One was even award winning, which is the polite way of saying a few people bought it.

I am seated with the product of this system; a group of witty, talented, disenchanted and pissed-off writers. We talk about how every time they release a new work they have to feign excitement for the people around them. My friend is now on her fourth publication and she says the hardest thing to do is not to complete the work, but to care when it’s completed.

“People come up to you,” she says, “and they’ll say ‘Oh, you must be so excited!’” The group howls with laughter. Excitement, it would seem, is not the order of the day when publishing Canadian literature. She has four published books and she still can’t get an agent. Even with three of her short stories being adapted for screen, no one seems to care.

Can lit has always suffered the fate of anonymity, and so the fact that great works produced by my companions on this day are going unnoticed is nothing new. But in these times, suffering for one’s art is becoming something of a joke. The strength and integrity of the craft used to be its own justification for one’s participation in it, but with so little to gain the first question out of one’s mouth is “Why?”

The emotional attachment of a writer to his or her work provided its own answer and rewards once upon a time. But after generations of toiling for the craft and remaining in obscurity, even writers (who are not for want of rational thought) are arriving at the logical conclusion that it just isn’t worth it.

One of the writers kisses her husband as he arrives with their newborn baby. She laments that she has not had much time for writing these days since the little bundle of joy came into her life. She still makes time for her music, though. After all, she says, if she puts on a concert people will actually show up and pay attention.

 

James Howick is a writer and independent filmmaker who, of course, also has a day job to support his creative pursuits.

Two women and the Iranian Revolution, 30 years on

Film Review: The Queen and I, Directed by Nahid Persson Sarvestani

By Amanda Connon-Unda
Arts and Culture Editor

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the revolution in Iran when many Iranians fled the country, demonstrations erupted and protesters were killed. Eventually the ruling Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and his wife Queen Farrah Diba were exiled and the government of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini replaced them.

Thirty years on, a new documentary about Farrah Diba has appeared, which reveals the complex relationship between a filmmaker, Nahid Persson Sarvestani, and her subject.

At Hot Docs festival this May in Toronto, Iranian-born filmmaker Nahid Persson Sarvestani revealed her new film to a Toronto audience, that chronicles her encounters with the striking 70-year-old former Queen of Iran, Farrah Diba.

Persson Sarvestani was in Toronto at Hot Docs to serve on the jury for the award going to the best Canadian feature. She was accompanied by fellow jurors in this category, Sky Sitney, director of programming at SilverDocs and Geoff Pevere, a columnist at The Toronto Star.

With credits to her name of more than 20 documentaries, Persson Sarvestani has a refined and nuanced personal approach in her latest film. Her own story as a former communist protester in Iran, the death of her brother during that time, and her later exile to Sweden are all of importance in her film. Compared with Farrah Diba, Persson Sarvestani’s life has some striking similarities, even for all of their differences. For one, both women had been exiled (Diba was in Paris, France) and both had a longing for home, and a hope for the future stability in their home country.

As the film’s story unfolds before the viewers eyes, we learn of the sensitive nature of making a film about a person whose Royalist advisers are not forthcoming with granting access to her, because they fear the filmmaker will reveal their Queen unfavourably. The whole film brings to the fore the issue of compromising one’s political views for the sake of making a film, and in the end the very process and the relationship with her subject become much more important to the filmmaker than any political statement could be.

In a curious and transparent way, politics are however not brushed under the rug.

Toward the end of the film Persson Sarvestani still deals with challenging interview questions about politics and the acts that Diba’s husband committed during the Iranian Revolution. Meanwhile, the arduous task of reconciling the differences between these two women whose politics are opposed is fully realized.

At the end of the film what is most apparent is a common bond of humanity and womanhood, amongst two people who have become dear friends.

 

The Queen and I is playing in North York, at the Empire Theatres at Empress Walk movie theatre.

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