In times of stress we turn to torn fragments of ourselves and worship them as if they were whole nations (From Mars at Sunrise). Mars at Sunrise (2014) is director Jessica Habie’s first feature. Billed as “A story of a war waged on imagination,” the film tells the story of Khaled,
Continue readingTag: features
Art Threat: The Act of Killing: Liberal Porn or Daring Activism?
The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, Anonymous, Christine Cynn, 2013) is a documentary about Indonesia’s anti-communist purges of 1965 that thankfully abandons the traditional interview format in favour of something daring and controversial. As requested by victims’ families, Oppenheimer — who has been working inside Indonesia making social justice-related media for over a
Continue readingArt Threat: Gender Mender: XXY is a cinematic exploration of intersexuality
From a purely organizational standpoint, there are plenty of reasons for the gender binary. The system delineates male and female characteristics as separate and static, ostensibly facilitating a natural and sustainable social order. It readily assigns roles and packages gender identity. It is convenient – when it works. The problem
Continue readingArt Threat: Remembering documentary film legend Peter Wintonick
You want to bring them back. Would they, if they could, return, after such a heavy crossing? You try, until the wish, almost disattached, gnawing, growling, finally bursts loose to call them. It’s difficult to write about our dear friend Peter Wintonick, who passed away less than one week ago
Continue readingArt Threat: JFK After 50 Years: Berlin to Dallas, Cold War to Camelot
Those of us, of a certain age, or so the story goes, can remember exactly where we were and what we were doing on 23rd of November, 1963, when we first heard news of the death of President John F Kennedy. Some will have been in the concert hall in
Continue readingArt Threat: Allegheny, BC: transformative theatre that shirks corporate culture
With six internationally acclaimed albums and a well-received book of poetry to his name, Rodney DeCroo is turning his talents to the theatre. I met with Mr. DeCroo in Vancouver at a Commercial Drive café in late August and talked with him about his current project. Allegheny, BC, directed by
Continue readingArt Threat: Ian Kamau: artistic reflections on city life
Ian Kamau is a Toronto based artist performing in Montreal for the Suoni per il Popolo festival at a concert organized by Howl!. Kamau is a key underground hip-hop artist creating today in Canada. This interview focuses on Kamau’s approach and specifically on the Traffic, a soul track from his
Continue readingArt Threat: Game of Thrones and Racist Fantasy
Aamer Rahman has recently caused quite a stir among Game of Thrones fandom with his Tumblr post about the shows very problematic representation of race, most notably that hideous last episode of season three. Rahman’s original Tumblr post and his response to the massive backlash from fans has been reposted
Continue readingArt Threat: Friday Film Pick: Things are Different Now
Ryan Conrad recently pulled his film from the Frameline San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival because the festival, despite a robust budget and years of protest from filmmakers, audiences and activists, continues to accept money from the Israeli consulate. Conrad joins a growing list of artists who are taking a stand in
Continue readingArt Threat: Fearless photography explores the Egyption women of the revolution
The woman in a red dress being blasted by pepper spray in Gezi Park, Istanbul, is not an anomaly. Women are on the front lines of Turkey’s protest movement and were also well represented in the series of upheavals that was dubbed the Arab Spring. But to gain a full
Continue readingArt Threat: Butch Dykes: A Herstory told in zines
At the recent Montreal Anarchist Bookfair, where another (better) world of incredibly inspiring, provocative and boundary-pushing art and media is on display each year, I stumbled upon Eloisa Aquino and her wares – a series of zines on awesome butch dykes, appropriately called The Life and Times of Butch Dykes.
Continue readingArt Threat: The Art & Money Project
It’s no secret that money rules our lives. I think what we’re now seeing is really the final and most ruthless stage of the integration of art and creativity into the capitalist market or, in other words, the final stages of art’s subordination to money. But I think that almost
Continue readingArt Threat: Blood work: A conversation with the director of Blood Relative
One ongoing trend in documentary filmmaking involves privileged minority world saviours travelling to distant destitute lands in order to do good or capture the act of doing good on film. In films like FUCK FOR FOREST, playing at this year’s Hot Docs film festival, people from rich countries set out
Continue readingArt Threat: Hot Docs turns twenty
Twenty years ago today, it was a year like any other. The ceremonial swap between less liberal and more liberal leader of the United States took place when Clinton picked up where Bush left off (launching a cruise missile attack on Iraq just half a year into his term and
Continue readingArt Threat: Temps Libre: an album filled with hope, inspired by the printemps érable
Something happened last spring: a whole generation of Montrealers was mobilized, politicized, made aware that they had a voice. Finally opening their windows onto spring mornings as the snow melted into the grass, people converged outside, en masse, where the air was filled with promise. They filled their lungs with
Continue readingArt Threat: Return to Gummo
Harmony Korine has been making headlines for his new pop-culture romp, Spring Breakers, with the usual fanfare and some reviewers decidedly giddy with the possibility of maybe “getting it” or maybe not. The film is apparently non-stop debauch and at least one critic has pointed out the work’s contribution to
Continue readingArt Threat: The Ghosts in Our Machine defends the animals on our screen
Over the last decade of programming political documentary for Cinema Politica I can say with confidence that there are two subjects that have always been decidedly divisive and caused the most vociferous backlash from audience members. One of those subjects is the ongoing illegal occupation of Palestine and the other
Continue readingArt Threat: Bowling for Columbine turns ten
Editor’s note: Art Threat has launched a cultural archaeological project that involves digging up previously published but now inaccessible film reviews and cultural musings from Montreal-based writer and teacher Matthew Hays. We’re calling it The Hays Files, and to get things rolling, we’re republishing a review Hays wrote of Bowling
Continue readingArt Threat: Weiwei-isms: the Coles Notes of an infamous Chinese dissident
A magnitude 8.0 earthquake shook through Wenchuan County in Sichuan province of the People’s Republic of China on May 12, 2008. Official figures listed 69,197 dead, including 5,335 children, mostly killed as a result of shoddy school construction — a horrible tragedy, particularly due to China’s one-child policy, that caught
Continue readingArt Threat: The Documentary Download Dilemma
Much ink has been spilled and pixels punctuated regarding the ongoing controversial topic around the copyright, downloading, streaming and file sharing of creative content, yet there has been little discussion (outside of organizational listserves and at festival forums) of documentary cinema and file sharing. This may be in large part due to
Continue reading