Cinematheque Ontario - The Free Screen

The Free Screen
February 23 to March 30

TIFF Cinematheque

Toronto – TIFF Bell Lightbox presents The Free Screen, a programme committed to independent and avant-garde works and to an exploration of numerous art forms and disciplines, as they relate to cinema. All screenings in this series are FREE.

The Free Screen welcomes the inaugural International Curatorial Residency Programme, Avant-Garde Canada: Curating the CFMDC Collection. The following two events are co-presentations with the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre (CFMDC), Canada’s foremost non-commercial distributor and resource for independent film, with a catalogue of approximately 3,000 films spanning more than 50 years. Following the launch in Toronto, the series will be presented at the Cal Arts and Film Forum in LA, the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley and Emerson College Cinematheque in Boston.

Wednesday, February 23 at 7 pm

Keeping Trace – On time and film, selected by Munich-based curator Marlene Rigler, explores the experience of time and the traces of passing moments that remain engraved upon the film frame.

Wednesday, March 23 at 7 pm

Images of Nature, or The Nature of the Image: Canadian Artists at Work, curated by American scholar Irina Leimbacher. Showcasing works made by artists from or living in Canada which employ a range of different aesthetic strategies and image technologies to comment on both the natural world and the nature of the cinematic image.

Mantler’s Visual Music

Wednesday, March 9 at 7 pm

Co-presented with The Music Gallery, The Free Screen welcomes Mantler’s Visual Music, a programme of classic avant-garde works introduced by Toronto’s Mantler, aka Chris Cummings. Mantler’s soulful pop music is marked by film-inflected lyrics and Sirkian swirls of melodrama. The screening includes films by Norman McLaren, Larry Jordan, Len Lye and Warren Sonbert, and is capped by a live 15-minute performance by Mantler, in his inimitable white suit.

Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area
Wednesday, March 30 at 7 pm

In partnership with Images Festival, The Free Screen welcomes Pacific Film Archive curator Kathy Geritz to present the Toronto launch of Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area, a PFA touring programme accompanied by a new publication of the same name co-edited by Geritz, Steve Anker and Steve Seid. The first programme in this ongoing series, Landscape as Expression, explores the rich avant-garde tradition that has grown up around the natural splendour and teeming urban landscapes of the San Francisco Bay area. The series includes films by such notables as Ernie Gehr, Larry Jordan, Chris Marker and Michael Glawogger. The screening will take place on March 30th, and will be followed by a book launch of this seminal new work of film scholarship.

About TIFF Bell Lightbox

TIFF Bell Lightbox, a breathtaking five-storey complex located in downtown Toronto, provides a permanent home for film lovers to celebrate cinema from around the world and will propel TIFF forward as an international leader in film culture. Designed by innovative architecture firm KPMB, TIFF Bell Lightbox’s fluid structure encourages exploration, movement and play. The campaign to build TIFF Bell Lightbox is generously supported by founding sponsor Bell, the Province of Ontario, the Government of Canada, the City of Toronto, the King and John Festival Corporation - consisting of the Reitman family and The Daniels Corporation – major sponsor and official bank RBC, major sponsor BlackBerry, HSBC Bank Canada, Visa†, the Copyright Collective of Canada, the Slaight Family Foundation, NBC Universal Canada, the Brian Linehan Charitable Foundation, Mackenzie Financial, the Harbinger Foundation, CIBC and BMO. The Board of Directors, staff and many generous individuals and corporations have also contributed to the campaign. For more information on the TIFF Bell Lightbox campaign, visit tiff.net.