This year, articule is pleased to present two evenings of short films by artists of colour from the international community. Titled The Other Film Festival, this special programme brings together our annual screening of Monitor from SAVAC (South Asian Visual Arts Centre) in Toronto with the Black Radical Imagination (US) tour, invited by SAW Video in Ottawa.

In Black Radical Imagination’s programme curated by Erin Christovale (Los Angeles) and Amir George (Chicago), new media, video art and experimental narration are means with which artists from the diaspora contribute their own vision of port-modern society through the state of current Black culture.

Monitor initiates dialogues around the shifting nature of South Asian politics, economies and landscapes through artists’ film and video. Curated by Azar Mahmoudian (Tehran) and Leila Pourtavaf (Toronto), this edition entitled “These Monsters are Real” questions how trauma haunts us and reflects on the increasing social anxieties about environmental catastrophes, current geopolitical crises and global tragedies.

As part of this mini film festival, a discussion will be hosted by writer and curator Nasrin Himada (Montreal), with the curators of Black Radical Imagination Erin Christovale and Amir George, and Sharlene Bamboat, Artistic Director of SAVAC.

articule is proud to pursue its collaboration with SAVAC and to create new links with SAW Video and Black Radical Imagination.
 

Sharlene Bamboat is a Toronto-based artist, working in a variety of media. Bamboat regularly works in collaboration with artists and academics. Her most regular collaborative partner is artist Alexis Mitchell, and together they form Bambitchell. Bamboat’s work has been exhibited internationally. She is on the programming committee of the Pleasure Dome Film & Video Collective, part of the board of directors of VTape, and is the Artistic Director of SAVAC (South Asian Visual Arts Centre).

Erin Christovale is a curator based in Los Angeles focusing on film/video within African Diaspora. She graduated with a B.A. from the USC School of Cinematic Arts and currently works at Film Independent. She also works with a collective of creative and heady thinkers called Native Thinghood promoting young, upcoming artists of colour.

Amir George is a motion picture artist and film curator from Chicago. His video work and curated programs have been screened in festivals and galleries across the US, Canada and Europe. In addition to founding The Cinema Culture, a grassroots film programming organization, Amir was founding programmer of Black Cinema House, a residential cinema space on Chicago’s south side. Amir currently teaches and produces media with youth through Chicagoland.

Nasrin Himada is a Palestinian writer, editor, and curator residing in Montréal. Her interdisciplinary research interests focus on the history of Palestinian cinema, art and activism, and the militarization of urban space through prison infrastructure and police surveillance. She currently holds a FQRSC postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Communication at Université de Montréal.   

Azar Mahmoudian is an independent curator and researcher based in Tehran. She has curated exhibitions and screenings for Cultuurcentrum Bruges, Belgium; Contemporary Art Brussels; SOAS, University of London; Blackwood Gallery, Toronto; and was a 2014 Fellow of Global Art Forum 8, Dubai. She currently works as a lecturer in Tehran universities and collaborates with a project-space in Tehran.

Leila Pourtavaf is a Toronto-based writer, independent curator and doctoral candidate in the Department of History at the University of Toronto. She was a founding member and coordinator of the Mobilivre–Bookmobile project, and editor of The Bookmobile Book (2015) which chronicles the project’s history. She is also the editor of Féminismes électriques (2012), a bilingual collection of essays which reflect on the last decade of feminist art production.

Special projects  

Participating Artists: Ja’Tovia Gary (US) | Cauleen Smith (US) | Lauren Kelley (US) | Ephraim Asili (US) | Terence Nance (US) | Sahej Rahal (Inde) | Kush Badhwar (Inde) | Tala Madani (Iran/US) | Payal Kapadia (Inde) | Anjana Kothamachu (Indonésie) | Chulayarnnon Siriphol (Thailande) | Laleh Khorramian (US)
Curator(s): Erin Christovale (US) | Amir George (US) | Azar Mahmoudian (Iran) | Leila Pourtavaf (Toronto)
Credits: Credits: An Ecstatic Experience, Ja’Tovia Gary, 2015 / Weapons of Mass Destruction, Payal Kapadia, 2012  savac.net | sawvideo.com