Monday, April 24, 2023
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Curated by Jaclyn Quaresma
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Work by Erin Johnson, Keenan MacWilliam, Anureet Watta,
João Pedro Rodrigues, João Rui Guerra da Mata
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Images Festival, Toronto
Co-presented by Toronto Queer Film Festival and Art Metropole
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This program was followed by a conversation between Erin Johnson, Charlotte Prager, Keenan MacWilliam, Alize Zorlutuna moderated by Jaclyn Quaresma
With queer coupledom at its core, Companion Piece consider closeness through friends, family, kin, companions, lovers, partners, and community, as well as the manifold forms they might take in the private sphere or in the public realm. Together, they ask:
Where does one find tenderness, and how might it be expressed? What forms can romance take, and which relationships make space for it? How does one choose to share intimate information? What weight can a song bear? What security might a hallway offer? What knowledges does the city hold? What can be learned from the ocean floor? And how does all this change over time?
These questions weave together works by Erin Johnson, Keenan MacWilliam, Anureet Watta, João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata, all of which consider the complexity of intimate relationships.
List of Works
To be Sound is to be Solid
Erin Johnson
CANADIAN PREMIERE | USA | 2022 | DIGITAL | 15 MIN | ENGLISH WITHOUT SUBTITLES
An oceanographer’s attempt to map the entire seafloor by 2030 parallels a filmmaker’s attempt to decipher the opaque queer history of a modernist seaside home through its complicated and circuitous floor plan.
At Home
Keenan MacWilliam
WORLD PREMIERE | CANADA | 2016 | DIGITAL | 3:30 MIN | ENGLISH WITHOUT SUBTITLES
This film is a voyeuristic look at the absurdity of coming out, set against the backdrop of the artist’s parents’ family home in Ottawa. Keenan often works through a lens of the familial landscape and positions herself as the audience’s storytelling guide to this intimate portrait of home.
Oranges in the Winter Sun
Anureet Watta
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE | INDIA | 2022 | DIGITAL | 20:40 MIN | ENGLISH, HINDI WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES
The experimental film attempts to capture the entanglements between memory and letting go, as two queer people try to love in the city of New Delhi. It attempts to look at Delhi with a queer lens–its magnificent domes and its incessant metro announcements.
Um Quarto na Cidade (A Room in Town)
João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata
CANADIAN PREMIERE | PORTUGAL | 2021 | DIGITAL | 5:17 MIN | PORTUGUESE WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES
When they silence the voices, music vibrates in the memory.
Jaclyn Quaresma 