Screening

Missives, is a new free broadsheet publication and an associated film screening event co-programmed by Patrick Staff with Canadian curator and writer Robin Simpson. Continuing the format of Staff’s recent screening-performances Dreams of Travel (2014) and Uniform Smoke (2015), this expanded public programming brings together a number of voices that generate resonances with the politics and interpersonal relationships that constitute the project, rather than describing or fixing the meaning of the work. Grounded within a Canadian context, it seeks to forge a connection among Trans/Queer contexts, production, dialogues and communities.

The broadsheet contains specially commissioned texts by Juliet Jacques, Staff and Simpson and will be distributed city wide as well as in Toronto via defunct Xtra newspaper boxes.

Alongside this, the screening event at Cineworks Annex (February 12 from 7pm), invokes a provisional social space, cinema and theatrical set where a temporary community may gather, through which a selection of film and video works explore first person narratives, interview, account and witness in queer Canadian moving image production, and reflect upon our viewing of it in a contemporary context. Presenting older works framed through their practice the evening engages an intergenerational conversation and includes: Mirha Soleil-Ross’ Gender Troublemakers (1993), Xanthra Mackay’s Rupert Remembers (2000), James Diamond’s The Man from Venus (1999), Mike Hoolboom’s Frank’s Cock (1993) and Gwendolyn and Co.’s Prowling by Night (1990).

The MISSIVES broadsheet and screening event are generously supported by the British Council. Presented by CAG in partnership with Cineworks.