Gabi Dao

Christine Sun Kim

Abbas Akhavan

Faye HeavyShield

Ser Serpas

This spring, the Contemporary Art Gallery is pleased to present a series of artist-curated film screenings at the gallery. Inviting five artists from CAG’s recent and upcoming programming to present films that have been formative to their thinking and practice in some way, each screening is a one-night-only event centered on a single feature-length work.

Thursday, March 19
[Abbas Akhavan presents *Before Night Falls* (2000)](https://cagvancouver.org/event/screening-abbas-akhavan-presents-before-night-falls-(2000))

Saturday, March 21
[Christine Sun Kim presents *Who Framed Roger Rabbit* (1988)](https://cagvancouver.org/event/screening-christine-sun-kim-presents-who-framed-roger-rabbit-(1988))

Tuesday, March 24
[Ser Serpas presents *Lake Mungo* (2008)](https://cagvancouver.org/event/screening-ser-serpas-presents-lake-mungo-(2008))

Thursday, March 26 
[Faye HeavyShield presents *Of Mice and Men* (1939)](https://cagvancouver.org/event/screening-faye-heavyshield-presents-of-mice-and-men-(1939))

Saturday, March 28
[gabi dao presents *A Useful Ghost* (2025)](https://cagvancouver.org/event/screening-gabi-dao-presents-a-useful-ghost-(2025))

### RSVP
Tickets to all screenings are free. Registration is encouraged; RSVP links for each screening are available through the links above. 

### Accessibility
Screenings will be held in CAG’s B.C. Binning Gallery, which is wheelchair accessible. All films — with the exception of *Of Mice and Men* (1939) — will be presented with closed captioning. Additional accessibility information can be found [here](https://cagvancouver.org/visit/accessibility). 

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Artists' Screening Series

Previously Viewed

[RSVP](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cag-abbas-akhavan-presents-before-night-falls-2000-tickets-1984438652429 "button")

This spring, the Contemporary Art Gallery is pleased to present *Previously Viewed*, a series of artist-curated film screenings. Inviting artists from CAG’s recent and upcoming programming to present films that have been formative to their thinking and practice in some way, each screening is a one-night-only event centered on a single feature-length work.

###  
Abbas Akhavan has selected *Before Night Falls* (2000).

> I first saw *Before Night Falls* in 2001 in the company of an unrequited love. The memory holds strong, as does the texture of the film and the writings of Reinaldo Arenas. While watching the film, I did not know that Julian Schnabel had made it, the camera licking every scene. Aside from the rich colours and textures I found the film and its soundtrack deeply atmospheric, hitting the right notes. Shortly after 2001 when I moved to Montreal, Fairuz's music carried me along the meandering long walks in nightly snow blizzards. 

> -Abbas Akhavan 

###  
Run time: 133 minutes.

### RSVP
Registration for this event is encouraged; tickets are free. Secure your seat [here](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cag-abbas-akhavan-presents-before-night-falls-2000-tickets-1984438652429). 

Rush tickets will also be made available the day of the event, starting at 6:45pm. 

### Accessibility
This event will be held in CAG’s B.C. Binning Gallery, which is wheelchair accessible. Additional accessibility information can be found [here](https://cagvancouver.org/visit/accessibility). This film will be presented with closed captioning. 

###  Biography
Abbas Akhavan’s (b. 1977, Tehran, Iran; lives/works: Montreal and Berlin) practice ranges from site-specific ephemeral installations to drawing, video, sculpture and performance. The direction of his research is deeply influenced by his engagement with the places in which he works – their histories and architectures, as well as the economies and inhabitants that shape them. The garden – and by extension, the spaces and species just outside the home, such as backyards, public parks and other domesticated landscapes – has been a foundational and recurring subject in his work. In recent largescale installations, Akhavan recreates cultural sites affected by international conflicts, attending to the multivalent ways in which ongoing geopolitics inform historical narratives. Akhavan’s work engages with formal, material and social legacies that define the boundaries between public and private, domesticated and wild, hostile and hospitable.

Upcoming and recent solo exhibitions include La Biennale Di Venezia (2026); the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2026); Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver (2025); Copenhagen Contemporary and Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen (2023). Recent group exhibitions include the Galleria Borghese, Rome (2026); Tate Modern, London (2025); Deichtorhallen, Hamburg (2024); 14th Gwangju Biennale (2023) and Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2022). Akhavan received an MFA from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver (2006), and a BFA from Concordia University, Montreal (2004). Recent residencies include Bangkok Kunstahalle, Bangkok, Thailand (2024); Fogo Island Arts, Fogo Island, Canada (2019, 2016, 2013) ; Capp Street Artist-in-Residence, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco, USA (2019); Atelier Calder, Saché, France (2017); and The Delfina Foundation, London, UK (2012). He is the recipient of the Hnatyshyn Foundation Mid-Career Award for Excellence in Visual Arts (2025); Fellbach Triennial Award (2017); Sobey Art Award (2015); Abraaj Group Art Prize (2014); and Berliner Kunstpreis (2012).

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Abbas Akhavan presents Before Night Falls (2000)

[RSVP](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cag-christine-sun-kim-presents-who-framed-roger-rabbit-1988-tickets-1984437752738 "button")

This spring, the Contemporary Art Gallery is pleased to present *Previously Viewed*, a series of artist-curated film screenings. Inviting artists from CAG’s recent and upcoming programming to present films that have been formative to their thinking and practice in some way, each screening is a one-night-only event centered on a single feature-length work.

###  
Christine Sun Kim has selected *Who Framed Roger Rabbit* (1988).

> I was eight when *Who Framed Roger Rabbit* came out, and it had a big impact on how I tell stories and how I look for connections. It centered on an almost non-existent group of characters known as the Toons of Toontown. The town exists only within Hollywood and was under threat of being erased, or “dipped.” The Toons found themselves threatened by outside forces and changes they struggled to adapt to. Meanwhile non-Toons called the shots. Ultimately, however, the Toons prevailed. Perhaps this reminded me of the constant battles we disabled people face against society and all the ableist laws and mindsets that try to erase us. Much of my art aims to stake a position of visibility and permanence amid a pervasive ableist culture that is sometimes subtle and subconscious and sometimes overt and in your face. So I identify with the Toons and their antic struggles to evade being dipped. 

> I have to give a big shout out to Christopher Lloyd for his role as the supervillain Judge Doom. *Back to the Future* was released in 1985, *Who Framed Roger Rabbit* in 1988, and *Back to the Future Part II* in 1989, placing Roger Rabbit squarely between the two Future films. Seeing Lloyd shift from the good scientist Doc to this deranged and terrifying villain and then back again was seared into my memory. It’s just acting, but young me saw this as a spectrum of human morality, from diligent heroism to true darkness. It’s important to note that this film was made in the ’80s and is full of misogynistic stereotypes and damaging Hollywood tropes, which really stood out to me when I recently rewatched it. But I can’t deny its impact on me.

> -Christine Sun Kim 

###  
Run time: 104 minutes.

### RSVP
Registration for this event is encouraged; tickets are free. Secure your seat [here](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cag-christine-sun-kim-presents-who-framed-roger-rabbit-1988-tickets-1984437752738). 

Rush tickets will also be made available the day of the event, starting at 6:45pm. 

### Accessibility
This event will be held in CAG’s B.C. Binning Gallery, which is wheelchair accessible. Additional accessibility information can be found [here](https://cagvancouver.org/visit/accessibility). This film will be presented with closed captioning. 

###  Biography
Christine Sun Kim has crafted a renowned practice that considers how sound operates in society, deconstructing the politics of sound and exploring how oral languages operate as social currency. Musical notation, written language, infographics, American Sign Language (ASL), the use of the body, and strategically deployed humor are all recurring elements in her practice. Working across drawing, performance, video and large scale murals, Kim explores her relationship to spoken and signed languages, to her built and social environments, and to the world at large.

Kim has exhibited and performed internationally, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2025); Gwangju Biennale (2023); Secession, Vienna (2023); Queens Museum, New York (2022); the Drawing Center, New York (2022); the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (2021); Manchester International Festival, Manchester (2021); MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge (2020); Whitney Biennial, New York (2019); Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo (2019); Art Institute of Chicago (2018); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2017); De Appel Arts Center, Amsterdam (2017); Berlin Biennale (2016); Shanghai Biennale (2016); MoMA PS1, New York (2015) and the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2013), among numerous others. Kim’s awards and fellowships include an MIT Media Lab Fellowship, a United States Artists fellowship, a Ford and Mellon Foundations’ Disabilities Future Fellowship, and the Prix International d’Art Contemporain of the Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco. Her works are held in numerous prominent collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, LACMA, Tate Britain, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others.

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Christine Sun Kim presents Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1998)

[RSVP](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cag-ser-serpas-presents-lake-mungo-2008-tickets-1984438266274 "button")

This spring, the Contemporary Art Gallery is pleased to present *Previously Viewed*, a series of artist-curated film screenings. Inviting artists from CAG’s recent and upcoming programming to present films that have been formative to their thinking and practice in some way, each screening is a one-night-only event centered on a single feature-length work.

###  
Ser Serpas has selected *Lake Mungo* (2008).

> *Lake Mungo* is a mockumentary that follows a ghost story and a missing-persons case, slowly unraveling a family at the seams. It presents itself as honest, almost documentary, but the truth it reveals is murky and unstable. What remains unseen becomes more disheveled than what’s shown. Its harrowing, unresolved loop stretches the emotional meaning across layers of family, memory and fabrication. That cyclical uncertainty, the sense of retreading gestures rather than resolving them, feels aligned with how I think about exhibition making, not as closure, but as the re-enactment of a rehearsed tragedy or farce, where value lies in the repetition itself.

> -Ser Serpas 

###  
Run time: 88 minutes.

### RSVP
Registration for this event is encouraged; tickets are free. Secure your seat [here](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cag-ser-serpas-presents-lake-mungo-2008-tickets-1984438266274). 

Rush tickets will also be made available the day of the event, starting at 6:45pm. 

### Accessibility
This event will be held in CAG’s B.C. Binning Gallery, which is wheelchair accessible. Additional accessibility information can be found [here](https://cagvancouver.org/visit/accessibility). This film will be presented with closed captioning. 

###  Biography
Ser Serpas (b. 1995, Boyle Heights, California) lives and works in New York City and received degrees from Columbia University, New York, and HEAD, Genève. Notable institutional solo exhibitions include presentations at the Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland; the Pinault Collection, Bourse de Commerce, Paris; and Swiss Institute, New York. Serpas has also participated in group exhibitions at the Rubell Museum, Miami; Aïshti Foundation, Beirut; MoMA PS1, New York; the 2024 Whitney Biennial, New York; the 2024 El Museo del Barrio Triennial, New York; Musée d’art moderne et contemporain Genève; Bonner Kunstverein, Germany; Haus am Waldsee, Berlin; Istituto Svizzero, Rome; Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Punta della Dogana, Venice; and Kunsthalle Fribourg, Switzerland. Serpas has solo exhibitions upcoming at Kölnischer Kunstverein, Germany (Fall 2026) and at CAG (opening April 16).

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Ser Serpas presents Lake Mungo (2008)

[RSVP](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cag-faye-heavyshield-presents-of-mice-and-men-1939-tickets-1984436926266 "button")

This spring, the Contemporary Art Gallery is pleased to present *Previously Viewed*, a series of artist-curated film screenings. Inviting artists from CAG’s recent and upcoming programming to present films that have been formative to their thinking and practice in some way, each screening is a one-night-only event centered on a single feature-length work.

###  
Faye HeavyShield has selected *Of Mice and Men* (1939).

> Everything and nothing specific about (the memory of) seeing this film as a child, though thinking of it here, I would call it an experience of birth and after-birth.

> My early childhood was spent in relative isolation. On a cattle ranch at the north end of the reserve that my father managed for the Blood Band. Horses, cows, chickens, and dogs, and television was new. Dada hunted deer and each one was a feast. Calves and foals were born and there was blood each time.

> *Of Mice and Men* tells of loyalty, heroes, land, love, brutality, hopes, and dreams.

> These I recognized — even before knowing of this writer John Steinbeck and before watching this movie — as all things present in Sommitsikanaki’s/gramma Kate’s voice relating the adventures of Kutoyis, Napi and our world of living with rocks and animals with whom we shared our language. So there is that power of a good story animated through another medium: film. It would happen that this shift in lens, perspective (reality, even) would evolve and serve me well. I don’t know if it was over time or something innate, but I am thankful to be both participant and observer. That liminality of neither here nor there, but here And there. The time at St. Mary’s Residential School necessitated a place of retreat, when I couldn’t be with family. Books and pictures did that. In particular, I am reminded of my first time reading. That first time, when marks became meaning. And those first words I deciphered on my own were “the dark pony.” I consider it more than a thread through this life as not that long ago, my son and I took a 14-hour drive, there and back, during which we listened to *Blood Meridian*.

> -Faye HeavyShield

###  
Run time: 107 minutes.

### RSVP
Registration for this event is encouraged; tickets are free. Secure your seat [here](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cag-faye-heavyshield-presents-of-mice-and-men-1939-tickets-1984436926266). 

Rush tickets will also be made available the day of the event, starting at 6:45pm. 

### Accessibility
This event will be held in CAG’s B.C. Binning Gallery, which is wheelchair accessible. Additional accessibility information can be found [here](https://cagvancouver.org/visit/accessibility). Note: This film will be presented without closed captioning. 

###  Biography
Faye HeavyShield is a member of the Blackfoot Confederacy from the Kainai (Blood) Nation in the foothills of Southern Alberta. She is a fluent speaker of the Blackfoot language and studied at the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary. HeavyShield has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions across Canada, including Nations in Urban Landscapes, Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; rock paper river, Gallery Connexion, Fredericton; Into the Garden of Angels, The Power Plant, Toronto; and blood, Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge. Her work is held in collections including the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg; the Heard Museum, Phoenix; the Glenbow Museum, Calgary; and the MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina. She is the recipient of an Eiteljorg Native American Contemporary Art Fellowship, and received both the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Distinguished Artist Award and the Gershon Iskowitz Prize in 2021.  

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Faye HeavyShield presents Of Mice and Men (1939)

[RSVP](https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/gabi-dao-selects-a-useful-ghost-2025-tickets-1984347506810 "button")

This spring, the Contemporary Art Gallery is pleased to present *Previously Viewed*, a series of artist-curated film screenings. Inviting artists from CAG’s recent and upcoming programming to present films that have been formative to their thinking and practice in some way, each screening is a one-night-only event centered on a single feature-length work.

###  
gabi dao has selected *A Useful Ghost* (2025).

> I selected *A Useful Ghost* in light of Wim Wenders’ self-congratulatory statement at this year’s Berlinale that the film world should “stay out of politics.” Director Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke exemplifies how cinema can be fresh, humorous and a very necessary, contemporary political critique in our time of escalating fascism and oppression.

> Steeped in a lineage of Southeast Asian ghost stories, the film's use of haunting as a form of active remembering that resists erasure resonated with me. Aspirationally rigorous in form and content, Ratchapoom skillfully crafts a story of forbidden ghost-human, cross-class romance, collusion and Thailand’s 2010 Red Shirt massacre. In this film, the real horror isn't the motley cast of possessed household electronics, but a world that forgets violent abuses of government power.

> -gabi dao  

###  
Run time: 130 minutes.

### RSVP
Registration for this event is encouraged; tickets are free. Secure your seat [here](https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/gabi-dao-selects-a-useful-ghost-2025-tickets-1984347506810). 

Rush tickets will also be made available the day of the event, starting at 6:45pm. 

### Accessibility
This event will be held in CAG’s B.C. Binning Gallery, which is wheelchair accessible. Additional accessibility information can be found [here](https://cagvancouver.org/visit/accessibility). This film will be presented with closed captioning. 

###  Biography
gabi dao’s practice is invested in how entanglements with natural and supernatural worlds shape notions of belief and belonging, frequently culminating as sculpture, installation, experimental films, collage, and scent. Through methodologies of gathering, breaking, repairing, listening, and collaboration, their practice insists on blurry temporalities, sensory affirmations and ways of knowing otherwise. Their work often begins within the slippages of “history,” archives and storytelling – towards channeling ineffable tensions between grief and joy, dissidence and complicity, disassociation and sentimentality.

dao’s work has been presented at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Vancouver Art Gallery; Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver; Radius CCA, Delft, NL; Vincom Centre for Contemporary Art, Hà Nội, VN; and the 36th Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts, where they were awarded the Research Residency Award; and has been screened at e-flux Screening Room, New York; Sàn Art, Sài Gòn, VN; and numerous festivals including the BFI London Film Festival and International Film Festival Rotterdam. dao holds an MFA from Piet Zwart Institute and has been in residence at Triangle Astérides, Marseille, FR; EKWC, Oisterwijk, NL; and Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, NL. They are represented by Unit 17.  

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Acknowledgements

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