Blog # 144…August, 2023 

Well, wasn’t July something!  Smoke from forest fires hundreds of miles away found its way into our bedrooms; writers and actors in Hollywood and longshoremen in Vancouver, all with legitimate concerns about the effect of artificial intelligence on their livelihoods, staged work stoppages … and a biblical deluge in Nova Scotia! Then of course there was Barbieheimer. While not forgetting the many things that distress and amaze us, let’s turn the dial and think about what we celebrated (or didn’t) on Canada Day. 

In the media, there were the usual cheerleaders calling attention to how lucky we are to be living in the best country in the world  –  and I agree, mostly anyway.  Then the other end of the line saying the country was broken…healthcare, housing, employment, social structures, all gone to ratshit…there’s room for improvement for sure. 

I liked Kate Taylor’s piece Why I Believe in Canadian Content in the Globe and Mail on July 1. She reflected on Canadian cultural sovereignty in the digital age which she’d explored during her Atkinson Fellowship more than a decade ago.  Bills 11 and 18 have brought the issues back into the spotlight now with the additional power of the two huge social media platforms carrying Canadian news.  I’m going to quote her directly because her remarks are so clear and eloquent. 

She begins by citing the “centrality of the arts since Neanderthals painted on cave walls. Or fashioned flutes from bones.  What culture does for a society and individuals…novels teach empathy, storytelling transmits values, theater outsources social risks to dedicated performers.”  

We were particularly aware of these things during the pandemic -  we could still watch screens, and still do, they’re now the medium where most storytelling takes place, but in Canada they will offer fewer of our stories unless we insist on it. Kate continues “ The arts are the very root of what makes us human, not having access to a living culture is like not having access to hospitals or a local food supply. Somewhere in our media diet we need programming that tells us, in ways both subtle or unsubtle, that there is a here here.”  There's good and not good here, but it's our here....love her call out to Gertrude Stein.

It’s been a great year for Canadian movies, it’s complicated what makes a film qualify as Canadian, but my definition includes these: 

Brother:  David Chariandy’s novel about two sons growing up with a single mum in Toronto interpreted onscreen by Clement Virgo

Scarborough:  Life at school in that Toronto suburb written and directed by Catherine Hernandez

Riceboy Sleeps: Anthony Shim tells a story, much like his own, of a childhood in Vancouver

Women Talking: Sarah Polley’s Oscar winning rendering of Miriam Toews’ look at women dealing with abuse

Blackberry:  Matt Johnson scores again with the innovation of RIM's device by Jim Balsillie  and Mike Lazaridis

I Like Movies: Chandler Levack’s first feature is about an unusual young man discovering that there’s life after high school

Something You Said Last Night: A sweet drama by Luis De Fillppis about a family on vacation, one happens to be a trans woman.

Unfortunately, it aint easy seeing these films, there’s usually a short run with not much publicity and by the time some word-of-mouth has circulated, they’ve disappeared and it takes Sherlock Holmes to find them... even Women Talking didn’t get the attention it deserved.                                                                                                                                          

Blog # 143…July 2023

 

I’ve lost enough of my pandemic twitchiness about crowds to venture into small theatres and galleries… had almost forgotten how wonderful creative imagination at work can be.

At the Tarragon Theatre in Toronto recently, in her one- woman show She’s Not Perfect, Fatuma Adur encourages us not to beat ourselves up for not being perfect – even to relish the joys of mediocrity. She’s a Somali/Canadian living here, a Black Muslim woman doing well as a cultural figure, sometimes subjected to the pressure of being a model both in her original country and here. She raps and jokes about longing for the freedom to be ordinary and maybe even screw up occasionally.

I’m often thinking about what we consider to be disability and was gently jolted by a friend the other day when I made a thoughtless remark from my perch of privilege and unconscious prejudice. Since then I’ve come up with a term - superabled - for people existing outside of the mainstream in some way. And I’m reminded of an actual stream, moving fast, with the most interesting things growing in the calm silt at the edges

Such is the case with Alex Bulmer and her latest work Perceptual Archeology at the Crow Theatre, a piece designed for all of us and including people with visual impairment.  Alex developed retinitis pigmentosa in her early 20’s and found gradually that she needed to shift her visual imagination to employ her other senses. Describing and using this experience, her one- woman show takes us into her world of disruption and uncertainty, shifting our perception of both her world and our own.

Bracketing the Rumi show at the Aga Khan Museum, in a clever curatorial feat are two women artists, both Muslim, each interpreting the Sufi mystic poet’s themes of displacement and transience in their own  medium.

Iranian/Canadian Soheila Estahani transforms two high towers of shipping pallets, often used as platforms to transport goods, to capture the feeling of unbetweeness. Echoing Rumi’s writing of movement and transition and the lived experience of many people, the pallets are laser etched with geometric designs often seen in Persian culture. After the exhibition closes the pallets will return to circulation, resuming their role in a permanent state of movement.  

Hangama Amiri, an Afghan/Canadian fabric artist uses hanging panels to present images of the objects often lost by refugees forced suddenly to leave home:  a dinner table set with family china, a simple bag of local rice, a garden with  trees growing the delicious fruit they picked as children. These very personal objects tell us stories and hold memories for the people who left so much behind,

The Rumi exhibit runs until October, see it if you can!                You'll find that he was the originator of the story of  three people feeling different parts of an elephant in the dark, all coming to different conclusions about what it was, also how he's revered by Brad Pitt, Beyonce and Coldplay.                                      

For me, a moving sight at the Aga Khan was a group of school kids on a tour, little girls in head scarves, little boys with patkas and others in ordinary kid gear, but different skin colours...that's my Toronto.

Back in August, deep into summer.