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Arts & Culture

Song
Esther Mathews

I can’t be talkin’ of love, dear,
I can’t be talkin’ of love.
If there be one thing I can’t talk of
That one thing do be love.

But that’t not sayin’ that I’m not lovin’ —
Still water, you know, runs deep,
An’ I do be lovin’ so deep, dear,
I be lovin’ you in my sleep.

But I can’t be talkin’ of love, dear,
I can’t be talkin’ of love,
If there be one thing I can’t talk of
That one thing do be love.

— from: Immortal Poems of the English Language. An Anthology Edited by Oscar Williams. 447 British and American Masterpieces by 150 Poets. Pocket Books. A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. New York. 1952.

Streetart by Anser. Photo: HyeM.

Established in Canada in April 1998 by the League of Canadian Poets (LCP), National Poetry Month (NPM) brings together schools, publishers, booksellers, literary organizations, libraries, and poets from across the country to celebrate poetry and its vital place in Canada’s culture. The year 2014 marks the 16th anniversary of NPM in Canada.

Regina Mayor Michael Fougere challenges his fellow mayors across Canada to have a local poet read a poem at the opening of their Council meetings in March or April. The challenge is a celebration of UNESCO’s World Poetry Day (March 21) and National Poetry Month in April. The purpose is to celebrate poetry, writing, small presses and the contribution of poets and all writers to the cultural life in our communities. It also celebrates libraries, and the work of so many mayors and municipalities to promote the Arts, culture, and literacy and reading. Great initiative, I believe.

Last week, LCP also announced the shortlist for its 2014 Memorial Awards, and the Spoken Word Award. The works and authors shortlisted are:

There will be some events where you can enjoy some poetry as well. I would recommend the following:

Poetry City
Presented by the Toronto Public Library
Thursday, Apr 10 — 6:00 to 8:15pm
Beaches Branch – Program Room

Five of Canada’s finest poets, Dennis Lee, Ronna Bloom, Ken Babstock, Karen Solie and Souvankham Thammavongsa invite you to celebrate National Poetry Month at the Beaches library.

HIJ Reading Series #4
Featuring Ian Williams and Souvankham Thammavongsa 
With special guests Songs for Runaway Girls
Sunday April 27 — 2:00 to 5:00 pm

Readings will include works by Williams and Thammavongsa, a great musical set, an author Q&A. As well, the members of Songs for Runaway Girls are going to prepare traditional sweet Argentine treats for us called Alfajores and Mate too. And as if that is not enough, there will be more pie and refreshments! You are also welcome to bring adult beverages of your choice. This sounds like absolute merriment!

If you’re a poetry fan and are able to attend these events, I suggest you do. It’s not only a chance to hear some new works, but also to support local poets. And if you’re curious for more poetry, I also suggest you take a tour of my budding poetry corner, where I share works from the greats and up-and-coming poets as well. It may be National Poetry Month but the joy of poetry is an everyday occurrence.

Acclaimed Toronto dance and music ensemble Arabesque returns after a year’s hiatus with the world premiere of its newest production, Sawah.

Sawah is directed and choreographed by Arabesque founder Yasmina Ramzy and directed and composed by Bassam Bishara and Suleiman Warwar. Arabesque brings Western sensibilities to traditional Arab style. They create large intricate ensemble performances, while maintaining the essence of the improvised tradition.

I had the pleasure of attending a rehearsal for Sawah and was able to have a chat with Ramzy. We discussed her approach to developing the production. Ramzy described how the company decided to take a year hiatus during which Sawah was created. The company was “reborn,” said Ramzy. It seems rather apropos this latest production is called Sawah, she continued, “since it is an Arabic word that means traveler or wanderer.”

Dancers at Sawah Rehearsal Photo: HyeM.

In a way this title mirrors the journey the company has taken. As a company, “we are not only contemporary, nor Middle Eastern, nor jazz.. we incorporate various aspects of dance. In Sawah, we want to showcase the nuances between Western and Middle Eastern cultures. And also show how Western culture has appropriated Middle Eastern culture.” One of the numbers includes the title song  [from the tv show] I Dream of Jeannie. Ramzy choreographed the number with both the Egyptian and American versions of the song. From what I saw at rehearsal, the audience will really enjoy this number. There are 11 choreograhies as part of the show; thus, there will be plenty to enjoy.

With regards to the choreography, Ramzy usually comes up with ideas and themes. In Sawah, director Bishara and composer Warwar have also made suggestions on what hand movements to add. And Ramzy has suggested some musical arrangements as well. “We’ve been having a lot of dialogue back and forth between us,” explains Ramzy. The dancers also have a say in the choreography; everyone has ideas. The show is “much richer for this reason.”

The company boasts a diverse, multicultural cast originating from 12 countries, including Tunisia, Peru, Jamaica, Lebanon, Iran etc. The performance includes over 20 dancers and 20 musicians. This year, they held auditions in Montreal for the first time. And five dancers from Montreal will be part of the show. This clip can give you an idea of the process, as a whole.

The show aims to evoke the sense of joy and freedom one feels when embarking on an exciting journey to new far off places. It’s a celebration of Middle Eastern culture and art and how it has found a new home in Canada. Ramzy also shared that Sawah “is my reaction to the rest of the world as well. I’m taking the artform and making it be part of something more than just dance. I want others to be aware of the richness of the culture. I want to give audiences a sense of that.”

Sawah is a narrative accompanied by very talented musicians and dancers. It makes sense there is no ‘real’ term or genre for it, as Ramzy said. It will sure bring audiences lots of entertainment and culture. I would say, if you have not been to an Arabesque performance, you make a point of going at least once. I left that rehearsal dancing my way home.

As most of you know, every weekend there is always something fun and exciting happening in Toronto. I thought I’d take a moment to round up a few events and festivals for you.

FILM

ReelWorld Film Festival 
The festival is fully underway and continues until Sunday, April 6th at Famous Players Canada Square Cinema. I suggest the following screenings for you:

Friday, April 4, 9pm
Music Video Night 

Saturday, April 5, 1pm
Family Screening
Free admission to children 12 and under, when accompanied by an adult.

Sunday, April 6, 5:30pm
Closing Night Gala: Horizon Beautiful

Toronto Silent Film Festival
The festival began this past Thursday but there are still some great films to catch on the big screen. It runs at the Carlton Cinema, Innis Town Hall, Casa Loma, and the Revue Cinema until Tuesday, April 8th. My choices for TSFF include:

Friday, April 4, 7:30pm
Carlton Cinema
City Girl – Dir. F. W. Murnau

Sunday, April 6, 4pm 
Fox Theatre
1000 Laffs: It Started with Charlie – Dir. Charlie Chaplin

Monday, April 7, 8pm
Casa Loma
Seven Years Bad Luck – Dir. Max Linder
Guest Musical Accompanist: Clark Wilson

I have also made some suggestions for Cinéfranco, as well as, aluCine Latin Film + Media Art festivals. Both of which continue this weekend.

My Hat And Glasses, J. Toonoo Image Courtesy of Feheley Fine Arts

VISUAL ARTS

Saturday, April 5th, 3pm
Artist Talk & Reception
Still Life: Drawings By Jutai Toonoo
Feheley Fine Arts

This is an exhibition of recent works by Cape Dorset artist, Jutai Toonoo. Toonoo often mixes media, adding oil pastel or charcoal to pencil crayon. His exploration of inanimate objects is based upon photographs, found objects, and both natural and staged scenes.

Sunday, April 6th, 2pm
Sunday Scene: Tour by Katie Kilroy-Marac
The Power Plant

Katie Kilroy-Marac is an Assistant Professor of Socio-Cultural Anthropology at the University of Toronto. She specializes in the social history of psychiatric thought, the naturalization of of psychiatric categories, and the spaces in which local understandings of illness and suffering come into contact with Western psychiatric models. Kilroy-Marac will be leading a tour of the current exhibition.

THEATRE

Minotaur
Young People’s Theatre
Runs through April 13, 2014

I recommend YPT’s productions often because they are family friendly. I also enjoy them because of their inventive ways of telling myths, folk, and fairy tales. Minotaur sounds like a fun and adventurous telling of the Greek myth story combined with a young boy’s efforts to save his soldier father. The good people from Mooney on Theatre also give it a good review.

50 Shades! The Musical
St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts, Bluma Appel Theatre
Runs through April 13, 2014

A completely original score, live band on stage, and sexy men and women running around scantily clad in leather gear… This is certainly an Adults-Only show, but why not? I have not read the book which ‘inspired’ this musical, nor do I care to. But this show sounds like fun…especially after dark.

I am currently on film festival training mode as the season is just beginning for us in T.O. Nonetheless, I will be making time to check out other happenings too. Hope you do as well. And if you see me around town, stop and say hi!

Let’s Be Boring Together

By Peter Gutiérrez

Let’s be sleepy in trees
Let’s awaken when they do
Let’s move slowly even if it hurts
Let’s watch the wind as it fails to arrive
Let’s chase nothing save the still moment
Let’s accept it all and keep our hands open
Let’s smile like idiots at animals and children
Let’s hear each other being quiet in separate rooms
Let’s read aloud passages we’ve read only silently before
Let’s not wonder where the time went—it bound our presence
Let’s walk outdoors together when the weather is good, and bad
Let’s teach each other simple things that we’re embarrassed not to know

Let’s be boring together
Let’s

Peter Gutiérrez has been writing and publishing poetry for more years than he cares to admit. Additionally he has written comics, criticism, nonfiction books, and short stories professionally. He lives in New Jersey and can be reached at fiifgutierrez@gmail.com.

Photo: HyeM.

This year, aluCine Latin Film + Media Arts Festival will heat things up for 10 days with a vibrant and festive explosion of Hispano American culture. The festival returns to Toronto with a varied and tantalizing lineup of films for all interests, and all ages.

aluCine will run starting tonight, April 3 until Saturday, April 12 featuring gallery installations, short and feature film programmes, performances, artists’ talks, panel discussions and workshops.  This year, aluCine will celebrate Mexico’s rich and vibrant culture, with a showcase of exciting, contemporary Latin-American cinema and media arts.

Opening Gala Screening: Quebranto/Disrupted
Thursday, April 3rd, 8pm
Jackman Hall, Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO)

This documentary is in memory and testimony of two characters: Fernando García, known as Pinolito, who was a child actor in the seventies, and Doña Lilia Ortega, his mother, an actress. Fernando came out as a transsexual some years ago, and now calls herself Coral Bonelli. They live together in Garibaldi yearning for their past in the movies, while Coral bravely comes to terms with her gender identity. They both still perform, though whilst some would assume it would be for https://www.shemalehd.sex/ it is not the case.

Quebranto · Disrupted · Trailer from Julián Hernández on Vimeo.

Short Films Presentation
On Identity: Politics and Human Rights
Friday, April 4th, 9pm
Jackman Hall, Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO)

The compilation of short films aim to make you reflect upon realities that affect us all: Dictatorships, complex relationships, and nostalgia for the abandoned motherland. Diverse in style and content, each film offers a particular vision of the Latin American continent.

The programme includes films from Perú, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, as well some co-productions with other European nations.

Shorts for Shorties I & II
Saturday, April 5th, 11:30am & 2:30pm
Wychwood Theatre, Artscape Wychwood Barns

Bavia Art Gallery – 898b St. Clair Avenue West

How many of you know where chocolate comes from? Do you know much about cacao? Its history, tradition, and modernity. Special attention is also paid to ChocoSol’s own process involving close partnerships with Mexican farmers of raw, sustainably produced and fairly traded cacao.

As always, these are but a few, carefully chosen picks to entice to come out to aluCine and explore more about our Latin American culture. For the complete schedule, list of programs, box office and ticket info, I direct you to visit alucinefestival.com.

**Para mis amigos de habla Hispana, les invito a leer más acerca de aluCine en su página web y en Facebook también.

Cinéfranco, English Canada’s largest celebration of international Francophone cinema returns to The Royal Cinema in Toronto from Friday, March 28 to Sunday, April 6, for its 17th edition.

Cinéfranco will present two programs of shorts on March 29, and April 3. The March 29 program, sponsored FRIC and Le Labo, showcases work from young Quebecois and French filmmakers who will be in attendance for a post-screening discussion. The April 3 program, sponsored FrancoQueer and the Inside Out GLBT Film Festival, will feature several International and Canadian Francophone shorts.

As for feature length films, I’ve taken a look through the program and have come up with a few suggestions for you.

Saturday, March 29 – 2:00pm
The Scar / La Cicatrice
Q&A with Dir. Jimmy Larouche & Prod. Patricia Diaz

A story about two men who grew up together in school. One was a bully; the other is now the bullied who bullies. The film is about more than bullying. It’s about the invisible scars that linger and can come to create trouble later in life. I’ve read some good stuff about this one, so I am curious about this film.

Saturday, March 29 – 6:30pm
Bright Days Ahead / Les Beaux Jours

Caroline, a dentist in her sixties, has just retired. So her daughters gave her a membership at the “Beaux jours” Senior Club. Here, Caroline meets a new lover but things get a little complicated as she questions her feelings for her ‘old husband’ as well.

Director Marion Vernoux moves away from the easy “cougar” clichés to prove that age is meaningless in matters of the heart and sexual attraction

Tuesday, April 1 – 8:30pm
Jo’s Neighborhood / Un P’tit Gars De Ménilmontant
Q&A with Dir. Alain Minier

After 15 years in prison, Jo returns to his former neighborhood – Ménilmontant, a collection of high rise estates on the gritty outskirts of Paris. It’s all completely changed; new gangs and new codes now rule this place. Jo finds it difficult to settle back into life on the outside, especially when he discovers that the woman he used to love is the mother of a 14 year old boy.

Wednesday, April 2 – 8:00pm
Asphalt Playground / La Cite Rose 

Twelve-year old Aimé, nicknamed Machine Gun (Mitraillette), is a mischievous kid from a housing project outside Paris, where families live alongside criminals and mothers try to keep their kids out of trouble. This isn’t an easy place to grow up.  infected by drug trafficking and violence. But Mitraillette wants to believe in a good life like his brother Djibril, a law student at the Sorbonne. He worries about his cousin Isma, now a watchman for Narcisse, the violent neighbourhood boss.

Openly inspired by the Brazilian film City of God, director Julien Abraham depicts these young people’s daily lives in all its human diversity with an enlightening energy and accuracy. I’ve seen City of God and thought it a good film; I’m now curious about La Cite Rose as well.

Saturday, April 5 – 1:30pm
Halal Butcher Shop / Boucherie Halal
Q&A with actor Said Benyoucef

Jamila and Hédi make a solid couple. In order to blend into Québec way of life, they open a halal butcher shop. Everything seems to smile at them until Hédi’s father comes to settle with them. Not only does he disapprove of Jamila and Hédi’s marriage, he also opens a small mosque in the back of the store to spread his fundamentalist messages.

These are my five choices at the moment. But the festival has many more films to enjoy. For further information on films and other details visit the festival’s website. Also, do note that all films at Cinéfranco are screened with English subtitles.

Coming Undone
By Tara Sinclair

In the canopy
of the morning sun,
the snow melts
like thoughts absorbing
into the unseen
of the season,
and the ground
moves in increments,
as the soil cracks
beneath in hope,
the birds sing a chorus above;
a speckling of the sun,
in the face of the day.

Tara Sinclair uses her words to connect nature and nurture. She studied Fish and Wildlife, Psychology, and has an interest in Buddhism. Of Ukrainian and Scottish descent, born and residing in Kelowna BC. You can read more of her writing at AlwaysLittlePieces.wordpress.com.

Secrets
By Viggo Mortensen

Oceans take our secrets
what we don’t want to see or smell anymore.
We feel anonymous
we feel clean
when we throw our past away.
It will wash, we think.
It will sink
it will drift far from this shore.
It will disappear.
Maybe the fish will eat our words
maybe lost or spurned loves
will help deep-sea feathery green plants grow.

Secretos

El océano se lleva nuestros secretos,
lo que no queremos ver, ni oler, nunca más.
Nos sentimos limpios cuando arrojamos
lejos de nosotros el pasado.
Se lavará, pensamos, se hundirá.
La corriente se lo llevará lejos de esta orilla.
Desaparecerá.
Tal vez nuestras palabras alimenten a los peces.
Tal vez el amor perdido o abandonado haga crecer
frondosas y verdes praderas submarinas.

Source: listal.com

Viggo Peter Mortensen, Jr. (October 20, 1958) is an American actor, poet, musician, photographer and painter. He made his film debut in Peter Weir’s 1985 thriller Witness, and subsequently appeared in many notable films of the 1990s. Mortensen grew in fame in the early 2000s with his role as Aragorn in the epic film trilogy The Lord of the Rings. In 2005, he won critical acclaim for David Cronenberg’s crime thriller A History of Violence. Two years later, another Cronenberg film Eastern Promises (2007) earned him further critical acclaim. A third teaming with Cronenberg in A Dangerous Method (2011) resulted in a Golden Globe Best Supporting Actor nomination.

Aside from acting, his other artistic pursuits include fine arts, photography, poetry, and music. In 2002, he founded the Perceval Press to publish the works of little-known artists and authors.