It’s entirely possible that an early work by the next Atom Egoyan or David Cronenberg will screen on Wednesday night at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. With the 2013 Student Film Showcase featuring the best from post-secondary schools around the country and the Jump Cuts Young Filmmakers Showcase kicking off the evening with Toronto-area high-school students’ films, the night will be a coming-out party for a new crop of talent. Judging by the polished creativity of some of the entries, it’s safe to say that young people are more prepared than ever to start telling stories on film from an early age.

According to CBC’s Chris Boyce, the goal of this weekend’s CBCMusic.ca Festival is twofold. First and foremost, the CBC wants to celebrate Canadian music. Second, it wants to celebrate CBC Music, the broadcaster’s online music service, which launched a little over a year ago.

In 1996, Theatre Columbus premiered playwright Michael O’Brien’s “freely adapted” take on the famous Beaumarchais play The Barber of Seville, which was written in 1775. O’Brien’s version mixed in music from the 1816 opera of the same name by Gioachino Rossini, as well as original tunes by composer John Millard. The adaptation also propelled the story forward a couple centuries, with pop culture references galore. With Theatre Columbus co-founder Leah Cherniak at the helm, the musical ended the season with six Dora Award nominations (it won three) and plenty of critical acclaim.

Seventeen years later, Soulpepper Theatre is remounting this zany reimagination of The Barber of Seville, updated once again by O’Brien, Millard, and Cherniak. But, for some reason—the change in decade, or company, or sense of humour—whatever had made the original so magical, has faded, save for a few key performances.

Detail of Cléo‘s first cover image.

In 1962, French director Agnès Varda released Cléo de cinq à sept, a film that remains greatly respected for its sophisticated ways of approaching existentialism and mortality, all through a strong feminist lens. It’s from this film—and in response to its vivid and varied depiction of how women perceive and are perceived—that Cléo, a new journal of film, film culture and feminism, has drawn its name.

The editor and founder of Cléo, Kiva Reardon is the staff film writer at TheLoop.ca and has written for publications like Cinema Scope, Reverse Shot, and NOW Magazine (and also, incidentally, Torontoist). Cléo, however, has a different mandate than any of those outlets: first, to allow for a sophisticated and in-depth discussion of film, far beyond a review, through a feminist lens. And then, to provide opportunities for both emerging and established writers to publish their work. Other people involved in the project include managing editor Julia Cooper and contributing editor Mallory Andrews.

The journal will be published online on a quarterly basis, and so far there’s no charge for readers. The inaugural Spring 2013 issue is currently available. The theme of the issue, “flesh,” is explored in various ways. One essay examines body politics and biology in Zero Dark Thirty; another looks at the radical (and often extremely uncomfortable) ways that intimacy is portrayed in 1997′s Gummo and 2012′s Spring Breakers, both written and directed by Harmony Korine. Somewhere between an academic journal and mainstream film review, Cléo’s first issue artfully walks the line between accessibility and in-depth, well-researched inquiry.

The journal is currently accepting submissions for its second issue, the theme of which will be “home.” 200-word abstracts are due by May 1st 2013. As the editors explain: “for our second instalment we are interested in the ways space is rendered both onscreen and off. The topic of home is an opportunity to critically engage with gendered spaces.”

Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains: the very best and very worst people, places, things, and ideas that have had an influence on the city over the past 12 months. From December 10 to 19, we’ll unveil the nominees, grouped by category. Vote for your favourites from each batch, every single day! On December 19 and 20 the winners from each category go head-to-head in the final round of voting, and on December 21, we will reveal your choices for Toronto’s Superhero and Supervillain of the year.

You know something’s gone wrong when you’re forced to check the calendar multiple times to ensure that it is in fact 2012. Though the police aren’t calling assault victims sluts anymore (they have since turned to offering fashion advice to pedestrians getting hit by cars), we were still left with a year where newsfeeds found themselves carrying story after story of harassment incidents: some online, and some much closer to home.

One case that had jaws dropping around the world involved Anita Sarkeesian, a former York University student who found herself on the receiving end of harassment from male gamers, including rape and death threats, after she called attention to the stereotypes that female characters were forced into in video games. A particularly gruesome attack took the form of an online game where players were presented the opportunity to bash in Sarkeesian’s face until it eventually became a bloody mess.

This is where local activist Stephanie Guthrie stepped in.

Guthrie determined that the game’s creator was one Ben “Bendilin” Spurr, a 25-year-old from Sault Ste Marie, who attempted to defend the game on the grounds that it wasn’t about hitting women but hitting “a selfish person.” Guthrie’s challenges—important especially because they showed how prominently misogyny persists in the gaming world—gained rapid and widespread support. Unfortunately, and reinforcing the concern that gaming culture still has a long way to go in this regard, Guthrie was quickly hit with the same kinds of threats and harassment she was attempting to expose. Guthrie’s attackers certainly deny it, but this harassment transcends the computer screen, and takes a real toll on its victims.

Guthrie’s activism, too, transcends the computer screen: after a string of assaults earlier this year in the Christie Pits area, she helped to organize Take Back the Block events in several neighbourhoods, to focus on constructive, community-oriented ways of responding to such incidents.

Though many have trolled in gleeful anonymity throughout the internet’s short lifespan, Guthrie has shown that harassers must be held (and will be held) accountable for their actions online as well as off. Though it’s disappointing to see that even today, the online assault against Sarkeesian continues in full force (TEDxWomen had to disable the comments and ratings of her recent talk), it’s only with more people like Guthrie coming forward to call that kind of behaviour out that we’ll be able to make progress.

The Toronto Marlies Standing up for athletes of all orientations.

Brian Burke Making it his mission to combat homophobia.

Cheri DiNovo Championing trans rights.

Jude MacDonald and Paul Magder Holding the mayor to account

Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains: the very best and very worst people, places, things, and ideas that have had an influence on the city over the past 12 months. From December 10 to 19, we’ll unveil the nominees, grouped by category. Vote for your favourites from each batch, every single day! On December 19 and 20 the winners from each category go head-to-head in the final round of voting, and on December 21, we will reveal your choices for Toronto’s Superhero and Supervillain of the year.

This past summer, tensions were high in the Christie Pits area after a sharp increase in sexual assaults on women in the neighborhood. Despite the public awareness work done by Toronto’s SlutWalk organizers in 2011, some in Toronto still dispensed terrible “rape prevention” advice, like former lingerie league football player (and mayor’s niece) Krista Ford, who advised women in a Tweet to “carry mace, take self-defense classes, and don’t dress like a whore.”

Ford’s tweet was swiftly and roundly condemned. But the strongest rebuttal came via an open letter to Ford written by comedian and improviser Alice Moran, who publicly outed herself as one of the women who’d been assaulted (a teenage suspect was taken into custody six weeks later). In her letter, Moran gently made the obvious point that she and the other victims had done nothing to justify the assaults that had been committed—as there was no justification for them, no matter what the victims were wearing.

This wasn’t the first time the Second City alumna had written an open letter; she’d addressed a National Post article demeaning female comics earlier in the summer, and in 2011, wrote an uncharacteristically scathing rebuttal to a Christie Blatchford column on the collective mourning of Jack Layton. But her unfailingly polite letter to Ford touched a chord, and earned her a brief but intense media spotlight, which she used to speak about the insidious behaviour of “slut-shaming.” An abashed Ford quickly apologized for her remarks.

In addition to being an ad hoc advocate for more enlightened gender attitudes, Moran was also a champion for her chosen community, Toronto’s comedians. She parlayed a deft knack for pop culture parody (first displayed in a series of viral videos for The Second City Network) into one of Bad Dog Theatre‘s most successful shows since their difficult relocation: Throne of Games, which Moran co-produced. (It’s being remounted in January at the Next Stage Theatre Festival.) Moran was also approached to co-write and star in another satire, the stage show Spank! The Fifty Shades Parody. Along with colleagues Colin Munch, Jon Blair, and Ian MacIntyre, she helped create what’s become a smash hit Stateside, with touring productions scheduled in over two dozen American cities in 2013.

Moran has, in any number of ways, stuck her neck out. She didn’t have to respond at all to Krista Ford’s errant statement, or could have responded abstractly, without identifying herself as one of the assault victims. Her choice to let us all into her very personal life in the hopes of shifting the way we talk about assault and its victims was gutsy and generous. When she performs in the remount of Throne of Games next month, Moran will be taking on a new character—that of the young princess Daenerys Targaryen, who eventually becomes a dragon-wrangling queen and slavery abolitionist. It’s one that’s nicely in the spirit of her conduct this year.

CORRECTION: December 16, 2:50PM Ian MacIntyre’s name was previous misspelled as “McIntyre.” The correction has been made to the post above.

Toronto Ombudsman Fiona Crean Grace under fire.

Daniel Dale   Staying professional, even when the mayor couldn’t.

The Globe and Mail‘s Paywall Reminding us that journalism costs money to make.

Captain John   Keeping the waterfront interesting, and keeping his dream alive.

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The CONTACT Photography Festival runs from May 1 to May 31. We’ll be profiling selected artists and shows throughout the month.

Photo by Jill Greenberg.

“Glass Ceiling“
O’Born Contemporary (131 Ossington Avenue)
Runs to June 2; Tuesday to Saturday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.

It’s telling that in Jill Greenberg’s latest exhibition, “Glass Ceiling,” none of the faces of the women are visible. In fact, these almost-naked women are barely keeping their heads above the water. The world of art—photography, painting, and all—is (let’s face it) still largely a man’s world. Since graduating with a senior thesis entitled The Female Object, Greenberg has explored this state of affairs and broader feminist questions in her work, remarking on the difficulties women face when competing against men.

In 2008 Greenberg came under fire when she, tasked with photographing Republican presidential candidate John McCain for the Atlantic, decided to create political art for her own website and so cast him in a sinister light. She has since noted the incident in her bio as such: “The violent backlash from her political art has informed this return to the question of what is tolerated by women in our culture.”

We recently had a chance to speak with Greenberg (who is currently on a shoot in Brazil) about feminism, shooting underwater, and whether or not the term “glass ceiling” is still an appropriate metaphor for female oppression.

Torontoist: What difficulties did you find shooting underwater?

Jill Greenberg: The medium-format studio-portrait camera with the underwater housing, with two underwater flashes on folding arms, is very, very awkward. I am wearing full scuba gear, weights, and an air tank, sitting at the bottom of a 13-foot-deep outdoor swimming pool in L.A.

I tend to make my personal shoots very difficult: wild horses, grizzly bears, toddlers. Somehow it works out.

The women in your photographs could be seen as decapitated, dead, drowned, or disposed of, to name a few—but in the centre of it all (in the photographs and physical gallery space) are the high heels/glass slipper. Which do you think our society is more obsessed with: the beauty or the violence?

I think we are all obsessed with beauty; only some of the population enjoys violence (men!).

Photo by Jill Greenberg.

There’s a particular photo that stands out mainly because it flips the water/ceiling to the ground so the woman is now on top. Was there a different message you were trying to send with this one?

Perhaps it reminds me of Narcissus. She is peacocking and her reflection is quite visible. We know how that went. My idea has always been about the impossibility of the perfection we women are told to aspire to. The fact that they wear heels underwater seems absurd, but these swimmers are dressed for work. Heels are part of the costume/kit they wear when performing.

These photographs could be interpreted as women coming up for air after being suffocated by patriarchy. But the women could easily be seen here as fish, and the surface of the water (that is, the glass ceiling) is actually keeping them alive by being above them. Thinking now to the backlash you faced for the McCain photograph, it does seems that women get cut up and chewed out if they manage to pass this ceiling and one-up men. It’s disturbing to think that there may be a metaphor worse than the “glass ceiling” to describe the oppression of women. What are your thoughts on this?

I could go on about the sad state of affairs for women in the world. North America is better than the Middle East or Africa, of course, but it’s misleading to think the playing field is flat. The rules are different for men and women. It didn’t really sink in for me until I was into my 40s.

As a photographer who goes by the name “The Manipulator” and does intense work in post-production, where do you feel the line should be drawn in terms of altering an image (referring to art versus objectification of women, for example)?

I have actually dropped that name, since when I first used it for my website, in 1995, I was one of very few photographers using digital imaging software. Now, of course, “Photoshop” is a verb, an adjective. And much of my work is captured in camera, with lighting. I don’t think there should be rules about images, unless it’s specifically photojournalism. I think everyone needs to be aware that all pictures lie, even if they are not Photoshopped, since slicing a 500th of a second out of a scene, in some cases a staged scene, is not going to tell a truthful story.

Is it possible to critique the objectification of women without incidentally turning the woman into an object in the critique?

No, it is not. It’s a conundrum, but I have reconciled myself to it. Image making and photography, specifically, objectify the subject. There is a power dynamic at play between the viewer and the viewed. This is one of the times that the gender of the artist is significant to the interpretation of the work.

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A great many things have and will continue to be written in the wake of a confrontation between the mayor and Toronto Star reporter Daniel Dale—about the mayor and his temper, the Star and its coverage of him, and the perpetually tense relationship between the two. But armchair psychologizing and media theory aside, there is also this: a lot of people, in comment sections and message boards and Twitter and coffee shops, are calling Daniel Dale some pretty nasty things.

Apparently, Dale defies some notion of masculinity that involves meeting physical intimidation with more of the same. Apparently, that’s a bad thing.

Dale, if you’ve never met him, is a mild-mannered, quiet, gentle guy. He is an award-winning journalist. And he has handled the media attention this situation has garnered with a great deal of composure.

None of that matters for the purpose of this point. The point would hold even if Dale was a talentless loudmouth who bungled at every turn.

What matters is that Dale had a 300-pound angry man with a football player’s build coming at him. He got the hell out of there. And for this he has been widely mocked.

We can continue to discuss those other questions about media relations at City Hall, but there should be no debate about whether running from a guy who is twice your size and has his fist raised, when nobody else is in danger and nothing but your phone is at stake, makes you less of a man.

It makes you a sensible human being with survival instincts. It means you are capable of keeping your head under pressure. It is, most of all, a sign that you have a sense of proportion—that you prize safety over some ego-driven display of bravado that can make a precarious situation worse. And if you did run when there was something more vital at stake—someone else’s safety, for instance—that wouldn’t make you less of a man, either, though it might make you less of a person.

If it were a woman who’d been sent to cover the story, it’s unlikely anyone would have faulted her for running away—it would have just been a sensible precaution. Calling Dale a wuss because he fails to conform to some kind of retrograde conflation of masculinity with brute force says everything about the name-callers, and nothing about Dale.

It also, perhaps, says something about the appeal Rob Ford continues to hold for a great many Torontonians. If Dale is somehow deficient for running then Ford is correspondingly manly in successfully intimidating him: it reinforces a conception of the mayor as strong, powerful, someone who won’t take crap—from journalists he doesn’t like, from staffers who give him disagreeable advice, from unions in the midst of negotiations. (There’s a lot more to say about the way that particular norm plays out in our political sphere—and especially about how it affects and is affected by the lack of diversity in elected officials—but we’ll save that for a future piece.)

Strength is a virtue. But it isn’t primarily one that manifests in physical action, and it takes many forms. (Self-control is one.) And it’s certainly not the domain of any particular gender.

Maybe the Star does have a vendetta against the mayor. Or maybe this is just the kind of scrunity they bring to every mayor: they sent a photographer to David Miller’s house to see if he kept his lights on during Earth Hour back when he was in office, after all. But whether he should have been working on this story or not, at that hour or not, nobody should fault a male reporter—one working on a real estate story in Toronto rather than, say, a street battle in Syria—for running from a raised fist.

2012 Good for Her Feminist Porn Awards
Berkeley Church (315 Queen Street East)
Friday April 20, 9 p.m.
$25 in advance or $30 at the door

Can you be a feminist and enjoy porn? According to female-focused sex shop Good For Her, the answer’s a clear yes (yes, oh, yes!). Channeling American sex educator and former porn actress Annie Sprinkle—”The answer to bad porn isn’t no porn…it’s to try and make better porn!”—they’ve been celebrating “better porn” since 2006.

The longest running celebration of erotica focused on women and marginalized people, the Good For Her Feminist Porn Awards marks their seventh year this Friday, at the Berkeley Church. That’s right, feminist porn in church.

Lorraine Hewitt, who works at the store and is co-director of the awards, says the event was created in order to showcase and honour those who are creating ethically-made erotic media with a feminist sensibility. This includes websites, movies, and film shorts. “We wanted to not only celebrate the kind of movies that took into account female viewers, but also to give directors a platform through which to promote their work,” Hewitt told us. “Otherwise, it can be difficult for women coming into our shop to know what they are looking for.”

It’s all about celebrating sex in an authentic, non-aggressive way. Contrary to what people may assume based on the name of the awards program, it’s also about celebrating all genders, not exclusively women. “It’s [about] men as well,” says Hewitt. “It’s also about celebrating other identities, people of colour, people of size, older people, basically those people who are typically not the intended audience.”

In order to be considered for a Feminist Porn Award, a woman had to have had a hand (ahem) in the production, writing, direction, or overall creation of the work; the work must depict genuine female pleasure (active desire and consent, real orgasm, and women taking control of their own fantasy); and it must expand the boundaries of sexual representation on film and challenge stereotypes that are often found in mainstream porn, particularly those of an ethnic or ageist nature.

“Marginalized groups tend to get misrepresented in mainstream porn,” explains Hewitt. “Black woman called GhettoBootie12, older women depicted as cougars instead of well-rounded females who just enjoy sex, and people of size portrayed as grotesque or fetishized.”

Hewitt also points out the the names of many porn movies tend to turn people off—though a quick browse of the nominees suggests that while you can take the bigotry out of the porn, it’s not so easy to shed the cheesy monikers. This year’s titles include: Babes in Bondage 4; Brunch Bunch: Queerly SF; Live Nerd Girls; Mommy Is Coming; and FUCKSTYLES (of the queer and famous).

In all, there are 40 nominees under consideration for categories that range from Sexiest Straight Film to Most Deliciously Diverse Cast. Open to the public, attendees at the awards show can expect a lot of spectacle, from the night’s performances to the guests who arrive in anything from ballgowns to leather, according to Hewitt. Hosts and performers include Elvira Kurt, an award-winning Canadian stand-up comic and Second City veteran; Ryan G. Hinds, a Toronto-based actor, singer, dancer, and writer; Coco La Creme, a burlesque performer; and Olive-Or-Oliver, an award-winning transgendered burlesque performer, drag queen, hoop dancer, performance artist, playwright, go-go dancer, model, photographer, and soon-to-be video artist. DJ Sigourney Beaver (get it?) and Ill Na Na dance trope will also be performing. Plus, of course, clips of the nominated films.

“The event is open to everyone and it exposes people to things that they may have never known existed,” says Hewitt. “So if you are looking for something different to do it is definitely worth checking out.”

City council: still mostly men.

“Does Rob Ford have a woman problem?” asked the Globe and Mail recently. A bold question, but the problem of female representation in politics reaches far beyond the mayor. In Toronto, 15 of the 44 councillors—or 34 per cent—are women, and while that sounds bad, it’s a heck of a lot better than the paltry 24.8 per cent elected to federal parliament.

Thankfully, a mentorship program may help correct the current sausage-fest that is Toronto politics.

The Toronto Regional Champion Campaign was launched in 2008; 26 young women were mentored by female councillors as part of an initiative by Councillor Pam McConnell (Ward 28, Toronto Centre-Rosedale). McConnell is chair of a Federation of Canadian Municipalities’ committee dedicated to upping the female quotient in municipal politics. The idea seems to have legs: the program just received funding from the feds’ Status of Women Canada and is set to hit four other communities including Edmonton and Wainfleet, Ontario.

In Toronto, the program just launched its third Protégée Program, with all 15 female city councillors participating. Each councillor is mentoring two young women for a period of 12 months. The women are typically 18 to 26 years of age, are either currently enrolled in or freshly out of university, and hail from a variety of communities and backgrounds–a nice touch, given that council is overwhelmingly Caucasian.

“When I came onto council there were very few women, period; now we’re looking at trying to get a more representative face of Toronto in general,” said McConnell. “It will only start when we give young women the tools, the experience, and, most importantly, the connections to put their names in.”

It’s McConnell’s hope that her sister councillors’ passion for politics will translate, and that these young women won’t face the same barriers to entry she did.

Councillor Pam McConnell at a council meeting last September.

Not only are female politicians forced to prove themselves as leaders over a longer period of time, says McConnell of those difficulties, but women also suffer in the combative environment that is politics: their consensus-building skills are undervalued, and they have a harder time fundraising. Women, she finds, shy away from the networking game, while young men thrive on it, and when it comes time to raise dough, the women suffer. McConnell hopes that the Protégée participants will not only gain confidence through the program, but will also build up a handy network of empowered contacts.

Mentee Leona Teixeira, a 23-year-old who hails from Avenue and Lawrence, currently works for MaRS helping online start-ups find their feet in Toronto. She was non-committal about a future career in politics but, having interned with GO Transit, is passionate about how proper transit infrastructure can help build communities.

Not surprisingly, she’s been paired with Councillor and TTC Chair Karen Stintz, aka the new “Rebel Mayor.”

As for Rob Ford’s “woman problem,” McConnell insisted that all councillors, male and female, are on board with the mentorship program. “I think we need to remember that every male member of council has a daughter, or a sister, or a granddaughter, and they know that those young women have things to contribute.”

A lovely sentiment, though it’s hard to forget that Ford is struggling to keep the few women he does have as members of his Executive Committee, which works to implement his agenda at City Hall. In this administration, fresh, young female faces on council are more necessary than ever.