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Urban Planner: March 25, 2010
Urban Planner is Torontoist’s guide to what’s on in Toronto, published every weekday morning, and in a weekend edition Friday afternoons. If you have an event you’d like considered, email all of its details—as well as images, if you’ve got any—to [email protected].
Graham Abbey and Sarain Boylan star in A Wake, the opening gala feature at the Female Eye Film Festival.
FILM: At this month’s Oscar ceremony, Kathryn Bigelow proved once and for all that directing is no longer a boys’ club, and that sentiment perfectly captures the spirit of the Female Eye Film Festival. Now in its tenth year, the Female Eye is a juried, competitive film festival committed to showcasing the works of female directors. The festival began yesterday, but the real fun begins tonight with the opening gala, featuring Penelope Buitenhuis‘s A Wake, in which a theatre troupe reunites after the death of their beloved director, revealing the tensions and rivalries from days past. A Q&A session with Buitenhuis and actors Graham Abbey, Tara Nicodemo, Sarain Boylan, and Kris Turner will follow the screening. (For a complete schedule, please visit the festival’s website.) Rainbow Cinemas Market Square (80 Front Street East); 7 p.m.; $8/advance, $10/door.
FUNDRAISER: This June, the G20 Summit will take Toronto by storm as the top finance ministers and bank governors from around the world sit down for two days of down-and-dirty economy talk. All the usual mainstream media outlets will, of course, be covering the event, but Upping the Anti, Toronto Media Co-op, and GroundWire have teamed up to offer Canadians an alternative take, featuring analysis of the summit through video, audio, and web feeds. Tonight, these organizations will host the I ((Heart)) Alt Media Party, an event to raise money for their coverage, featuring music by 100 Dollars, Bob Wiseman, John Rose, Kay Pettigrew, d’bi Young, and DJs Nick Red & DJ B#, an art auction from CoCo, a raffle, and more. CineCycle (129 Spadina Avenue), 9 p.m., donations accepted.
FILM: You might say that the French New Wave of the 1950s and ’60s signalled the birth of the auteur theory—the idea that the director is the architect of a film’s meaning, with the finished product representing the auteur’s personal creative vision. Few auteurs share the iconic status of Jean-Luc Godard, who will be the subject of a special double-header tonight at Innis Town Hall. The first film screened will be 1965’s Pierrot le fou, which stars Godard favourite Jean-Paul Belmondo in the title role as a bored man on the run with his children’s babysitter, who is being chased by terrorists. The second will be Notre musique, Godard’s 2004 allegorical depiction of hell, purgatory, and heaven through the use of war footage. Innis Town Hall (2 Sussex Avenue), 7 p.m., FREE.
WORDS: The literary salon, an intellectual pow-wow popular in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, is back with a bang. One of the Toronto Public Library’s heroic efforts, the Bram and Bluma Appel Salon was launched last year to provide a forum for ideas and discussion, and The Writer’s Room with Ian Brown has proven to be one of its most successful series. Tonight at the Salon, the Globe and Mail‘s Brown will interview Margaret Atwood, or, according to the TPL, “the high priestess of Canadian literature,” about writing and survival in disastrous times. Toronto Reference Library (789 Yonge Street), 7 p.m. (doors at 6 p.m.), FREE.