At the time of the inaugural festival last year, I was taking a Community Arts class, and one of our assignments was to interview a community art project leader. Film festivals in general aren’t considered to be community art projects, but there was something about TPFF that made it feel like one. This interview — with Robert Allison, one of the founders of TPFF — is a year old, but I think it captures the significance of the festival and I hope it drives you to check it out this year.

TPFF runs from September 26 to October 2. Films are scheduled at Bloor Cinema, Toronto Revue Cinema, Jackman Hall (AGO) and Empire Studio 10 (Mississauga). Tickets are $10, or $7 for seniors/students/unwaged. I recommend getting a package of 10 tickets for $75. You can use the package to order multiple tickets for single screenings; share one with a friend.

Loss and losing. Grief, failure, brokenness, numbness, uncertainty, fear, the death of feeling, the death of dreaming. The absolute relentless, endless, habitual, unfairness of the world. What does loss mean to individuals? What does it mean to whole cultures, whole people who have learned to live with it as a constant companion?¹ – Arundhati Roy

A skeptic like myself will read the newspapers harbouring a vague suspicion toward anyone being heralded by the corporate media. It is this practice that led me, as a young teenager, to the other side of the Israel-Palestine conflict; the story less told, the story revealing illegal occupation, displacement, loss, torture, humiliation and exile. It seemed so easy to stand on the side of social justice, to recognize the wrongs that had been committed, supported and sustained by Israel and its allies, to be aghast at the imposed immobilization, the spontaneous, arbitrary demolition of Palestinian homes, the swelling settlements that encroached the borders of the land formerly known as Palestine. How does a country cease to exist? Who could support this violent, 20th century incarnation of imperialism? When would this be undone—and could it be?

My relief in knowing fragments of the Palestinian story was squandered by the constant reminders indicating that siding with Arabs was unpopular, was equal to siding with radicals, siding with suicide bombers, siding with a people that was deemed unworthy of its own land.

But slivers of hope exist, they have existed between then and now, and they have never been more optimistically manifested than in the inaugural Toronto Palestine Film Festival (TPFF), which took place between October 25th and November 1st (2008) across four venues in both Toronto and Mississauga. It might not be a vast hope, or a promising one, but it is one that exists at last, and one that exists to be shared.

Film festivals aren’t traditionally considered community art projects, but with a mandate combining awareness, education and engagement, TPFF establishes itself as a collaborative group with open arms, reaching out and letting in, building momentum with prior individual film screenings that led to the conception of a fuller, more organized festival. Robert Allison, one of the core volunteers who founded the festival, spoke to me about TPFF, which he says, “belonged to everyone who chose to be a part of it.”

It was July 2006. Israel was dropping bombs on Lebanon. Over a thousand people were dead, Lebanese civil infrastructure was severely damaged, and nearly two million citizens—both Lebanese and Israeli—were displaced. Watching from Toronto, Robert Allison was angry. He ended up at a demonstration in an attempt to channel his outrage toward the unprovoked and undeserved brutality, but he wasn’t sure if it was the right outlet. Allison knew he wanted to make a contribution but kept asking himself, “Where am I comfortable?” And then, a tremendous opportunity presented itself. Allison visited Egypt and Lebanon, and after “standing in the ruins of where bombs had been dropped,” he found a new purpose for activism back home. When he returned to Toronto, it was already a year since the first bombs dropped. He wanted to show a film to commemorate the anniversary.

Allison’s history of showing marginalized films begins here, and his efforts have culminated into a full-fledged festival that focuses specifically on film works about and by Palestinians. It was during this process and configuration of individual screenings that Allison was convinced of the desperate hunger for knowledge and truth about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict amongst Torontonians—every time he showed a film at the Brunswick (which has since closed), he was screening to sold-out crowds that included innumerable unfamiliar faces—people he didn’t recognize from the activist community. By the time the second anniversary of the July War came around, Allison says that he and the people he was organizing with “were forming as a collective,” and it was around this time that he was coming into contact with film works that focused specifically on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Allison’s interest in this particular conflict had little to do with Israel or Palestine specifically. “One of the things that affected me about the whole issue was social justice. Right and wrong. I don’t care who’s doing the killing; I just know that killing is wrong. So I stand on the side of those being killed,” he says. By reframing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as one of social justice, Allison was able to reach into other activist communities who would share in the process of proliferating awareness and education. By focusing on justice—instead of ethnicity—TPFF was able to “reach out to different communities” based on the mix of the collective, says Allison. They were also able to educate and breed empathy amongst people who had existing prejudices against Palestinians—including Allison’s father and grandmother. By expanding the terms of inclusion, by extending a hand to non-Palestinians, engagement beyond those already in the know was possible.

With the planning of a coherent festival underway, I ask Allison where TPFF found financial support. Although he wasn’t in charge of that aspect of the festival, he admits to taking a cue from his parents, who ran a theatre for ten years without receiving a dime of government funding. “The key is that they got to do what they want,” Allison says, while admitting that TPFF did receive nominal support from public funding bodies (the receipt of which was protested by Conservative bloggers in the city). “My personal feeling was that we should apply for the grants, but not rely on them,” he says. Instead, TPFF found the support of local businesses to fund the festival but more importantly, they partnered with local festivals and organizations to co-present films, creating an expansive network that colludes with other initiatives that are either ethnic-specific or arts-based. With an attitude that claims “we don’t need to do somersaults to get these people to support us,” Allison found that “people came out of the woodwork,” including Frederick, a French journalist-turned-restaurateur from Le Select Bistro who not only gave organizers free meals and donated cash to the festival, but distributed TPFF programs to his customers before and during the festival.

Programming the festival introduced new challenges that ensured little else but the promise of spontaneous improvisation. Allison’s only specification for screenings—which took place every Sunday in his home after a meeting with volunteer committee members—was that at least one Palestinian be present. Over 200 films were submitted to the festival, and though a rating system was devised, selections were made on a case-by-case basis. Allison shares a devastating story about Palestinian filmmaker Hanna Elias to exemplify this selection process. Elias, who teaches filmmaking to kids in Bethlehem, was traveling from Los Angeles to Bethlehem with a stopover in Switzerland, where he boarded an Israeli airline. Airline staff obliterated his film equipment and poured salt into an already deep wound by searching his personal belongings. Despite his films having exorbitant screening fees that the festival had already passed on, “you hear this story from him and you want to support this guy,” Allison says. “He’s going through hell.” Elias’s The Olive Harvest and The Mountain were both screened during TPFF to packed audiences.

The only guarantee in selecting films is that “it’s a balancing act,” says Allison. All told, the selection process allowed for another layer of community to emerge amongst committee members and filmmakers. Mohammed Alatar, director of The Iron Wall and Jerusalem: East Side Story said, “I don’t care about money, just show my film.” Other artists, like Palestinian filmmaker and producer Annemarie Jacir (the sister of visual artist Emily Jacir, whose installation came to A Space last year), were phenomenally accommodating in making professional connections for Allison to acquire films that seemed shrouded in red tape. And still other factors were working in TPFF’s favour.

Allison is conscientious of the apprehension sponsored events have to program this kind of content. “There’s a reason why 23 of the films were Canadian premieres,” Allison says, explaining that TPFF’s opening and closing films—Salt of This Sea and Slingshot Hip-Hop—were both turned down by the Toronto International Film Festival, even though they had been around the international film festival circuit and were Official Selections at Cannes and Sundance, respectively. He also notes that Hot Docs gave a total of six minutes to Palestinian content. The wedge created by reticence was enthusiastically filled by TPFF. “We created the space,” says Allison, and it was one where an existing community was fortified by the awareness and education of new audiences.

TPFF sold thousands of tickets in the eight days of the festival. That’s thousands of opportunities for awareness, education, empathy and hope. But Allison admits there were shortcomings, things that would certainly be applied in subsequent presentations of the festival: context, conversation, and educational materials. Allison’s first regret is that “we did not appropriately build in a mechanism for these people to talk about what they had just seen.” He also thinks that there should have been “information for people to walk away with.” Although many of the films explicitly used the political crisis as a backdrop to their stories, “we need to spend $2000 on educational materials,” says Allison. He also plans to continue individual screenings throughout the year, so that education doesn’t stop on November 2nd.

In crisis, solidarity breeds empathy, empathy breeds hope and hope breeds change. TPFF proves that solidarity can extend beyond the borders of ethnicity and touch the hearts and minds of Torontonians who know social injustice when they see it—and feel enough to contribute to its amelioration.

¹ Roy, Arundhati. “Come September.” Lannan Foundation Reading & Conversations. Lensic Performing Arts Center, Santa Fe. 18 Sept. 2002. 9 Aug. 2009. 11 Nov. 2008 <http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=945405493000735497>.

© Marissa Neave, the last place on earth you probably want to be, 2009. | Permalink | Comment | Post tags: film festival, palestine, robert allison, tiff, toronto, tpff

You’ve had quite a prolific career in several different media — street art, painting, children’s books. What binds all of these formats together for you, especially since some of your themes, like maps and portraits, carry over through much of your work?

It’s all done in the spirit of learning and exploring. Making connections and sharing.

Untitled (Self Portrait), 2009, acrylic and antique map on canvas, 24″ × 18″

Your paintings on exhibition at Angell Gallery are deconstructed/abstract
 self-portraits on maps. Where do you find the maps, and what is their 
significance in particular? What is the correlation between each map and
 subject?

Back in the early 1990s while studying at the School of Visual Arts I used to search through dumpsters for free paper… I couldn’t afford much back then so I looked for materials everywhere. There was one dumpster on 17th and Broadway that always had large rolls of blueprint paper from a nearby architectural firm. The paper was perfect for painting upon and nice and thin for gluing onto walls. I also liked how my loose paintings were juxtaposed upon the structure and rigidity of the building designs. Equally interesting to me were how these paintings atop designs of New York City buildings were then reintroduced to the streets via my gluing of them up outdoors.

From the blueprints I moved to maps, a pretty natural next step. I’ve always loved looking at maps and learning about the design of our world. I began to seek them out everywhere, eBay is a big help. I favor antique maps for their softer colors, more human feel and gentle surface. New maps are too glossy and plastic to the touch. I love to travel and install my works around the globe and I figure if I can’t yet physically get to a place, I can metaphorically do it by marking or painting on the maps.

I continue to paint on blueprints and maps and, as a matter of fact, I’ve installed some self portraits in the streets of Toronto that were created on both.

I really loved how in some cases, the maps were totally obscured by layers 
of paint, and the only evidence of the map beneath was the creases and folds of its surface. When do you know a work is finished?

The acrylic paints and pigments I use are home made by an artist in New York. The colors are very rich and the acrylic and urethane mediums are very versatile. They can be any range of finish from matte to high gloss and its viscosity can be completely controlled. These qualities changed the way I paint. By using rich, concentrated pigments I was able to push and pull the liquidity of the paint without compromising my control of color, opacity or transparency.

As for when a painting is finished? I like what Brice Marden once said, “When the painting really lives, has a right to exist on its own strengths and weaknesses, I consider it finished. When I have put all I can into it and it really breathes, I stop. There are times when a work has pulled ahead of me and goes on to become something new to me, something that I have never seen before; that is finishing in an exhilarating way.”

Untitled (Self Portrait), 2009, acrylic and antique map on canvas, 40″ × 29″

Where does this process begin for you? Do you start with the surface or the 
subject?

I begin by mounting a single map or multiple maps to a canvas. For the single maps, I have a stretched canvas the same size, for others I’ll tear the maps and overlap them to fit. I’ll keep the map borders so that the framing quality or design is retained. This overlapping results in the creation of new geographies. Land masses and bodies of water mix and conjoin to create new places. I paint on top of the maps once they’re mounted.

What about a particular surface draws you to paint on it?

It’s in the spirit of collaborating with that surface… it’s a dialog, a relationship. It’s the same as working in the streets.

Street art has a spirit of intervention. In terms of production, is there an element of this in the work you show in galleries, or is it a different 
process altogether?

The works in the streets aren’t as built up as the ones mounted on canvas. If I use too much paint on the paper pieces intended for the streets, they won’t age or decompose in the gradual manner that I prefer. One of the most important aspects of working in the streets for me is allowing the work to wither away and disappear. Heavy application of acrylic would prevent that.

Michael De Feo’s work is on exhibition at Angell Gallery until August 29th. Next up, De Feo participates in the Hacia Afuera public art festival in Harlem, New York City, August  22nd and 23rd. If you keep a lookout, you just might happen upon some of his street pieces–including the flower motif for which he is perhaps best known–in Toronto.

Take a look through De Feo’s website to see documentation of his street art from around the world.

Heading image: Untitled (Self Portrait), 2009, acrylic and antique map on canvas, 20″ × 16″
Images courtesy the artist.

© Marissa Neave, the last place on earth you probably want to be, 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Post tags: angell gallery, maps, michael de feo, painting, portraits, street art, toronto

There are quite a few things that stood out to me in the pieces on exhibition at Angell Gallery. First of all, your use of buildings/dwellings (or objects that resemble either). Can you talk about the significance these sorts of spaces have in your work? (By the way, I thought the use of buildings/dwellings in your work read really well with De Feo’s portraits on maps).

Thanks, I had only seen De Feo’s work online and wasn’t even aware that they were all painted on maps, very cool relation!  I use buildings to signify human interaction/impact without having to include people. I try to build the habitats with a certain amount of anonymity so that they don’t necessarily refer to anything specific.  Although the landscapes are deserted they appear as though they could have been habitable.

I was also very drawn to how accurately you render real-life materials. There’s wood, acrylic (or plastic, or candy), shells, water. These materials co-exist in your environments with imagined materials as well. I notice as well that some of the imagined elements — namely, the bubble-like clouds — are suspended with string within your images. What is the relationship between reality and fiction in your work, and how do you balance the two? The clouds, for example, obviously don’t need to be hanging from strings, since you are fully designing the scene, and yet they do, as if it was a physical maquette.

It’s important for me to make sure that the objects look like they could exist in real life, but exist only as a representation (or maquette) of transforming matter.  By doing this I can remove site specific associations by making environments that are completely fictional.  That, and I really like train sets and models, so it ends up coming from a mix of aesthetic and conceptual  reasons.

Some of your work reminds me of old video games — and, sometimes, glitches in old video games. They also evoke a number of random things, like movies, candy, and children’s books. It’s an odd mixture of future and nostalgia. What sorts of visual experiences inform your work?

Any of those, sometimes music videos and art installations too.  Point-and-click adventure games made a huge impact on me because they had the luxury to pre-render scenes, which resulted in really great graphics that were incomparable in any other genre.  Granted they were probably the coldest type of game, but they seemed the most authentic to me.

Can you say anything specifically about the works that were selected to be in this exhibition? I found them to be a lot darker than some of your other work, both in colour and composition. They had a more sombre tone amongst them than I was expecting, considering the work I had seen on your website.

They are the newest work, except “City Flicker Stars” which was one of the first compositions I started and only recently finished for this show.  I think they are only half darker, maybe because I’ve been watching a lot of Hitchcock films.  I don’t really have a good answer for this one, I apologise.

And finally, a question you don’t have to answer, but I’m curious: How close are you to constructing these scenes in a giant warehouse so that people can walk through them and experience them physically?

Maybe one day.  I have been in talks with IMM Living about designing ceramic gifts through them, not really walk through-able but definitely physical!  I would really prefer to take an industrial design approach to making physical work and ensure it has another function other than being an art object.

What’s next for Alex? Apparently, lots of stuff. The group show, Peep Show at Lonsdale Gallery features work by McLeod, until September 27th, and his work will also be a part of their anniversary exhibition in November. South of the border, he will be exhibiting in a show upcoming at Concertina Gallery in Chicago. The summer group show at Angell is up until August 29th. Keep an eye on alxclub.com — McLeod updates frequently.

[Header Image: city flicker stars (detail) by Alex McLeod; courtesy of the artist. Rollover images for details.]

© Marissa Neave, the last place on earth you probably want to be, 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Post tags: 3d rendering, alex mcleod, angell gallery, concertina gallery, landscape, lonsdale gallery, switch contemporary

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© Marissa Neave, the last place on earth you probably want to be, 2009. | Permalink | Comment | Post tags: gallery 44, installation, new york, nicholas knight, photography, toronto

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© Marissa Neave, the last place on earth you probably want to be, 2008. | Permalink | 3 comments | Post tags: art, artist, collage, interview, recommendation

This is Part Two of an earlier interview, posted here.

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© Marissa Neave, the last place on earth you probably want to be, 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Post tags: artist, exhibition, intervention, interview, nyc, poster boy, public art, space

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© Marissa Neave, the last place on earth you probably want to be, 2008. | Permalink | 3 comments | Post tags: artist, exhibition, intervention, interview, nyc, poster boy, public art, space