Syndicate: IMAGES FESTIVAL, Toronto

[czegledy@interlog.com (Nina Czegledy)]

Dear Syndicalists,

Greetings to all on this warm Sunday morning just after the closing of the
IMAGES Festival. The successful screenings and the successful parties are
over and among the prizes awarded last night, Istvan Kantor won the
Telefilm Canada Prize for Black Flag and Sergey Dvortsvoy of Kazakhstan,
the best documentary prize for Chastie (Paradise) which is his first film.

Following the screenings of Finnish work earlier in the week, yesterday
afternoon Tapio presented "A shortcut to Finnish Media Art" and after a bit
of the usual techno difficulty  we established a live link with Andy Best
and Terhi Penttila in Helsinki. It was a really good atmosphere at the
InterAccess Gallery, with many questions and lots of interaction. We all
hope to see Tapio with more Finnish work presented here in the future.


And now I give it over to Tapio for his Festival impressions.
nina

Toronto,and its media art scene seem to give a feeling that visitors are
welcome, not least due to the rich variety of sexual and ethnic communities
in the city. A sense of openness, which is not so troubled by
competitiveness and conflict like perhaps in larger US cities, makes me
feel that I could enjoy staying and working here.

IMAGES festival has a strong emphasis on film and video, less attention to
installations, cd-roms or web related work. Like in many festivals, this
seems to be changing. For the syndicated I would recommend sending here the
most courageous or outrageous to the most subtle work done with the most
minimal tech and budget to a high end production. The main thing is what
you have to present and how you do it, not how much it has cost. The
politics here are ok.

Istvan Kantor presented a strong critical statement that relates to the
Harris government in Ontario, a Thatcher - Reagan type of politician who
has caused severe cuts in social and cultural programs. Istvan: "Down with
the government that starves us". I have rarely seen computer animation used
in a meaningful way, his Blag Flag had it. Also the animations by Alex
Rivera and Lalo Lopez showed that 3d animation can be used in radical
ways... their series Animaquiladora resembled the political satire by
Guillermo Gomez Pena, accurate and urgent views of the discriminatory
politics in the US towards Chicanos. These were just two highlights, the
festival program was much more and I saw only a part of it.

It has been great to spend sunny spring days here with Nina, who made this
all happen for me.

greetings to all,

tapio