By Hadiyya Mwapachu

Rebels with a Cause, the inaugural film festival organized by the Ontario Public Interest Research Group (OPIRG) at York, took place in the week of October 24-28, 2011 at various locations around the York campus. The festival successfully screened films that are artistically, politically, and socially critical, combined with artist’s talks, panel discussions, and Q&A’s. The films represented the voices of York students, alumni and faculty, as well as independent filmmakers from the larger Toronto community. OPIRG’s Rebels with a Cause aims to (re)introduce its audiences to the political and social spheres at York and its community, while inciting action and educating through the avenue of film. For recorded discussions and list of films, visit www.opirgyork.ca/node/161

The following article reviews highlights from the festival.
Continue reading →

By Vicky Moufawad-Paul

If Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972) and Gilles Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers (1966) were to have a baby, and that baby was a film, that film would be Rachid Bouchareb’s Outside the Law / Hors La Loi (2010).

When Outside the Law premiered at the Cannes film festival, French troops in full riot gear surrounded the Palais where the film screened. Claiming that the film purports historical inaccuracies, parts of France’s establishment disagree with the film and tried, unsuccessfully, to stop it from playing. But in actuality, the controversy really is bound up in the issue of perspective.
Continue reading →

By Sheri Granite

If you went looking for an art exhibition at Accolade East by an oppressed Palestinian artist who grew up in a world where death rituals were common, you were misinformed, and may have been surprised to find an art exhibition at Accolade West by an artist who happens to be Israeli, an international student who was never oppressed, and knows nothing of common death rituals.

My art, identity, and artistic focus have been significantly misrepresented, distorted, and altered in the Nov. 2, 2011 issue of Excalibur describing my art exhibition Echo.
Continue reading →

By Amy Saunders

ORIFICE, as described by the artist, “is a video installation that uses back-projections on screens made of fabric to create a box in the middle of the gallery that viewers may enter to be enveloped within the video. The videos are comprised of different tight shots of artist Brendan Tang throwing clay on a potter’s wheel. The clay has been dyed to mimic flesh and blood and will play between recognition and abstraction; as something both viscerally familiar but traumatically foreign from the internal body.”
Continue reading →

By Gina Webb

I couldn’t stay away from Nuit Blanche. I love art but I wasn’t expecting much; there is something disturbingly disingenuous when a big bank tells us that we are going to see our city transformed by contemporary art like we’ve never seen it before. I wasn’t overly excited to go, yet I knew I wouldn’t stay in. I also always jump at the chance for a good old-fashioned all-nighter with friends.

I knew that the streets would be crowded. I knew that some art projects would be impossible to see, and others possible after an hour’s wait. I knew that it would be cold and I knew that its sprawl was vast.
Continue reading →