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Rest your fanny at Art Matters

Sean Yendrys curates unique art, and features his favourite four legged friend - the chair

By looking over his past shows, you might assume that Sean Yendrys has a chair fetish. The 22-year-old Concordia graphic design student is curating his second Art Matters show at Concordia this week. And like last year, he is featuring some chairs in his display. “There is a big possibility that my phone will die,” Yendrys said, upon my third phone call in two days. “I’ve spent the last 48 hours at Concordia. I haven’t had a chance to recharge it.” The man is busy, and with good reason. Full story

Arts

Trapped in the wrong body

Boy I Am follows three women as they become men at Cinema Politica

If ever there’s a film that takes a contentious topic and treats it with some long overdue respect, it’s Boy I Am. The documentary, directed by Sam Feder and Judy Hollar, examines the issue of female to male sex operations with courage, clarity and conscience.
Women, lesbians, gays and male-to-female transsexuals have fought hard for the right to be loud and proud about their personal sexual preferences, but still not included in this celebration are the women who feel like they were given the wrong package. FTM transgenders still lack the communal support enjoyed by other groups; it is a new frontier of sexual acceptance.

Documentaries resorting to cheap tricks

Film critic suggests that music and graphs tell the audience what to think

The line between what cinema is and what it ought to be is one that is being crossed increasingly rarely, according to film historian and critic André Habib.
Last Friday’s Mary Ann Beckett-Baxter Memorial Lecture held at Concordia University was called “Can we still think with images?” and headed by Habib and filmmaker Rodrigue Jean. The talk was preceded by a screening of Jean’s critically acclaimed documentary Hommes à Louer. The Jutra-nominated film is a series of interviews with 11 male prostitutes from across Montreal over the course of a year. It’s a harrowing and disturbing account of a dark pocket of society where prejudices abound. There’s no sugar-coating the facts in Hommes à Louer; it isn’t a Michael Moore-type documentary with a ton of voice-over and crazy graphs and music – there are none. The audience is left to its own devices to make up its own mind about these men.

An uploaded labour of love

Couple crafts webisodes about a Montreal starlet with diva pretensions

Aimy Hart has been described as determined, delusional, selfish, naive and insecure. Part ditzy reality star and celebutante, part desperate actress, Aimy’s online web series, Miss Top 10, has netted the ambitious starlet many new fans - over 300 of them on Facebook. They follow along each week as the series chronicles her many misadventures: Aimy bounces off to auditions, only to be cast as a promotions girl at sporting events, and get set up by her parents with a handsome mayoral hopeful - who needs Aimy to hide the fact he’s a flaming homosexual. The episodes are three to five minute-long bites of the daily life of a drama queen, framed by a pink jewel-encrusted Internet video player.

From the hallways of Vogue to the Project Runway closet

Fashion in film: two documentaries not to miss

The Oscars have come to a close and so has Montreal fashion week, but there is no need to be blue.
Fashion is never better preserved than on a film reel, from the backstage anticipation of a designer’s first runway show to a fashion magazine editor’s icy glare of disapproval, fashion-forward folks should not miss two documentaries just released on DVD.
The first was made on a tiny budget and chronicles the hardships of a burgeoning fashion designer in New York City, putting on his very first collection and displaying it at Fashion Week. Eleven Minutes begins with Jay McCarroll, walking around the Bryant Park tents in February 2007, worried about his debut at the following fashion week in September. “It’s very important to make that leap from TV designer to real life designer,” McCarroll said, as worry crept across his face. “If I fuck this one up, I may have to reconsider some things.”

London art- the building - courtesy of shawn dezan..jpg

Placing the final touches

Artists decorate England's Market Estate Project, before the city tears it down

LONDON -- Walking up to The Market Estate Project, I noticed a man hanging off the side of the building.
A black curtain was the only thing supporting his existence, coming out of the top window of the tower block closest to the entrance. In the name of art, this man had volunteered to hang still from the side of the building for the eight hours the project was open.
Such is the dedication of local British artists to this project.

Glass ceiling not yet shattered

Oscar goes to female, but for war film

Becoming the first woman to win Best Director is certainly an accolade, but the win doesn’t shatter the glass ceiling for female directors as much as it should.
Kathryn Bigelow directed The Hurt Locker, the rough-and-tumble Iraq war flick, which certainly appealed to testosterone-infused male voters (who are in majority). True, a woman won fair and square, but she won playing a man’s game. Oscar voters enjoy gritty films, the type of films that are not typically made by women.

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