2017 PROGRAMMING

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SPACE

While I enjoy watching superhero or Star Wars movies (yes, you read that right!), there is a place that sits maybe on the left side of my heart, where an artist’s vision reaches inside. These filmmakers create intimate windows that indicate things about myself I might not have thought about or felt was important to me. It’s the slow reveal of the dis-covering that lures me in. Some films are instantly relatable, others enthrall, and some unsettle. The beauty of compelling short films, multimedia performances, and video projections is that they can act as a catalyst to open a space in which possibilities beyond the art itself arise. These spaces foster dialogue around perhaps unfamiliar perspectives, disable our certainty about the world while challenging us to make new connections – between ideas, between forms and between people. There will be multiple ways to experience the moving image collectively – installation, indoor and outdoor screenings, pub talks and a workshop.

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LOCATION

One of the guiding principles of the Fabulous Festival of Fringe Film this year is to begin to expand our definition of ‘local’. If we consider the Saugeen Ojibway Nation traditional territory itself as a model, perhaps we can learn something about how we think of ‘others’; of how we think of borders and of how we think of belonging. Traditional territories are nebulous swaths of land defined by river watersheds. The fringes of these territories are about as defined and constant as that of a river or shoreline. Along these ambiguous edges, people butt up
against each other – negotiating relationships as they threaten each other’s identities while simultaneously enriching them. It’s going to feel a little awkward; a little unfamiliar; a little threatening when we think in terms of ‘our’ festival or ‘their festival.’ We hope it is neither. We hope that by having a nebulous border, many will feel welcome

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CULTURE

Thinking about the large tract of traditional territory of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation, our diverse group of guest
programmers, will present multiple perspectives on what land means to them. Kate Barry (Vancouver),
Elwood Jimmy (Guelph), Native Art Department International (NYC) a.k.a Maria Hupfield and Jason Lujan, (NYC), jes sachse (Toronto), Clayton Windatt (North Bay) offer their curatorial perspectives while amplifying their own artistic voices. All are established artists themselves. Check out the programmers’ impressive bios and the other places they are connected to, on our website! Through partnerships, we co-present Wapikoni Cinema on Tour; ImagineNATIVE @ Sauble Beach; and Caroline Klimek, a PhD Candidate at York University, who will program student work from the Department of Cinema and Media Arts.

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COLLECTIVITY

An amazing team has brought this festival together. Many thanks go to the founding members of the Grey Zone
Collective: Tony Massett, Phil Hoffman and former member, Myke Dyer; former Artistic Director and ongoing member of the GZC, Corinna Ghaznavi, and Leslie Supnet, who invigorates the Collective with her young energy. I’d also like to officially welcome Adrian Kahgee as a new member of The Grey Zone Collective and our community co- ordinator. She is from Saugeen First Nation and our discussions have been instrumental in honing our focus on space and place, and in asking how the film festival could be a mechanism to re/awaken our treaty obligations. Our partners have guided us over the long process of planning and we thank them for generously supporting our efforts: Saugeen First Nation #29, AKIMBO, The Garafraxa Café, Glencolton Farms, Vtape, Hanover Drive-In Theatre, Jest Arts, ImagineNATIVE, Wapikoni, Durham Art Gallery, Durham Arena, The Breakfast Nook, York University’s Department of Cinema and Media Arts, and the Scenic City Film Festival. We are immeasurably grateful to our funders, the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, and Canada Summer Jobs, who have all invested in our collective imagining of a re-awakened treaty. We invite you to join us on this moving picture adventure, sit with us in conversation and share your experiences in person and on social media. We want your feedback! We need spaces to hang out with each other – to share our different cultures, perspectives, abilities and experiences. We’re simply using film and video as a beacon to show people where some of those spaces are. Our guest programmers have selected artists to help define these new spaces. This is just one way to engage in the process of recognizing we are all treaty people. There is a great deal of work to be done and it’s time for non-Indigenous people to take action.

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MANY THANKS TO:

Chief Lester Anoquot and Band Council
Staff at Saugeen First Nation (Anissa Nashkewa, Jennifer Kewageshig, Lori Kewaquom, Benson Coulson)
Pamela Hopwood, writing and publicity
Clint Enns, technician
Michelle Gay, design
Ronan Bryson, videographer
Lisa Sammut and Laura Blaney, volunteers
& all the volunteers and contributors who have come on board since writing this message.
All the local and visiting patrons/viewers/attendees – you’re why we do what we do!
This festival is a collaborative effort – thank you all for your contributions and being a part of it.

–Debbie Ebanks Schlums, artistic director

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Programmer Bios

Kate Barry.

I received my BFA from Emily Carr University of Art & Design (2000), and my MFA from the University of Ottawa (2009). My art practice investigates the performative capacities of the human body through video, drawing and performance art. I have exhibited and performed at the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa), Carleton University Art Gallery (Ottawa), Galerie SAW Gallery (Ottawa), The Rider Project (New York City), Glad Day Event Space (Toronto) as well as LINK & PIN performance art series (Montreal). I have also self-produced work at the Vancouver Art Gallery (Vancouver), Muse d’Orsay (Paris, France) and Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto). Currently, I work as the Project Manager for LIVE! Biennale, Vancouver. From 2014-2017, I worked as the Submissions and Communication Coordinator at Vtape, a distribution organization in Toronto. From 2013 -2016, I was the project manager for More Caught in the Act: An Anthology of Performance Art by Canadian Women, ed. Johanna Householder and Tanya Mars, copublished by YYZ publications; FADO Performance Art Centre; and Artexte (2016).

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Elwood Jimmy

is recently of Guelph, Canada, working as the program coordinator for Musagetes, an arts foundation with a current international presence in Italy, Croatia, Brazil and Senegal. He is originally from the Thunderchild First Nation, an Indigenous community located in the northern plains region of Turtle Island. For over a decade he has played a leadership role in several collaborative arts projects and organizations within a variety of communities and contexts. After moving to Toronto in 2012, he worked for a number of film festivals in the city including the Planet in Focus Environmental Film Festival, the aluCine Latin Film + Media Arts Festival, the 8 Fest, the imagineNative Film + Media Arts Festival, the Regent Park Film Festival and the Images Festival. From 2014-15, he was the Administrative Director with Red Pepper Spectacle Arts, a community arts organization that works primarily with Toronto’s Indigenous community, and maintains a working partnership with the organization. As well, he programs for Bold as Love and Ombassin, multidisciplinary collectives that present new works by Indigenous artists and artists of Colour throughout the Greater Toronto Area. He has curated visual, media and performance art projects for a number of centres including A Space Gallery, Gallery 101, Ace Art, the Dunlop Art Gallery, and Paved Arts, among others.

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Debbie Ebanks Schlums

is a multidisciplinary artist, writer and artistic director of the Fabulous Festival of Fringe Film. Born in Jamaica and raised in Canada, she has lived and worked in Jamaica, Canada, Switzerland and Germany. Her art practice explores themes of identity, migration, and trauma. She was a founding member of the Out of a War Zone and To Lemon Hill Collectives, both addressing the Syrian refugee crisis. Her work has been shown at various public art galleries and community events. She is the recipient of various awards including the DAC Reed T. Cooper Bursary, the Ginny Kleker Award for Commitment to the Arts, two OAC Visual Arts Grants and an Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Fellowship. Debbie holds degrees in Philosophy, Political Science and International
Relations and studied Visual and Critical Studies and Social Practice at the California College of the Arts. She lives in Mulmur, Ontario.

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Caroline Klimek

is a researcher and film programmer based in Toronto, ON. She is a second year PhD student studying in the Cinema and Media Arts department at York University, focusing on the impact Canadian funding and policy stakeholders have on film festivals’ new media programmes and exhibition practices. Her other research interests include emerging technologies, media archaeology, archives, expanded cinema and media industry studies.

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Jason Lujan and Maria Hupfield

work as Native Art Department International, a collaborative project focusing on communication platforms and alternative systems of community support, at the same time functioning as emancipation from identity-based artwork. Maria Hupfield (born in Parry Sound, Ontario on Georgian Bay, Canada) is a member of Wasauksing First Nation, Ontario, and is currently based in Brooklyn, NY. Recently selected as a featured international artist for SITE Santa Fe 2016 and the Distinguished Visiting Artist Program, University of British Columbia, she received recognition in the USA from the prestigious Joan Mitchell Foundation for her hand-sewn industrial felt sculptures. Hupfield was awarded a long term Canada Council for The Arts Grant to make work in New York with her nine-foot birchbark canoe made of industrial felt assembled and performed in Venice, Italy for the premiere of Jiimaan, coinciding with the Venice Biennale 2015. Hupfield is an advocate of native community arts and activism; Founder of 7th Generation Image Makers, Native Child and Family Services of Toronto, a native youth arts and mural outreach program in downtown Toronto. Jason Lujan (born in Marfa, Texas, USA) has lived in New York City since 2001. His multi-disciplinary work is invested in normalizing contemporary Native American content within the global cultural fabric. Previous exhibitions and performances include the
Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ; the National Museum of the American Indian, NY, NY; the Curibita Biennial in Brazil; Continental de Artes Indígenas Contemporáneas at the Museo Nacional de Culturas Populares, Mexico City; International Print Center of New York City; and recent solo installations at the Museum of Contemporary Native Art in Santa Fe. Jason occasionally curates, and co-organizes programs and exhibitions in New York City; in 2014 he curated the exhibition Zines Plus and the World of ABC No Rio at the New York Center for
Book Arts.

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jes sachse

is at the forefront of a renewal of disability art, justice and culture in Canada. Presently living in Toronto, jes is an artist, writer and performer whose work focuses on disability culture in ways that refuse to reduce or bracket out the messy complexities of difference. Their work & writing has appeared inNOW Magazine, The Peak, CV2 -The Canadian Journal of Poetry and Critical Writing, Mobilizing Metaphor: Art, Culture and Disability Activism in Canada, and the 40th Anniversary Edition of Our Bodies,
Ourselves.

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Born in St. Catherines, Clayton Windatt

has lived in the Northeastern region of Ontario for most of his life. He is a Métis arts administrator currently working as an independent curator. After working as the Director of the White Water Gallery Artist-Run Centre in North Bay, Ontario for 7 years he now pursues his own practice of art creation and dissemination. Clayton holds a BA in Fine Art from Nipissing University and received his Graphic Design certification from Canadore College. He works actively with several arts organizations locally, provincially and nationally on committees and boards of directors including working with the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective for the past 4 years. Clayton maintains contracted positions with Canadore College’s REP21 theatre program and works as a columnist for the North Bay Nipissing News producing a weekly arts column for the Nipissing District. He works with the ON THE EDGE fringe festival and is a member of the Future In Safe Hands Collective. He aids Aanmitaagzi with their different community arts events and contributes actively as a writer, designer, curator, performer, theatre technician, consultant and is an active visual and media artist.