Thursdays
July 4 TO 25, 2019 (EDIT)
For the fourth year of our Corktown Common series, Toronto Outdoor Picture Show invites attendees to enjoy four weekly screenings this July in the glow of our brand-new, magnificent, much larger screen. At this east-side iteration of the Dynamic Duos programme, join us for some of the most iconic two-handers of cult, queer, family and Indigenous cinema.
Pack your favourite blanket and join us for alfresco movies and an unbeatable view of Toronto's skyline!
Dynamic Duos is co-curated by Artistic & Executive Director Emily Reid and programming contributors Tom Dorey, Nataleah Hunter-Young, and TOPS co-founder Felan Parker. You can support Toronto Outdoor Picture Show's cultural investment in communities with a donation.
Poster Artwork by
José Garcia of Zoca Studio Inc.
Toronto Outdoor Picture Show’s It’s a Party! anniversary season programme will open with a 25th anniversary screening of Clueless, a cultural touchstone by the Prom Queen of 90s teen cinema, Amy Heckerling. Every day’s a party for the high school kids of Beverly Hills, a privileged group who don’t think far beyond the bubble of their own peers. Though easy to write off as teen drivel for mass audiences, this adaptation of Jane Austen’s funniest novel, Emma, is anything but clueless. It endures as a modern classic thanks to its sharp wit (equal parts Austen and Heckerling, to be sure), replete with iconic one-liners that will bring cheers from our majority female audience, many of whom came of age while watching and re-watching VHS copies of this charming gem.
If Clueless was modern Jane Austen for the 90s set, The Tragic Fall of Valerie Mallory Finkerstein is Jane Austen for today. Valerie invites her closest friends to a meticulously planned outdoor birthday meal - a setting straight out of a regency era picnic - for her best friend Ava, an occasion where Valerie plans to announce her love for the birthday girl in front of everyone. But what happens if Ava has fallen for another suitor?
DAY MONTH DATE
Clueless
Directed by Amy Heckerling, 1995
Short film:
The Tragic Fall of Valerie Mallory Finkerstein, dir. Martina Monro, 2019
The chaos of misunderstandings, misgivings, generational strife, romance, and deep secrets rain down on a modern Punjabi family as they gather in Delhi to celebrate a traditional Hindu wedding. Indian director Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding celebrates the richness of love not simply through story, but also through one of the most iconic colour palettes in cinema history. Glowing marigolds and crimson red saris may be quintessentially Indian, but their celebratory spirit translates worldwide.
Colour is also a motif also explored in this evening’s shorts. In Festival of Light, Toronto experimental filmmaker Dan Browne documents the amber flames of the annual Kensington Street Festival, a celebration of light on the darkest night of the year. Rounding out the evening is Jamaican-Québécoise, Toronto-based filmmaker Maya Annik’s The Foreigner, whose protagonist is drawn by a hued glow to a basement Brazilian dance party, one where you don’t need to know the language or footwork to feel part of the community. TOPS fans also won’t want to miss Maya Annik’s brand-new film Projections, premiering on August 23rd as part of Christie Pits Film Festival’s 10th anniversary season.
DAY MONTH DATE
Monsoon Wedding
Directed by Mira Nair, 2001
Short films:
The Foreigner
dir. Maya Annik, 2014
and Festival of Light dir. Dan Browne, 2007
As much a side-splitting farce as it is a commentary on America’s polarized political climate, The Birdcage is an uproarious physical comedy featuring a star-studded cast and a soundtrack straight out of a drag show. The film stars Robin Williams as Armand, the owner of a gay nightclub, and a not-yet-out Nathan Lane as his husband and star drag performer Albert. When Armand's son announces his engagement to the daughter of an ultra-conservative, homophobic U.S. senator, he begs his dad to play it straight at a meet-the-parents dinner party – but Albert can’t resist camping it up. The film plays out as a farcical battle between straight-laced prejudice and queer sexual freedom – a battle that audiences will still find familiar today.
Meanwhile, the gay nightclub takes centre stage in Stage Name: Victoria, an auto-documentary from queer Ojibwe filmmaker and drag queen Taran Morriseau. Morriseau narrates the story over a montage of backstage preparation and onstage performance, illustrating the transformative power of drag in rural Indigenous communities.
DAY MONTH DATE
The Birdcage
Directed by Mike Nichols, 1996
Short film:
Stage Name: Victoria
dir. Taran Morriseau, 2017
Taking its inspiration and setting from Agatha Christie’s classic manor-bound dinner party murder mysteries, Robert Altman’s Gosford Park masterfully explores the complex interrelations and hierarchies of social class, gender, and power in this satirical black comedy featuring a wealth of trans-Atlantic acting talent, sumptuous cinematography, and Altman’s trademark richly layered dialogue. When Sir William McCordle is murdered at his country house on the occasion of his lavish shooting party, members of the downstairs servant class and their upstairs-dwelling social “betters” attempt to feel each other out and avoid suspicion. But with no shortage of motives, everyone is a suspect.
Paired with Gosford Park is Montreal filmmaker Marie-Eve Juste’s Nouvel An, an intimate portrait of 20-something friends preparing for a New Year’s celebration while discussing self-image, desires, and gender representation over a dinner party. Clearly influenced by French New Wave filmmaking, Juste’s film oozes style in artful black and white while meditating on the joys of togetherness and solitude.
DAY MONTH DATE
Gosford Park
Directed by
Robert Altman, 2001
Short films: Nouvel An
dir. Marie-Eve Juste, 2015
and Next Floor dir. Denis Villenueve, 2008
To close our fifth summer series at Corktown Common, this screening centres on vibrant celebrations of community and culture. Brimstone & Glory is a visual spectacle, a sensory experience, that highlights the rich culture of Mexico’s fireworks festivities. Generations of workers in Tultupec, Oaxaca construct elaborate, dangerous pyrotechnics for an annual celebration in honour of San Juan de Dios, the patron saint of fireworks makers. Driven by stunning cinematography and a soaring score by Benh Zeitlin (Beasts of the Southern Wild), we join in a magnificent celebration of local pride.
Last year’s acclaimed Québécois-made short Acadiana similarly takes a fly-on-the-wall approach to observing the attendees and participants at the annual Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival in Louisiana. Without any dialogue, it speaks volumes about this particular time in America’s deep south, and the customs and culture its inhabitants hold dear. In Masko Nimiwin, new generation artist and Atikamekw filmmaker Marie-Christine Petiquay invites us to the spectacular annual pow wow at Manawan, sharing with us the tale of a dancing bear that is legendary in the community.
DAY MONTH DATE
Brimstone & Glory
Directed by
Viktor Jakovleski, 2017
Short films: Acadiana
dir. Guillaume Fournier, Samuel Matteau & Yannick Nolin, 2019
Masko Nimiwin (The Bear's Dance) dir. Marie-Christine Petiquay, 2008
Corktown Common Park, Toronto
Enter at 155 Bayview Ave
Eats & Treats @ 7pm. Films @ sundown.
Free/PWYC (suggested $10), not a ticketed event
Donations make our programming possible
BYOBlanket & Chairs
Films are screened with captioning
Please see the accessibility features of Corktown Common
