Call for OFF Screen, LIVE, and Guest Programs now open!

Images Festival is pleased to open their call for OFF SCREEN and LIVE submissions that accepts program and exhibition proposals for cinema screenings and gallery exhibitions on a rolling basis. 

Proposals will be reviewed in the summer and early fall over an extended period of planning as the festival’s program and presenting partnerships begin to take form.

Submission deadline: Ongoing

Proposals received in one review cycle may not be conceptually complementary or logistically possible for the upcoming festival year. However, the removal of a fixed submission deadline allows Images to consider proposals in greater depth, assess capacity, and prepare to seek funding and partnerships to meaningfully support the realization of the presentations. 

ABOUT IMAGES FESTIVAL

Images Festival annually exhibits film and video installations, media-based performances, and online work alongside its ON SCREEN program of film and video works. For the OFF SCREEN and LIVE segments of the festival, Images partners with GTA-based galleries, production centres, and other organizations.

Images presents work that counters dominant mainstream narratives and provides alternative ways of thinking and seeing that expands the understanding of media art through our programming and education-based initiatives. 

Images Festival does not select films based on any particular themes, genres or aesthetic categories but selects moving image works that share formal and political sensibilities which emerge from recent critical discourses between contemporary art, cinema and media arts. 

33rd Images Festival Call for ON SCREEN Submissions

Established in 1987, IMAGES FESTIVAL is the longest running and most influential moving image festival in Canada. Our ON SCREEN program is an annual survey dedicated to contemporary artist’s film and video presented in a cinema context and to moving image in all its forms.

Images presents work that counters dominant mainstream narratives and provides alternative ways of thinking and seeing that expands the understanding of media art through our programming and education-based initiatives. 

Images Festival does not select films based on any particular themes, genres or aesthetic categories but selects moving image works that share formal and political sensibilities which emerge from recent critical discourses between contemporary art, cinema and media arts. 

DATES

The 33rd edition of Images Festival will take place between April 16 to 22, 2020.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE

Monday, October 14, 2019. 

GENERAL SUBMISSION ELIGIBILITY

Images Festival will consider works that have been completed in the last three years, including short, mid-length and feature films. Artists maintain final edit and copyright control. 

If you submit an incomplete film (rough cuts, works-in-progress), the picture must be locked. We do not offer funds for the completion of works, or take on commissions.

STUDENT SUBMISSION ELIGIBILITY

Images Festival will accept student works that have been completed in the last academic year (2019/2020) for consideration in our annual International Student Showcase program, which is programmed by students and/or recent graduates. The work must not exceed 20 minutes in length in order to qualify.

Student artists and filmmakers can submit a maximum of two submissions/works. If there are multiple submissions, only the first two works submitted by each student will be reviewed. 

If students elect to submit to the general On Screen Competition program (rather than in the student category), the entry fee requirement applies. 

PLEASE NOTE: Student works may NOT be entered into both the Student and On Screen Competition programs.

2019 Images Festival is Almost Here!

The Images Festival is one of the most enduring and respected platforms in the world for the exhibition and dissemination of independent film and media art. The festival takes place annually in Toronto, Ontario, and has been attended by more than 25,000 people each year. The 2019 edition will take place from April 11 – 18th and will include approximately 16 in-cinema programs, 14 gallery exhibitions, 10 public program events, and five live performances. Images has spent the last 31 years presenting media works that range from the formally and aesthetically challenging, to the personal and lyrical and is committed to cultivating a passionate arts community who see moving image culture as a means or understanding our contemporary context.

Opening Night: Software Garden by Rory Pilgrim
Thursday April 11, 7:00PM
The Royal Cinema, 608 College St.

Nurtured over two years of collaboration, workshops, and live concerts, artist and musician Rory Pilgrim premieres his debut music video album Software Garden in Canada. In contrast to a recent fascination with technology’s dystopian impact on public and private life, Software Garden asks how we meet from both behind and beyond our screens. Over the course of 11 tracks and performances, we encounter proposals for tenderness with digital and robotic entities in tow. Without cynicism, irony, or repudiation, the enmeshing of lyrical, cinematic, and choreographed sequences pour between stage, studio, and screen.

Opening night will be followed by Opening Night Party featuring Korea Town Acid at The Baby G.

HEAT (a work-in-progress) by Aisha Sasha John
Saturday April 13, 10:00PM
The Costume House, 165 Geary Ave.

Aisha Sasha John’s medium is energy. Her solo dance show the aisha of is premiered at the Whitney museum in 2017; in 2018 it was presented by the mai and Toronto’s 2018 summerworks festival. I have to live. (McClelland & Stewart) was a finalist for the 2018 Griffin Poetry Prize.

Keynote Lecture: Visions of Black Secret Technology by Charles Mudede
Saturday April 13, 3:00PM
Innis Town Hall, 2 Sussex Ave.

This talk will begin by closely examining the movie Black Panther to determine not only how black technology is visualized, but, more importantly, what this visualization tells us about our understanding, manner of coding, and modes of experiencing technology as a whole.

401 Richmond Gallery Tour with Geneviève Wallen
Saturday April 13, 12:00PM
The Commons, 401 Richmond St. W.

Join curator and writer Geneviève Wallen on tour of the exhibitions at 401 Richmond.

Meet at the lobby of 401 Richmond for a walking tour of Outliers on Tour at Tangled Art + Disability, Sharona Franklin’s installation in the Gallery 44 Vitrines, New Psychedelia of Industrial Healing, Sarah Pupo’s solo exhibition burning through the body, Emilija Škarnulytė’s video work Sirenomelia at VTape.

The tour will conclude at Pamila Matharu’s solo exhibition One of These Things is Not Like The Other, at A Space. Followed by an artist talk by Matharu at 1:00pm.

Artist Talk: KC Wei
Sunday April 14, 3:00PM
Small World Museum, 101-180 Shaw St.

Canadian Spotlight artist KC Wei will deliver a talk about her music, publishing and community driven projects, as well as her latest film, art rock? The Popular Esoteric (2018) — a recent document of overlaps in Vancouver's underground music and art scenes. Her talk with be followed by a conversation with journalist and critic Merray Gerges.

Wei's first feature film, Murky Colours (2016) will screen on April 13.

Images Festival - Full Schedule Announced!

Images Festival is excited to announce the full program schedule for its 32nd edition. Images Festival showcases artistic excellence in contemporary moving image culture through 14 gallery exhibitions, 73 on-screen works, and eight live performances happening throughout the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). The 2019 program features works that elaborate the textures of communities and embody alternative, discursive models of moving image presentation. The curated lineup calls attention to our histories, solidarities, and collaborations, providing vivid perspectives that further challenge and uproot the dialogue surrounding experimental media art.

Images festival from from April 11-18th 2019.

Images Festival’s OPENING NIGHT film on Thursday, April 11 will be the Canadian premiere of Software Garden, a music video album by Rory Pilgrim at The Royal Cinema. In contrast to a recent fascination with technology’s dystopian impact on public and private life, the film asks how we meet from both behind and beyond our screens. Software Garden is preceded by Marnie Ellen Hertzler’s, Hi I Need To Be Loved and Andrés Baron’s Printed Sunset.

On Thursday, April 18 the CLOSING NIGHT program titled Outer Worlds is curated by Janine Marchessault, featuring five new large-format digital film shorts in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the invention of IMAX. Taking place at the historic Cinesphere Theatre at Ontario Place, Outer Worlds include works by Oliver Husain, Lisa Jackson, Kelly Richardson, Michael Snow, and Leila Sujir.

This year’s CANADIAN ARTIST SPOTLIGHT is Vancouver-based filmmaker KC Wei whose work explores the liminal space of music, video and writing, with romance, euphoria and dissolution coursing throughout her narratives. Wei’s first film Murky Colours, draws from the made-for-Hollywood spy novel first written by her father, Menjin Wei, and applies a particular collage aesthetic to account for the work’s fragmented storylines and hybridized, cinematic genre. In calling to this agglomerate execution, Wei selected Hito Steryl’s In Free Fall to accompany the Spotlight Feature.

The Images Festival was established by the Northern Visions Collective to look closely at the dynamics of accessibility. Images began as Toronto’s only alternative to the Toronto International Film Festival, integrating film and video from its inception, and later expanding to include installations, performances and new media.

Images Festival 2019 Calls for Submissions →

The Images Festival was established by the Northern Visions Collective to look closely at the dynamics of accessibility. Images began as Toronto’s only alternative to the Toronto International Film Festival, integrating film and video from its inception, and later expanding to include installations, performances and new media. From the beginning, Images has been at the forefront in identifying and supporting work that has been marginalized or unrecognized by existing exhibition venues, and was crucial in opening up dialogue in the media arts community around issues of race, culture, gender and sexuality.

Toronto’s original interdisciplinary arts festival, Images, is a critical forum for the independent media arts in Canada and around the world and provides artists with a supportive and professional forum in which to present their projects. Many influential media artists have been nurtured by Images’ willingness to embrace new creative concepts and modes of expression in the media arts field. The Images Festival exhibits and encourages the work of artists producing film and video outside of mainstream commercial production, distribution systems and aesthetic conventions. In addition to the international competition programs drawn from submissions to the festival, Images includes artists’ retrospectives, national and regional spotlights, publishing projects, touring programs and special guest-curated programs.

OFF SCREEN and LIVE Submissions
Deadline: September 29, 2018 No entry fee for this section
APPLY HERE

GUEST PROGRAMMER Submissions
Deadline: September 26, 2017
No entry fee for this section

ON SCREEN Submissions
Deadline: November 7th, 2017
$15 CAN submission fee per entry
APPLY HERE

ON SCREEN for STUDENTS Submissions
Deadline: November 7th, 2017
No entry fee up to two works no more than 20 minutes each
APPLY HERE

The 32nd Images Festival will run from April 11 to 19th, 2019.

Reelworld Film Festival: Call for Submissions →

Do you know of any Indigenous or racially diverse filmmakers, who would like to be eligible for $125,000 of funding towards their first feature film or web-based narrative work?

Reelworld Film Festival is a recognized partner of Telefilm's Talent To Watch program, and offers access to this funding.  Through our Emerging 20 program (E20), twenty applicants are chosen each year to pitch their projects to industry professionals.  Reelworld provides professional development in September with two days of workshops, and one day during the festival October 11 to actively pitch their projects one-on-one to several industry executives. 

Deadline:  August 17th, 2018 at midnight EST.

Reelworld Film Festival Dates:  October 10-14, 2018

After the festival, participants garner an opportunity to submit their projects to Reelworld for consideration in submission of the Talent to Watch program in March 2019, where they could be chosen by Telefilm to receive $125,000 in funding!

After last year's festival, E20's Lulu Wei and Nayani Thiyagarajah had their projects submitted to Telefilm and both received $125,000 each towards their project.  Who will it be next year?

The Emerging 20 program is supported by the Inspirit Foundation and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.