Mary Stark and David Chatton Barker, artists based in Manchester, UK, are visiting Toronto. Please join us for a night of film performance and sonic spells at the one and only CineCycle, the especially specially fantastic cinema venue in Toronto. We'll show individual and collaborative films and performance works made over the last two years, as well as fresh from the processing buckets of this year’s Independent Imaging Retreat, otherwise known as Phil Hoffman’s Film Farm.

the8fest small-gauge film festival proudly presents the launch of: John Porter’s CineScenes: Documentary Portraits of Alternative Film Scenes Toronto and Beyond, 1978-2015

About the book:John Porter’s CineScenes is the first volume to spotlight Toronto native John Porter’s legendary photographs of alternative film culture – its “celebrities,” places, and rituals – taken across a span of nearly 40 years. This soft-cover, 144-page book features over 200 beautifully reproduced b&w and colour photos by Porter, and includes essays by Scott MacDonald, Nicole Gingras, Dot Tuer, and Tess Takahashi.

Radiant Bodies is a collection of moving image works that explores the intersections between the human body and the radiant properties of cinema. Through hand-made techniques that focus on the materiality of moving images, each of these works underscore the invisible ways in which the world imprints upon human, and other, bodies. Photographic images are dependent on light, and could not exist without the ability to receive and transmit energy that then forms realistic images. However, radiant energy can be simultaneously damaging. Unprotected negatives and photo-paper become blackened and useless, magnetic waves warp video images, and incorrect exposure in camera similarly destroys photographic information in film, analogue or digital formats.

Featuring works by: Emily Pelstring, Gariné Torossian, Daniel McIntyre, Louise Borque and Kyle Armstrong. Curated by Melanie Wilmink