FILM X DESIGN

Public Art Project

See the works in person
Paved Paradise Brock Street across from Market Square
The Broom Factory 305 Rideau Street

There are two main aims of our Film x Design project: the first is to celebrate the legacy of filmmaking and storytelling in Canada and, in doing so, stir excitement for the present and future of our cinema. Our second goal is to bring together our local community of art-lovers, artists, and passerbys through a casual interaction with art pieces displayed by Paved Paradise (on Brock Street across from Market Square) and at the Broom Factory (305 Rideau Street) in Kingston. Each art piece is dedicated to one of six selected directors in Canada. Our three Kingston-based artists, GHY Cheung, Grace Dixon, and Benjamin Nelson, were each assigned two directors, and were tasked to create two pieces of art (one for each director). The artworks are a confluence of each artist’s individual style coupled with the thematic particularities of the assigned director.

The descriptions accompanying the artworks have been written to offer a glimpse of Canadian cinematic history. Additional information on each director’s aesthetic style, narrative tropes, and the influence they have had both domestically and globally is also described briefly in the hopes of inspiring curiosity for those who may not know the works of these directors. Each director featured in this project was selected for the particular way in which they have impacted Canadian cinema. All, in their own differing ways, have challenged what we mean by “Canadian cinema” on the level of aesthetics, representation, form, and content, and have thus broadened the horizons for future filmmakers in Canada. Of course, any short list of Canadian directors will be incomplete, and we hope that this small selection of filmmakers will encourage those curious to seek out directors not mentioned here. The necessity of film and media – both documentary and fiction – as a way to inspire discourse, connect, reflect society back to us, and to bring an artful depth into the quotidian has only been amplified by the pandemic. Our celebration of Canadian film acknowledges film’s ability to soften the edges of anxiety in the face of uncertainty and also celebrate artforms that are essential to us as social creatures. – Emily Sanders, project curator

Emily Sanders is a PhD student in the Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies program at Queen’s University. Her thesis examines the abject as an aesthetic process that interrogates notions of nationhood, colonialism, and white supremacy in Anglo-Canadian feature films of the 1980s and 90s. Her current favourite Canadian flick is Sophie Deraspe’s Antigone (2019).

Presented with support from
with additional thanks to
THE CITY OF KINGSTON’S PUBLIC ART PROGRAM, CREATIVE INDUSTRIES STRATEGY AND ARTS & CULTURE SERVICES RAW DESIGN