“The story of Niagara Custom Lab dates to some time in the mid-90s, when the filmmaker Sebastjan Henrickson opened a film lab for artists on Niagara Street in Toronto. Niagara would process celluloid in ways no other lab would, treating it like the most versatile of artists’ mediums: a canvas coated in chemistry.

Over the years this eccentric enterprise became a hub of the city’s experimental film scene, part of the network of artist-friendly establishments that helped make Toronto one of the world’s premiere places for creating and engaging with avant-garde cinema. It has handled work for nearly every local filmmaker, hosted screenings and workshops, sheltered visiting filmmakers, and moved twice to dodge rising downtown rents and development. In the wake of mainstream cinema’s transition to digital technologies, it is also one of the last labs in the world serving artists perpetually fascinated by the peculiarities of film: its luminosity, its plasticity, the beauty of the projected image.” - Kate Addleman-Frankel

Programmed in collaboration with Kate Addleman-Frankel to correspond with her exhibit, Bright Lights Dark City: Niagara Custom Lab and Toronto Experimental Film (on display from May 1 – 31 at the Gladstone Hotel), this program features a selection of films made by filmmakers that worked/hung out/visited or got their films processed at Niagara Custom Lab. The program represents a tiny selection from a historical trajectory of films that owe their existence to the expertise of Henrickson and his colleagues.

Programme:

Cooper/Bridges Fight ­ Christina Battle, 2002, Canada, 16mm, 3 min.

Lab Movie, Sebastjan Henrickson, 2002, Canada, 16mm, 12 min.

Root, Riccardo Iacono, 2003, Canada/UK, 16mm, 6 min.

it’s easier to pick sours than sweets, Sara Mclean, 2009, Canada 16mm, 5 min.

last still life, Michèle Stanley, 2003, Canada, 16mm, 3 min.

The Finite, Alexi Manis, 2004, Canada, 16mm, 8 min.

Two Pictures, Carl Brown & Rose Lowder, 1999, Canada/France, 16mm, 12 min.

Pour, Riccardo Iacono, 2003, Canada/UK, 16mm 2 min.

Amtrak, Sylvain Chaussée, 2014, Canada, 16mm, 9 min.

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Bright Lights Dark City and this corresponding program are supported, in part, by the Ontario Arts Council.

Gladstone Hotel, Ballroom

1214 Queen St West

Monday May 25, 2015

8:00 PM screening

$5-10 suggested donation

Thank you to Gladstone Hotel and Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre (CFMDC)