A Screening Night at the Helen Pitt Gallery Artist Run Centre Friday, October 24, 6:30pm Sean Arden for Upgrade Vancouver, Roy & McHardy, Sharon Kahanoff, Graham Meisner, Donna Szoke & Jeremy Todd. The Helen Pitt Gallery ARC is pleased to host a screening of Easter Everywhere, a new digital film project by Jeremy Todd, alongside recent works by the artist's current collaborators and peers. This "artist's choice" event is meant to invoke a constellation of interdependencies within our local cultural ecology -relationships of difference and mutual aid that are often displaced by the strategic affiliations and omissions of contemporary art as a competitive professional sphere. It's also an attempt to bring together divergent audiences for the discovery of new and informed ideas. Screening Schedule: 7:00pm -Upgrade Vancouver 2008 Video Preview w/ an introduction by Sean Arden 30min, 2008. Sean Arden will be introducing this preview reel, along with the functions of the Upgrade Network for Vancouver Artists working with time based media and technology. Upgrade International is an evolving international network for the art and technology community. In 2003, Upgrade Vancouver became the first node of Upgrade International outside of New York (under the direction of Kate Armstrong). There are currently 27 Upgrade nodes in operation. Most recent members include Poland and Tijuana. 7:45pm -Boucher & Cacciatore Roy and McHardy 20min, 2004 Roy & McHardy's first video production, Boucher & Cacciatore (2004), is a 20-minute satirical video based on "the cooking show." Aside from their research of "do-ityourself," "self-improvement" or "lifestyle" genres made for television, their influences come from specific literary works and artistic strategies. These include the plays of Samuel Beckett and Tom Stoppard, Gustave Flaubert's unfinished satirical novel Bouvard & Pecuchet, and the performance art and the development of personae of Gilbert and George and Andrea Fraser's practice. 8:15pm -The Here To Gathered Sharon Kahanoff, 22.5 min, 2008 A reception hall, an art gallery, a living room, a street, a beach and a gymnasium- The Here To Gathered plays inside these theatres of the social. Gestural, visceral, corny and critical, meditative, artificial and often realistic, the film threatens to erupt at the seams from its own difference. But it's all held in check by a rigid structuralism that (like any law excessively applied) vents itself in the absurd. Lurking between genres, The Here To Gathered is a portrait, in both major and minor keys, of nothing more than passage. 8:45 pm -A Prick In The Soul Graham Meisner 40min, 2008 A Prick In The Soul is a narrative music video that examines the problems related to exploitation and artistic appropriation. The video takes the form of a story about three people that perform an act of revenge on an individual who has used them for the purpose of making a piece of music theatre. 9:35pm -Mary Donna Szoke 7 min, 2007 This animation is based on my grandmother Mary who passed away before I was born. This version of her I held as a nine year-old girl was created in my attempt to understand familial and cultural history. Embedded in this lamentation is a tribute to my family's lost Jewish heritage. Generous thanks for the music by Jamie Saft, "Kasha Dub" from Sovlanut, Tzadik Records. 9:50pm -Easter Everywhere Jeremy Todd 68min, 2008 Lady Justice (Margaret Dragu) recalls a horrible outbreak that has swept the Earth (originating in the slums surrounding the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics). A lone man (Eric Metcalfe) appears on camera, describing his years in hiding and relationships with a Woman and Boy who may or may not exist. Easter Everywhere explores some collapsed mythologies of autonomy and transcendence in a world overdetermined by capitalist relations. Visit www.eastereverywherefilm.blogspot.com for more info. Participating Artists: Sharon Kahanoff is an artist, filmmaker, writer and teacher. Her artwork has been exhibited in galleries and cinemas locally and in the US. Committed to the collaborative nature of film, Sharon has also worked on numerous films directed by other people over the last 10 years. Graham Meisner is a composer who has been concentrating on various pieces for small vocal and instrumental ensembles. Graham has also recently completed songs and incidental music for Matilda Aslizadeh's feature film A Hero of Our Time and is now composing the music for an interactive website project Sign After the X by David Clark and Marina Roy. Roy and McHardy have been collaborating since 2003. Together they write, direct, act and edit all of their video productions. They see their practice as one that straddles both performance and video. Donna Szoke is an artist from Winnipeg, living in Vancouver. Her single channel video and interdisciplinary collaborations exhibit internationally, while her installations have been seen in Canada and the US. She teaches studio and academic classes about video art, new media and experimental practices. Jeremy Todd is an interdisciplinary artist living in Vancouver who often considers the formation of cultural memory and its socio-political effects. He has been curating, teaching and writing as a part of his practice for the past ten years. Easter Everywhere is his second digital film project, following Dear Guy (2007).