From the category archives:

Canada

Racist Quebec Film Draws Ire from Everyone

by Rea McNamara on November 27, 2015
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White guys are at it again. Earlier this week, Quebec filmmaker Dominic Gagnon’s of the North enraged Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq as a “painful and racist” experimental documentary that used her music without permission. Tagaq took to Twitter to complain about the Montreal International Documentary Film Festival’s (RIDM) recent screening of the film.

And she’s not wrong to be upset. A bit of background: of the North compiles user-generated YouTube footage from Nunavut and Northern Quebec; it’s a mash-up of Arctic tundra landscapes populated with oil rigs, hunting, and skidoos but also Inuit men vomiting after drinking binges, and even a desperate Buñuel-esque edit of a vagina that cuts into a video of a dog’s tail hair being trimmed.

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If a Tree Falls in the Forest and There’s No New York Art Critic to Review it, No One Cares

by Paddy Johnson on August 27, 2015
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I like looking. It’s why I write at Art F City, and why, every summer, I chose to vacation in the wilderness. I don’t want to stop looking, but I need a break from the rest of the job.

Spending a bunch of time on a trail makes that easy. This year, I spent part of my vacation at Cape Breton Highlands National Park in Nova Scotia. One of the best qualities of visiting a national park: admission doesn’t come with a press release telling you what to think about your experience and why it’s important to humanity. Nobody expects visitors to theorize their experience in the woods or even reflect on it. The job is just to enjoy it. (Which I did.)

More after the jump.

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Changes at Canada’s Major Arts Funder Part 1: New Suits

by Rea McNamara on August 5, 2015
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Big changes are afoot at the Canada Council, the nation’s largest source of funding for the arts. From a shake-up of granting procedures to the appointment of a new chairman of the board, who’s quite the dapper dresser.

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