Explosion in the Movie Machine: Essays and Documents on Toronto Artists'Film and Video is an anthology of contemporary reflections, scholarly texts, historical documents and visual documentation that examines the depth, brilliance and contradictions of Toronto's media arts history and ecology. With a focus on artists' film and video organizations, practices, manifestos, and guiding debates, this volume takes stock of where we've been and speculates on where we're headed. Exploring such fundamental issues as censorship, the importance of festivals, the politics of representation, and the longstanding division between film and video aesthetics and institutions, Explosion in the Movie Machine should become a crucial document for artists, students, critics and curators in local, national and international media arts communities.
Edited by Chris Gehman, the book features contributions from Kay Armatage, Jonathan Culp, Jon Davies, R. Bruce Elder, Richard Fung, Peggy Gale, Marc Glassman, Wanda Nanibush, John Porter, Taryn Sirove, Tom Sherman and Michael Zryd.
Chris Gehman is a filmmaker, curator, teacher, and writer living in Toronto. He was the Artistic Director of the Images Festival from 2000 to 2004, has worked as an independent programmer for Cinematheque Ontario and the Toronto International Film Festival, and has curated film and video programs for venues in Japan, Serbia, the U.S. and Canada. His essays on experimental film and video have appeared in publications such as Millenium Film Journal, Cinema Scope, Take One, POV, and Prefix Photo, as well as anthologies on the films of John Porter and Philip Hoffman, and he was co-editor, with Steve Reinke, of the anthology The Sharpest Point: Animation at the End of Cinema (YYZBOOKS, 2005). His films have screened at numerous international festivals and screening programs. He received an Honours BAA in Media Arts from Ryerson University (1993), and an MFA in Film Production from York University (2009).
