* Free Admission

The ongoing Cinema Lounge lecture and series gives Canadian artists the opportunity to choose a Canadian film that has impacted them in their careers, and to write and speak about its importance. In this way, the Cinema Lounge series contributes to a larger public debate on Canadian cinema.

To open this year’s series, we welcome Toronto professor, filmmaker and video artist John Greyson, who has selected to discuss Frank Vitale’s early 1970’s classic Montreal Main. 

Starring: Stephen Lack, Allan Moyle, Peter Brawley, Frank Vitale, John Sutherland, Dave Sutherland, Ann Sutherland, Jackie Holden, Pam Marchant and Tony Booth

“Distinguished by its improvised performances, confessional tone and lyrical construction, Montreal Main was widely praised by critics as an intensely personal and honest work. Its theme of sexual diversity, its depiction of a place and people on the fringes of society, and its remarkable portrait of the gentle and understated relationship between Frank and Johnny were all revelations….Montreal Main was produced on a modest $20,000 budget and enjoyed considerable success with audiences in non-commercial theatres.

Frank Vitale, a gay artist hanging on to the sixties, lives on Montreal’s cosmopolitan St-Laurent Boulevard – the Main – in Montreal, where he and his friends have established an enclave outside the bounds of liberal society. Into this world comes Johnny, a young adolescent emerging from the suburbs. He and Frank meet by chance in a strange moment of mutual need and gradually develop an unconventional but deeply touching friendship. But Johnny’s pseudo-hip, intellectual parents and Frank’s gay friends intervene, refusing to allow the relationship to continue.” (Canadian Film Encyclopedia)

About John Greyson: The multi disciplinary John Greyson is a Toronto film and video artist whose features, shorts and installations include Fig Trees, Proteus, Zero Patience and Lilies. Most of his films have won major awards, most recently FIG TREES which won 2009, Best Documentary Teddy, Berlin Film Festival; and Best Canadian Feature at the Inside Out Festival.

His shorts, features and installations include: Fig Trees (2009), Proteus (2003), The Law of Enclosures (2000), Lilies (1996),  Un©ut (1997), Zero Patience (1993), The MakHing of Monsters (1991), and Urinal (1988). He co-edited Queer Looks, a critical anthology on gay/lesbian film & video (Routledge,1993), is the author of Urinal and Other Stories (Power Plant/Art Metropole, 1993), and has published essays and artists pieces in Alphabet City, Public, FUSE, and twelve critical anthologies. An associate professor at York University, he was awarded the Bell Canada Video Art  Award, 2007.

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