exhibition: vtape

ALI KAZIMI
JOHN GREYSON
RICHARD FUNG

"REX vs SINGH"
(2009, 30:00)

October 10 - November 14, 2009
Opening Saturday, October 10, 11am - 1pm
* NOTE EARLY START*

Video Vox: a conversation with the artists, Ali Kazimi, John Greyson and Richard Fung
Saturday, October 10, 2009, 11:30
* a light lunch will be served*

video still, Rex vs. Singh, 2009

Vtape is honoured to present this highly innovative docu-witness project to the audiences of Toronto. Rex vs. Singh is the work of three of Toronto's - and Canada's - finest film and videomakers. It is Rashomon-esque in its structure (but funnier and more serious all at once). Each of the three artists uses his own visual vocabulary to open out this (relatively) small but (deeply) revealing record of Canadian intolerance, allowing it to bleed through the veneer of history as it has sedimented into the Canadian canon of self-definition.

The story: In 1915, two Sikh mill workers, Dalip Singh and Naina Singh, were entrapped by undercover police in Vancouver and accused of sodomy. Their trial occurs one year after the infamous Komagata Maru ship, carrying immigrant passengers from British India, was stranded at the Vancouver harbour.

Kazimi, Greyson and Fung each approach the story from a unique perspective: one employs the language of straight-forward documentary, another evokes the court transcripts themselves and (inevitably) Greyson conjures "the musical" opportunity - all in the service of this here-to-fore hidden corner of Canadian history. Rex vs. Singh is a marvel of story-telling, allowing the viewer to continually weigh and evaluate - and then re-evaluate - the information provided by the artists. Delicious in its execution, the legalese becomes the vehicle and then becomes the roadblock through which we must pick our way, seekers of the truth - or at least a version of it.

Rex vs. Singh is presented by Vtape with the participation of the Reel Asian Film Festival. It will also be playing in Reel Asian’s Canadian shorts presentation Sense of Wonder on Friday, November 13, 6:15 pm at Innis Town Hall.

Ali Kazimi is one Canada’s leading documentary filmmakers. winner of the Donald Brittain Award/ the Gemini Award for Best Social/Political documentary for Runaway Grooms ('05). His films have received two Genie Award nominations Narmada; A Valley Rises ( '94), Shooting Indians ('97) and a Gemini nomination for Some Kind of Arrangement ('97). Kazimi's films have received over thirty national and international honours and awards, been screened in dozens of festivals and broadcast on many networks including the CBC, TVOntario, PBS (US) and Channel 4 (UK). His work has been honoured with four retrospectives - Images Festival, ('98), Pacific Film Archives/Berkeley Art Museum ('06), Mumbai International Film Festival for Documentary & Short Films ('09) and the VIBGYOR International Film Festival, Kerala, India. Born and raised in India, Kazimi graduated from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University with a B.Sc. in 1982. He graduated in film production from York University, in 1988. He has guest-lectured nationally and internationally; taught at OCAD and joined the full-time faculty at York University in 2006.

John Greyson is a Toronto film/video artist whose shorts, features and installations include: Fig Trees (2003, Oakville Art Galleries); Proteus (Best Actor, Sithenghi 2003); The Law of Enclosures (2000, Best Actor Genie); Lilies (1996 - Best Film Genie, Best Film at festivals in Montreal, Johannesburg, Los Angeles, San Francisco); Un©ut (1997, Honourable Mention, Berlin Film Festival); Zero Patience (1993 - Best Canadian Film, Sudbury Film Festival); The Making of Monsters (1991 - Best Canadian Short, Toronto Film Festival, Best Short Film Teddy - Berlin Film Festival); and Urinal (1988 - Best Feature Teddy, Berlin Film Festival). 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 assistant professor in film production at York University, he was awarded the Toronto Arts Award for Film/Video, 2000, and the Bell Canada Video Art Award in 2007. Greyson currently teaches at York University.

Richard Fung is a Trinidad-born, Toronto-based video artist and cultural critic. His single-channel tapes and installations, which include My Mother’s Place (1990), Sea in the Blood (2000) and Uncomfortable: The Art of Christopher Cozier (2005), have been widely screened and collected internationally, and have been broadcast in Canada and the United States. He is the co-author with Monika Kin Gagnon of 13: Conversations on Art and Cultural Race Politics (Montreal: Artexte, 2002), and his essays have been published in numerous journals and anthologies. Fung was a Rockefeller Fellow at the Center for Media, Culture and History at New York University and has received the Bell Canada Award for Video Art and the Toronto Arts Award for Media Art among other honours. He is an associate professor at the Ontario College of Art and Design. In 2009 he was visiting professor at the James Beveridge Media Resource Centre, Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi.

Please contact Erik Martinson at Vtape to book class visits to view any Vtape Video Gallery program as well as other titles in the Vtape holdings and to have an orientation to Vtape and all the extensive research facilities available to students, curators, writers and the general public.

Vtape
401 Richmond St., #452
Toronto, ON M5V 3A8
416 351-1317
Tuesday-Friday 11am-5pm, Saturday 12-4pm
For more information, contact info@vtape.org
www.vtape.org