Hit List
Robyn Fadden
THURSDAY 11Activist Yves Engler talks about his book Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid, at Concordia's GSA (2030 MacKay), 5 p.m. - see review at Hour.ca. Palestinian writer and musician Abeer Alzinaty, a.k.a. Sabreena Da Witch, discusses war, change and revolution, at La Centrale (4296 St-Laurent Blvd.), 6 p.m. Form has function in Material Applied, a multi-artist show at Les Territoires (#527-372 Ste-Catherine W.), 6 p.m., to March 20, artmattersfestival.com. Belgian-born, Montreal-based painter Clio Honig embraces electric-hued sexuality at InStock (5259 Parc), 6 p.m. And U.K. soul-folk phenom Charlie Winston satisfies at L'Astral (305 Ste-Catherine W.), 8 p.m.
FRIDAY 12
Live music and lively, responsive dance form the malleable core of Isabelle Van Grimde's Bodies to Bodies III, at Agora de la Danse (840 Cherrier), March 10-13, 8 p.m. Eveline Boulva and Sophie Privé's Des instants entre parenthèses pairs sunlit treetops with human nature, at Galerie Orange (81 St-Paul E.), 6 p.m., to April 4. Switch gears with the Arion Orchestre's J.S. Bach: Cantates and Concertos, at Salle Claude-Champagne, Université de Montréal, 8 p.m. Travel boldly into unknown territory as local short-fiction anthology Here Be Monsters launches its second issue, Safer Where You
Are, at Burritoville (2005 Bishop), 8 p.m. Change it up with the erratically dreamy/disturbing sounds of Hyena Hive, Minibloc, Chansons d'Amour, Wapstan, Gmackrr & Kvik and RDC, at L'Envers (185 Van Horne), PWYC, 9 p.m.
SATURDAY 13
Multidisciplinary artist Diane Landry alters the meaning of objects and memory in Knight of Infinite Resignation and Kartz Ucci's 368 songs with the word sad in the title mixed into one song may do just that, at Optica (#508-372 Ste-Catherine W.), 3 p.m. Feel the ravaging ga(y)ze of famed artist, performer, trouble-maker Rover P. Machinery, at Eastern Bloc (7240 Clark), 4 p.m. Roll and rock out, in either order, at the Montreal Roller Derby Fun-raiser, at Green Room (5386 St-Laurent Blvd.), 9 p.m. And, like a trio of magical, musical forest creatures, Woods, Real Estate and Valleys shack up at Club Lambi, (4465 St-Laurent Blvd.), 9 p.m.
SUNDAY 14
Journey to the subarctic via Peter Mettler's 1994 documentary Picture of Light, a reflection of extremes and absurdities, with an original score by Jim O'Rourke, at the de Sève Cinema (LB-125, 1400 De Maisonneuve W.), 2 p.m., part of the excellent, multi-artist exhibition Magnetic Norths at Concordia University's Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery. Laugh with 'em and at 'em as Morro and Jasp Do Puberty at Théâtre Ste-Catherine (264 Ste-Catherine E.), 2 p.m. Later, Blues for Haiti heats up Club Lambi (4465 St-Laurent Blvd.) with music by Carolyn Fe, Steve Rowe, James Green and the Blues Electric, hosted by Darragh Hemmings, 8:30 p.m., by donation.
MONDAY 15
Travel to the U.S. Southwest with artist Bonnie Baxter in her series L'Amérique de Jane, a reimagining of personal experience through an everywoman form, at Division Gallery's Westmount location (1368 Greene), to April 24. Dean Garlick's The Fish - with Erik Volet's illustrations of life inside a whale! - launches at Drawn and Quarterly (211 Bernard W.). The fifth Montreal Human Rights Film Festival (March 11-21, www.ffdpm.com) brings us 62 films from 20 countries. Tonight: the Montreal Life Stories project I Was There - Stories of Women in Conflict Zones, followed by discussion, at Centre Culturel Simon Bolivar (394 De Maisonneuve W.), 7 p.m.
TUESDAY 16
Artist-run centre Articule, now in its 30th year, fundraises with Articule Who's Who, a historic exhibition of more than 80 original works donated by past exhibiting artists, concluding with a March 20 soirée featuring a raffle that sends every ticket-holding guest home with a ready-to-hang artwork! Tickets are $150, see www.articule.org for more. Artist Diyan Achjadi recreates brightly coloured childhood imagery to reveal totalitarianism ideologies in her The Further Adventures of Girl, at Oboro (4001 Berri). And, believe it, Alice In Chains plays Métropolis. Which somehow reminds me of learning how to drive. And then forgetting how to drive.
WEDNESDAY 17
Pretend to Be Irish Day! The traditional (since 1824!) rabble-rousing, family-friendly St-Patrick's Day Parade begins Sunday at noon at Ste-Catherine and Fort and travels to Phillips Square. A little less subtle tonight: On the Spot's Improv: The Drinking Game, a questionable remedy for improv (and Irishness) gone wrong, at Comedyworks (1238 Bishop), 8:30 p.m. And the Edgy Women Festival begins with a scantily clad performance by The Scandelles - Sasha Van Bon Bon, Kitty Neptune and Countess Christsmasher - whose pornartgraphic Neon Nightz takes us back to the '90s, Montreal strip-club style, at Mainline Theatre (3997 St-Laurent Blvd.), 8 p.m., to March 19.
Well one of the week's highlights for me is availing myself of Montreal's alternative weeklies each and every Thursday. Idispensible reading/perusing if you want to keep your ear to the ground and be clued into the goings-on in our fair city. From keeping abreast of local politics and (news)stories of note to scoping out what's going on culturally and musically, there's simply no better way to keep apprised of the week's options and learn a thing or two in the process. Having said that, what the hell is going on Hour folk? In the last few months columnists Brendan Murphy and Laura Roberts have gone M.I.A. and the paper itself has become threadbare - think the most recent edition is a scant 16 or 17 pages!?! What's contained in the pages is doubtless informative (all killer, no filler and all that) but there's far less to enjoy and linger upon. Hoping that this is a transitional thing 'cause The Hour remains an indisepnsible part of Montreal's mosaic and I for one don't want to see it go "Go Gentle into That Good Night..."
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David St Pierre
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Call me a cynical bastard but I can't help but appreciate the irony that Montreal is having its fifth Human Rights Film Festival when a great deal of the its population all but tuned out the inconvenient realities of living in the heart of Quebec. On August 11th 2008 Freddy Villanueva died under the highly dubious circumstances and we STILL don't have a definitive ending to this story. I would guess that anybody that's black, hispanic, native or anything other than 'pure laine' would have quite a tale to tell on how they've been treated here. Sure we're not living in some horrible repressive nation where we get tortured, raped and killed daily but the fact that we collectively turn our eyes away from the smaller injustices here casts us in a peculiar light.
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Pedro Eggers
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