The Images Festival runs April 5 - 14, 2007

Happy 20th anniversary, Images Festival. The city's most unique film fest with its consistently hearty programming of challenging, esoteric, visionary artworks announced its full lineup this morning. This year Images will showcase over 130 works in "film, video, gallery installation, live performance and new media as well as artist talks, parties and walking tours".

Two special programs will make their debuts: MOMENTUM and ifpod. Momentum is a series of symposiums, one for each day of the fest (10 in total), featuring speaking engagements and events with prominent Canadian and international media artists, cultural workers, and theorists. The ifpod project is... well, I'll let them explain: "an experiment in polymorphous dissemination aimed at infiltrating the mobile YOUniverse with a unique collection of ten Canadian video art works - on the down load for any and every possible screen". Can't wait to see what that's all about.

We are looking forward to covering this year's definitely NSFW Images Festival.

Program Highlights:

On Screen - The Festival unspools 84 new films and videos by artists from Canada and 13 countries around the world, including:

OPENING NIGHT GALA: North American premiere of Babette Mangolte's Seven Easy Pieces by Marina AbramovicÌ?.
* New works by Toronto artists Christina Battle, Andrea Cooper, Jesika Joy and many others.
* Guest-curated programs of new video work from Scandinavia and the Netherlands.

Off Screen - The fastest growing section of the Festival and for good reason! This year see over 40 works by Canadian and International installation artists in 19 venues throughout Toronto:

* Lonnie van Brummlen's 35mm film installation Grossraum.
* War Games, an exhibition of 3 video works by Afghani artist Lida Abdul.
* The massive Projections exhibit curated by Barbara Fischer, spanning four University of Toronto galleries and featuring work by Stan Douglas, Jana Sterbak, Rebecca Belmore, Ian Carr Harris and many others.

Live Images - One of the most popular series at the Festival, featuring film, video and audio artists, musicians and other performers live and in person with spectacular media art performances. Highlights include:

* Quasar, a multi-projector sound and image performance by German artists Jürgen Reble and Thomas Köner at The Music Gallery.
* Japanese photographer Hitoshi Toyoda live slide show NAZUNA.
* A program of projector performance works by John Porter, Bruce McClure and Mauricio Ancalmo.
* A Live/New Media program highlighting recent online and media works by the collective Battery Operated and Naeem Mohaiemen.

For more info, visit the Images Festival website.

(Photo: Images Festival)