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The Reel Asian Digital Community Archive was dreamed up to reflect on the festival’s history as we approached our 30th anniversary. From cleaning out the office and sorting through boxes of storage materials to public callouts for community members old and new to submit their personal materials, we embarked on a six-month journey of collecting and documenting. The archive is now live and available for anyone interested in looking at the festival through its traces. Come visit the RARARA Internet Cafe during the festival to check it out.

RARARA Internet Cafe

THURS, NOV 12–SAT, NOV 21
MON–FRI: 11AM–7PM | SAT–SUN: 10AM–7PM

THE GLASS ROOM, 401 RICHMOND ST W

The RARARA Internet Cafe is your chill and lounge space during the festival season! Hop into our computer booths to peruse the digital archive, spend some down time between screenings at our library, see the artist installations, or engage in our many activities, from the trading-card post to the communal stop-motion activity.

Visit the RARARA Internet Cafe on select days to peruse artist books, magazines, and zines from Asia on cinema and art, or order something delicious to drink!

Omíkhlē Bookshop

SAT, NOV 14 FROM 11AM–7PM
SAT, NOV 21 FROM 11AM–7PM

THE GLASS ROOM, 401 RICHMOND ST W

Omikhlē Bookshop is a Toronto-based independent Asian art bookshop originally founded in Kunming, China. The name “Omikhlē,” meaning “mist” in Greek, was inspired by Theo Angelopoulos’s film Landscape in the Mist (1988), reflecting our belief that a bookshop can be a landscape that cuts through the mist of disorienting times. Focusing on photography, cinema, visual culture, and independent publishing, we work with artists and publishers across China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, Cambodia, Japan, and beyond. Alongside bookselling, we organize talks and artist and publisher events.

Café An

FRI, NOV 13 FROM 11AM–7PM
SUN, NOV 15 FROM 11AM–7PM

THE GLASS ROOM, 401 RICHMOND ST W

A place for calm or connection, Café An is a pop-up bakery and café that began as a way to meet neighbours and gather friends together. The menu at Café An reflects the nostalgia of growing up in Chinatown. Café An is hosted and organized by Doris Chu.

Flush & Brew

FRI, NOV 20 FROM 11AM–7PM

THE GLASS ROOM, 401 RICHMOND ST W

Flush & Brew is a tea-focused series of pop-up events run by Jasmine Gui. Drop by the Internet Cafe to chat, chill and have a warm cup of tea.

Communal Stop-Motion Film

AVAILABLE AT THE RARARA INTERNET CAFE & ALL SCREENING VENUES AND GALA RECEPTIONS

In a sequel to last year’s wishing stump installation, we invite you to contribute to our collaborative stop-motion film project, animated by Akash Jones with music composed by Pantayo! Find a stop-motion station at our events (except for Opening Night) or visit the RARARA Internet Cafe to customize your own frame and be part of this community-made film in celebration of our 30th anniversary!

Orbit Artist Residency Installations

THE GLASS ROOM, 401 RICHMOND ST W

The Orbit Artist Residency was a three-month programme inviting artists and researchers to engage with the film festival archive. Residents were free to take any direction they wanted with the material, and produced short dispatches of works-in-process, reflections, and artwork. They further developed these in the early fall into fully formed artist installations. Come visit the RARARA Internet Cafe to see their completed works!

Artist Statement: Karaoke from the Archive draws on Empty Orchestra, a 2008 Reel Asian exhibit, working through karaoke as a minor archival practice. Rather than pursuing fantasies of recovery or mastery in a cultural archive, the work approaches the past through approximation, i.e., embracing the amateur, imperfect quality that karaoke performance inherently carries. Just as the karaoke singer never fully becomes the original vocalist, this piece resists the idea that archival engagement can offer complete access to what came before. Instead, it treats imprecision and imitation as generative modes of remembering.

Aaisha Salman is a PhD candidate in cinema studies at the University of Toronto, where they research television and cinema archives from Pakistan. Working at the intersection of arts and research, they are committed to communal archiving practices and thinking critically about digitality and preservation.

Artist Statement: I believe the act of drawing is an act of research. I’ve been studying the malleability of perception and portrayal of the past. Overwhelmed by choices of colour, I draw exclusively in greyscale.

Em Cheng is a licensed architect and visual artist. Her projects have been supported by the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Ontario Arts Council.

Artist Statement: Branches broken in the same direction is a wayfinding experiment that visualizes three archive films as maps. This cartographical effort considers these narratives as landscapes, their traces as trails, and their spaces as proximities. If the archive is a forest, these maps invite you to feel lost, which is also the feeling of wonder, which is the question that will lead me to you, you to me.

Yvette Sin is a filmmaker, collage artist, and writer based in Toronto. She is easily excitable! And easily vexed. She is learning how to endure.

In the Reel Asian Archive: Artist Talk

SUN, NOV 15 FROM 5:30–7PM

THE COMMONS LOBBY, 401 RICHMOND ST W

Learn more from our Orbit artists-in-residence, Aaisha Salman, Em Cheng, and Yvette Sin, about their time spent in the Reel Asian archives, approach to creative research, and journey toward the artist installations

30th Anniversary Trading Cards

Tricennium Reel Forever

BUY CARD PACKS AT ANY OF OUR MERCH TABLES OR AT THE RARARA INTERNET CAFE

For the festival’s 30th anniversary, RARARA commissioned Toronto artist Philip Leonard Ocampo to design a deck of 30 collectible trading cards inspired by the festival archive. The deck features 30 unique designs, one for each year of festival history. It also features a special rare-pull holographic card, designed by Jeffrey Kam.

Tricennium Reel Forever: Artist Talk

SAT, NOV 21 from 3–4:30PM

THE GLASS ROOM, 401 RICHMOND ST W

Come listen to this special presentation by artist Philip Leonard Ocampo as he walks through the design process of his 30th-anniversary trading cards, from ideation to completion.

401 Richmond St W

IN PERSON ACCESSIBILITY

 

ASL interpretation will be provided for this session. Please click here to read about how we provide access.

This presentation will feature improved air quality by our use of a HEPA-filter ambient air purifier. Reel Asian is a mask-friendly festival.

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