KEEPING NAC COOL
In an effort to beat the heat, NAC will be closed for a few weeks beginning Thursday 2 February.
With remarkable foresight we’ll be closed for renovations during the winter doldrums so that an air conditioning system can be installed along with LED lighting and black out blinds for the Plate Glass Gallery.
These renovations are made possible thanks to funding from the Ontario Trillium Foundation and support from our friends at Oast House Brewers.
NAC will officially reopen on Saturday 8 April with our annual Small Feats fundraiser and party. That’s a humdinger not to be missed.
Though we won’t be keeping regular gallery hours, the Plate Glass Gallery will remain open with work by Alex Fraser and Puppet-A-Go-Go, the Flea Market Gallery with work by Alicia Nauta, and other sporadic events peppered throughout the calendar including The Brock Art Collective’s annual exhibit in the Dennis Tourbin Members Gallery on Friday 24 February. (We’ll hold limited gallery hours the week of the show so you can check out Niagara’s latest crop of up and comers.)
As well, NAC will continue with its Film House programming at the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre. NAC’s Minister of Energy, Minds, and Resources will be moonlighting as DJ Awkward Mix in The Film House lobby on Wednesday 1 February and Saturday 11 February, playing country blues in advance of the I AM THE BLUES doc. Join us for a pre-show drink!
NAC’s board directors are also working out the details of our next culinary spectacular fundraiser to take place a little further down St. Paul at Bolete at the end of February. Tickets will go on sale next week.
And finally, we’re working away at NAC’s new STUDIO SHOP at 433 St. Paul and getting ready for a grand opening this March. Fifteen NAC Member artists have established studio spaces and storefront renovations to make the wildest retail space in town are well underway.
If you need to get in touch with us, you can email natasha@nac.org or artists@nac.org.
It’s that time of year again!
We’re gearing up for the biggest art buying frenzy and party of the year! We’re calling on the artist members of NAC to create remarkable works of art in support of your friendly neighbourhood artist-run centre.
But hey! Check it out.
While we’re still offering up sweet square foot works of art, we’re adding an even smaller option to this year’s wall. Sign up for a 6”x 8” canvas, to be sold for $100. Or stick with the 12”x12” canvas or Masonite board, to be sold for $200. Or do both!
We have lots of space, but only the best works will be accepted. Contributing artists choose to donate all or half the proceeds of their work to NAC.
NAC will supply some materials on request (canvas or Masonite) but photographic, mixed-media, and works on paper will also be considered. You must be a member in good standing to participate.
Let us know if you intend on making work by filling out the form (available HERE) and emailing it to nacsmallfeats@gmail.com by Friday 17 February before midnight. Small Feats takes place at NAC on Saturday 8 April, so save the date!
DATES TO REMEMBER
Friday 17 February 2017 before midnight / Applications to emailed to nacsmallfeats@gmail.com.
>> Download the form here.
Saturday 1 April 2017 12PM-4PM / Artwork to be dropped off at NAC
Saturday 8 April 2017 8PM / SMALL FEATS!
We will email you when the materials are available for pick up.
Need to renew or sign on?
You can swing by NAC and we’ll hook you up or stay home and do it online here
This Week at The Film House
I AM THE BLUES
Canada, USA 2015. Directed by Daniel Cross. 106 min. PG
Wed 1 Feb 8PM + Sat 11 Feb 9:30PM
I AM THE BLUES looks at the the players that lack a mythology or much commercial acclaim, but continue to live and breathe the blues.” – Exclaim!
I AM THE BLUES takes the audience on a musical journey through the swamps of the Louisiana Bayou, the juke joints of the Mississippi Delta and Moonshine soaked BBQs in the North Mississippi Hill Country. The film visits blues musicians rooted in the genre’s heyday, many in their 80s, still living in the American deep south and touring the Chitlin’ Circuit. Let Bobby Rush, Barbara Lynn, Henry Gray, Carol Fran, Little Freddie King, Lazy Lester, Bilbo Walker, and their friends awaken the blues in all of us.
Hacksaw Ridge
Australia, USA 2016. Directed by Mel Gibson. 139 min. 18A
Thurs 2 Feb 7PM / Fri 3 Feb 9:30PM / Sat 4 Feb 7PM / Sun 5 Feb 4PM
Hacksaw Ridge is a truly remarkable and moving film about unimaginable courage in the face of impossible odds. – Peter Hammond, Deadline
Hacksaw Ridge is the extraordinary true story of Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield) who, in Okinawa during the bloodiest battle of WWII, saved 75 men without firing or carrying a gun. He believed that while the war was justified, killing was nevertheless wrong. As an army medic, he single-handedly evacuated the wounded from behind enemy lines, braved fire while tending to soldiers and was wounded by a grenade and hit by snipers. Doss was the first conscientious objector to ever earn the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Groundhog Day
USA 1993. Directed by Harold Ramis. 101 min. PG
Thurs 2 Feb 9:30PM
Ironically, given the theme of the film, this never gets old. Winning performances, and respect for the comedic value of the script delivers laughs every time. – Caroline Westbrook, Empire
Phil (Bill Murray), a TV weatherman for a local station in Pennsylvania displays a charm and wit on camera that evaporates the moment the camera goes off; he treats his co-workers with contempt, especially his producer Rita (Andie MacDowell) and cameraman Larry (Chris Elliot). On February 2, 1992, Phil, Rita, and Larry are sent on an assignment: the annual Groundhog Day festivities in Punxsutawney, PA. Soon, no matter what Phil does, he’s stuck in February 2, 1992 day after day after endless Groundhog Day.
Moonlight
USA 2016. Directed by Barry Jenkins. 111 min. 14A
Fri 3 Feb 7PM / Sat 4 Feb 4PM / Mon 6 Feb 8PM
Perhaps the most beautiful thing about Moonlight is its open-endedness, its resistance to easy summary or categorization. – A. O. Scott, The New York Times
With numerous wins at both the Gotham Awards and the New York City Film Critics Awards, this tender, heartbreaking story of a young man’s struggle to find himself, told across three defining chapters in his life as he experiences the ecstasy, pain, and beauty of falling in love, while grappling with his own sexuality, has been deeply affecting audiences. A clear Oscar contender, this film was seen by A.O Scott of the New York Times three times before he wondered in a glowing review: “Is this the year’s best movie?”
A Cat in Paris
France, Belgium 2010. Directed by Jean-Loup Felicioli & Alain Gagnol. 70 min. NR
Sat 4 Feb 1PM
Like an animated children’s version of an Alfred Hitchcock or Roman Polanski thriller set on the rooftops of Paris! – The New York Times
Dino is a pet cat that leads a double life. By day he lives with Zoe, a little mute girl whose mother, Jeanne, is a detective in the Parisian police force. But at night he sneaks out the window to work with Nico – a slinky cat burglar with a big heart, whose fluid movements are poetry in motion – as he evades captors and slips and swishes from rooftop to rooftop across the Paris skyline. The cat’s two worlds collide when young Zoe decides to follow Dino on his nocturnal adventures – and falls into the hands of Victor Costa, a blustery gangster planning the theft of a rare statue. Now cat and cat burglar must team up to save Zoe from the bumbling thieves, leading to a thrilling acrobatic finale on top of Notre Dame.
Footloose
USA 1984. Directed by Herbert Ross. 107 min. 14A
Sat 4 Feb 9:30PM
Nearly three decades on, Bacon’s vest-clad set-piece dance in a flour mill looks cheesily 1980s, but the rest of Ross’s drama wears its age well, real song-and-dance joy for the pre-Glee generation.
– Jane Lamacraft, Sight & Sound, British Film Institute
In this lively adolescent-oriented musical, a city kid attempts to adapt to life in an ultra-conservative backwater Midwestern town. Once there, he ends up leading the repressed teenagers into a rebellion against the town fathers, who have outlawed rock & roll and dancing. Get your dancing shoes on ‘cause everybody is going to cut loose when Kevin Bacon dances his heart and soul out on the big screen. Don’t miss this opportunity to revisit a wonderful piece of 1984 film nostalgia.
