November 21-Midi Onodera’s I have no memory of my direction

Midi Onodera’s I have no mem­o­ry of my direction
Part of the Oth­er Places Book Launch Series

Midi Onodera in person

Thurs­day Novem­ber 21, 8:30pm
Jack­man Hall, 317 Dun­das Street West, Toron­to, ON
Free event

More infor­ma­tion at: otherplaces.mano-ramo.ca

I have no mem­o­ry of my direc­tion, Midi Onodera, 2005, 77min, Canada

“I have no mem­o­ry of my direc­tion” is a fea­ture length exper­i­men­tal nar­ra­tive. The sto­ry unfolds through a Cana­di­an-born Japan­ese woman’s voice-over as she dreams her way through Japan. Osten­si­bly search­ing for an emo­tion­al con­nec­tion with her aging father, the woman con­tem­plates her own inher­it­ed cul­ture and famil­ial touch­stones. Her North Amer­i­can pop cul­ture sen­si­bil­i­ty fus­es with a dis­tort­ed Japan­ese per­spec­tive to cre­ate a sur­re­al inter­pre­ta­tion of a “Japan of the imag­i­na­tion.” This fic­tion­al land­scape is pep­pered with invent­ed Japan­ese myths, rumi­na­tions on mem­o­ry loss, the tem­po­ral space of dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy and the ghosts of inher­it­ed imagination.

Midi Onodera is a recip­i­ent of the 2018 Gov­er­nor General’s Award for Visu­al and Media Arts. She is a mov­ing image artist who has been mak­ing work for 35+ years. She has pro­duced over 25 inde­pen­dent shorts rang­ing from film to dig­i­tal video to “low end” toy cam­era for­mats. In addi­tion to this she cre­at­ed a the­atri­cal fea­ture film, Skin Deep and 500+ online videos. Since 2006 she has pro­duced an annu­al online video project which can be viewed at: www.midionodera.com.