November 22-Alison Duke’s Missing Minutes

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Ali­son Duke’s Miss­ing Minutes
Part of the Oth­er Places Book Launch Series
a con­ver­sa­tion with Ali­son Duke and Jor­dan Arseneault

Fri­day Novem­ber 22, 6:30pm
Jack­man Hall, 317 Dun­das Street West, Toron­to, ON
Free event

More infor­ma­tion at: otherplaces.mano-ramo.ca

Ali­son Duke, Pro­duc­tion still for Promise Me, in progress, Pho­to by Yvano Antonio

Ali­son Duke is absent from her own work in ways that not many film­mak­ers are. After meet­ing this empath­ic doc­u­men­tar­i­an in Toron­to in 2017, film researcher and activist organ/izer Jor­dan Arse­neault had the priv­i­lege of sit­ting down with her last win­ter – with Mon­tréal vidéaste Éti­enne Gan­jo­hi­an – to delve into Duke’s filmic sub­jects, her strat­e­gy for autho­r­i­al removal, and about 17 miss­ing min­utes from one unfor­get­table film. For the occa­sion of this spe­cial launch of Oth­er Places, we offer a pre­view of Duke’s jaw-drop­ping fic­tion for­ay in progress Promise Me (in progress, prod. Fon­na Sei­du) and MediaQueer’s didac­tic short intro­duc­ing this Black, queer con­vey­or of truths and keep­er of promis­es. Film­mak­er in atten­dance and in con­ver­sa­tion with the very grate­ful author. — JA

Ali­son Duke is an artis­tic activist, award-win­ning film­mak­er and pro­duc­er. Duke

estab­lished Gold­e­lox Pro­duc­tions to pro­duce social issue con­tent. In 2016, she pro­duced the Akua Ben­jamin Lega­cy Project, a dig­i­tal web series, which cel­e­brates the lega­cies of Toron­to-based black activists. Inspired by Ava Duver­nay, #metoo and the real­i­ty that oppor­tu­ni­ties for women behind the cam­era in Cana­da are long over­due, Duke hired five black female Cana­di­an direc­tors to helm the films. Ali­son has worked as a seg­ment producer/director for sev­er­al inter­na­tion­al­ly renowned syn­di­cat­ed doc­u­men­tary series and award-win­ning fea­ture-length social issues doc­u­men­taries that have received Cana­di­an, USA and Euro­pean tele­vi­sion broad­casts as well as film fes­ti­val awards. Her first film, Raisin Kane: a rapumen­tary (2001) won the HBO best doc­u­men­tary award at the Urban World Film Festival.

Jor­dan Arse­neault is a trans­la­tor, per­former and film cura­tor in Mon­tréal. By day, he has coor­di­nat­ed the Queer Media Data­base Cana­da-Québec project and sub­ti­tled films with Mon­tréal’s T&S Coop for sev­er­al years; by night, he attacks stages in his drag per­sona, Peach­es LeP­oz. His two social prac­tice work­shops, Fear Drag (2010-present), and Dis­clo­sure Cook­book (with artist Miki­ki) address crim­i­nal­iza­tion, stig­ma, HIV/AIDS, addic­tion, queer­ness and com­mu­ni­ty. Besides this year’s priv­i­lege of writ­ing on A. Duke, his account of “How to Have an HIV/AIDS Lec­ture Series in an Epi­dem­ic” fea­tures in the Aug. 2019 issue of On Curat­ing, edit­ed by Theodore Kerr. Born: Saint John, Cana­da, 1980.