Life of a Craphead – Bugs screening (with live performance introduction)
Life of a Craphead
Bugs – screening, performative introduction and Q&A
Friday February 26, 2016
FREE
Doors open at 7:45
Performance begins at 8:00 with film to follow
355 Clarence Street
LOMAA’s Visiting Artist Program is pleased to welcome Life of a Craphead (Amy Lam and Jon McCurley) to premiere their feature Bugs. Artists will be in attendance and will present an introduction with performers and costumes from the film and will follow up with a Q&A after the screening. A pre-screening will feature trailers by London-based artists Lucas Cabral and Sam Noseworthy.
Bugs — the debut feature film from performance artists Life of a Craphead — is a satire about a bug society and its most powerful family. Featuring situations like a university lecture gone wrong and a failed SNL episode, the story presents the absurdity of life within a patriarchal society obsessed with success.
The DIY film sets the Bug universe right in the middle of the real world, creating multiple layers of reality that interact with each other. The bugs, played by actors in black and white cartoony costumes, inhabit a shadow world that shifts between what’s recognizable and what’s improbable. Produced over the last 5 years with a large cast and crew of artists and comedians, Bugs introduces a filmmaking style that rejects seamlessness in favour of a messy resonance.
SYNOPSIS
Bugs is a satire about a bug society and its most successful family. The Bug Prime Minister, Shay (Gerry Campbell), has ruled the Bug Garden for many years and is finally, reluctantly, retiring. He’s chosen his niece, Gaston (Liz Peterson), to take over — but Gaston, who is plagued with ambitions to be the Bug Garden’s most respected politician-architect-filmmaker — is folding under the pressure. Dan is his other niece, but she’s a dreamer and can’t be trusted; she’s full of conflicting ideals and tries to act on all of them.
Shay goes to the Oracle for advice and they foretell that his family can’t be saved. Meanwhile, a government worker/aspiring comedian Sexy Bug (Glenn Macaulay) and his best friend Rob (Peter Kalyniuk) are sick of the Shay family’s rule. They plot to vandalize a monument being built to honour the family. From afar, the neighboring Bird Country celebrates another Bug political failure.
CREDITS
Bugs (74 min., 2015)
WRITTEN, DIRECTED, EDITED & PRODUCED by Life of a Craphead
STARRING: Liz Peterson, Glenn Macaulay, Peter Kalyniuk, Gerry Campbell, Lisa Smolkin, Kayla Lorette, & Mr. Fly
WITH: Jess Carvalho, Connor Crawford, Zoe Solomon, Jesi the Elder, Seth Scriver, Jonny Peterson, Neil Lapierre, Bridget Moser, Sean O’Neill, Charlie Murray, Daniel Goodbaum, Laura McCoy, Agnes Forfa, Amy Lam, Jon McCurley, Fraser McCallum, Simon Schlesinger, Robert Dayton, Alicia Nauta, Jace Tracz, Sebastian Butt, Fake Injury Party, Randy Gagne, Sagan MacIsaac, Arielle Gavin, Meghan O’Neill & many more
PRODUCTION DESIGN by Laura McCoy
MUSIC by Andrew Zukerman
SOUND DESIGN & MIX by Cricket Cave (Zoe Gordon & Shayne Ehman), Matt Smith
3D ANIMATIONS by Steph Davidson
VFX by Zak Tatham
DP FOR 2012/2014/2015: Chris Boni
DP FOR 2011: Augustina Saygnavong
SOUND RECORDISTS: Matt Smith, Andrew Zukerman, Zoe Gordon & Shayne Ehman
PRODUCED WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF the Canada Council for the Arts, the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council, Double Double Land, The Western Front, Xpace Cultural Centre, The Art Gallery of Ontario, Trinity Square Video, LIFT, William F. White, The Macdowell Colony, Gendai Gallery, and WEIRD THINGS.
LIFE OF A CRAPHEAD is the collaboration of Amy Lam and Jon McCurley since 2006. Their work spans performance art, film, and curation. Projects include The Life of a Craphead Fifty Year Retrospective, 2006-2056 (Art Gallery of Ontario, 2013), an exhibition of all the work they will ever make; Double Double Land Land (Gallery TPW, 2009), a play about a second-rate city; and Free Lunch (2007), a public, anonymously-advertised free lunch serving everything on the menu of a restaurant (100+ items). Life of a Craphead also run and host the popular monthly performance art show Doored, which recently toured to New York (Flux Factory) and Rotterdam (Showroom MAMA) and is broadcast online at dooredtv.tumblr.com. Their work has been featured in Canadian Art, C Magazine, and Art in America. They live and work in Toronto, Canada.
www.lifeofacraphead.com
LOMAA would like to thank Canada Council for the Arts for their continued support of the Visiting Artist Program.
www.lomaa.ca