Our New Project: Collecting Seniors' Stories
An Extraordinary Woman: The Thriller Writer!
You’ve probably seen or heard about the movie The Talented Mr. Ripley or Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train. But do you much about the woman who created those chilling sociopathic characters? Join us for our next Extraordinary Woman event at the Revue Cinema, Sunday, Nov. 17, at 12:30 pm and learn about writer Patricia Highsmith. Born in 1921 and a lesbian, she was forced to lead a double life, hiding her love affairs from family and public. She wrote 22 novels and short stories, inspiring more than two dozen film adaptations.
We are screening the 2022 documentary Loving Highsmith, with guest speaker Janice Kulyk Keefer, author, detective fiction fan and former literature professor. Watch the trailer! Buy tickets through the Revue website. Tickets: $17.50, general; $14.50 students and seniors. Read more about the event here.
This will be our last Extraordinary Women event for the year. Don’t miss this one!
Exhibit: A Unique Perspective!
How often do you go to an art exhibit and are given a puzzle to solve? That’s what Gwen Zezulka has done with her show of photographs. Your challenge: Guess what real-life objects she has zeroed in on to find the remarkable images she has on display at Back Lane Studios. How about a detail from a muffin mix, or petals and oil floating on water pooling at a storm water drain? There’s beauty and texture there — and Gwen has found it. Her exhibit of photographs continues at Back Lane Studios until Sunday, Nov. 17. She will be at the studio on weekends, Fridays 6:00-10:00 pm and Saturdays and Sundays, 11:00 am-4:00 pm. Drop by and play the guessing game!! Read more here about her exhibit.
Mapping archival photos: Time travel with OldTO.org
elcome to OldTO. It’s an interactive map featuring a wealth of digitized historic photos from the City of Toronto Archives.
Are you interested in what your neighbourhood might have looked like? Do you want to revisit downtown before all of the condos went up? Have a look at the map and see. There are thousands of images, some dating back to 1856.
The map was originally created by Sidewalk Labs, the Google affiliate that was planning a downtown development in Toronto’s Portlands. Sidewalk abandoned its project in 2020 and eventually stopped hosting OldTO.org. However, they kindly left the source code freely available.
At Back Lane Studios, we were sad to see OldTO.org vanish. One of our main projects is our Mapping our Memories endeavour. This photo map parallels this interest, and we are thrilled to be able to restore it.
We will be forever grateful to software developer Michael Lenaghan for his terrific work bringing this mapping tool back to life! (Check the browser you use to access oldto.org. Try Chrome if you’re having problems.)
In the Studio: Film Club Nov. 3, 2:00 pm
To mark Remembrance Day, we chose this moving film set in 1938 fascist Italy and starring these two luminous stars, Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni, in unexpected roles. The New York Times called their performances in this 1977 production “an acting tour de force”: “their brief encounter lights up the screen with the kind of radiance you get only from great movie actors who also are great stars.” The film takes place on the day of Hitler’s state visit to Rome. One can’t help but cringe at the fascist environment and the parallels we see today. If you haven’t seen it, look for it (there are copies at the library, as well as online sources). It deserves to be seen! Watch the trailer here.
Our next Film Club meeting is Sunday, Dec. 1, 2:00 to 4:00 pm.