Back Lane Studios

Join us Sunday, Feb. 23, 12:30pm for the next in our Extraordinary Women series presented in partnership with the Revue Cinema. The subject: The incomparable, the unforgettable, the extraordinarily talented and the tragic Janis Joplin.  The documentary: the 2015 film Janis: Little Girl Blue. Our guest for our Q&A:  Rob Bowman, music historian, York University prof who pioneered the academic study of popular music.  We are thrilled to have Rob join us again; he was part of our panel for our screening last year of the Jackie Shane documentary.

It’s hard to believe but Janice Joplin died 55 years ago of a heroine overdose at the age of 27. Her career was meteoric, following her performance in 1967 at the Monterey Pop Festival. In 1969, she performed at Woodstock and on the Festival Express train tour in 1970.  For anyone who lived through those times, her covers and original songs will always resonate: Piece of my Heart; Me and Bobby McGee; Cry Baby; Mercedes Benz.  The film explores her early years in an oil-producing town, Port Arthur, in Texas; her rebellious teenage years; her pain and lifelong search for love and acceptance. Book your ticket on the Revue website here. 

Watch the trailer here and read more about the film here.

Mark Sunday, March 30, 12:30 pm on your calendar for our Extraordinary Woman event about actor  Marion Davies, who is remembered most for being William Randolph Hearst’s mistress rather than the extraordinarily talented comic actor she was. Read more about the event here. 

Are you doing some property, family or other historical research? Are you looking for photos in archives but can’t find anything relevant? Kirsten Gunter, who is working on a Back Lane Studios project, was searching online to no avail for photos of the Mid-Town Bakery. It was located in the same building as her first Toronto apartment on Bloor across from Honest Ed’s. Despite all of the photos of the popular store on the south side of the street, she could find nothing that might have included the bakery.

Fortunately, Wayne Reeves is here to help us out. Recently retired as Chief Curator for the City of Toronto, Wayne knows a thing or two about navigating archival collections! He has generously agreed to share his photo-searching expertise in an online Zoom workshop, Tuesday, March 11, from 7:00 — 8:30 pm.

To join us, please reserve a spot here on Eventbrite. We suggest a small donation of $5 for the session. Read more about the workshop here.

Read about the historic exhibits and projects Wayne, our presenter, was involved with while working with the city. We thank him for preparing this workshop!

Our exhibit of photographs and quotes from Lucy Maud Montgomery’s journals and books will reopen this month, February. We were inspired to create the exhibit last year to mark the 150th anniversary of Maud’s birth but had to close the exhibit for scheduled art shows. 

Lucy Maud Montgomery spent a lot of time in Toronto, especially during the last seven years of her life when she lived at 210 Riverside Dr. in Swansea. Her ghost is everywhere in this city, with the evidence recorded in her copious diaries. It’s surprising how much she accomplished in the last seven years of her life, despite depression, worries about her sons, money concerns and her husband Ewan’s mental illness. We’ve collected some archival photos, including many taken by Maud herself, and combined them with quotes from her journals.

We’ve also explored some themes that run through her novels and her diaries. One great irony stands out; Her fictional creations represent wish fulfilment, a fantasy of what she would have wanted things to be; her life, on the other hand, was in stark contrast to the world she dreamed of. You’ll learn about some of the challenges she faced and some of the challenges she created for herself at this exhibit.

You will also be impressed by the breadth of Maud’s knowledge: she was interested in so many things — science, astronomy, photography, history. She, truly, was a remarkable woman.

Join us at our studio  for the next screening, Sunday, March 2, 2:00pm for  a documentary that digs deep into nostalgia, social history, food, and, yes, the movies. We are screening The Automat, the restaurant chain, which at one time was the largest in the United States. Mel Brooks composed a special song to honouring his love of The Automat’s excellent coffee, while Ruth Bader Ginsburg commented on the restaurant’s democratic elegance. Above, The Automat costars with Doris Day in one of the many films where it makes an appearance.

Enjoy the trailer for The Automat here.

Our film club aims to screen movies that have been overlooked or forgotten, and deserve to be seen again. At each screening, the film is introduced and a discussion follows. We have snacks, thanks to Kirsten Gunter who has been running the club. A memberships is $25 for  all of 2025 screenings. Read  how to become a member and the films chosen for 2025  here. 

For our Jan. 26 screening of the documentary about biracial ballet dancer Maria Tallchief, we were joined on Zoom (and on the big screen) by filmmakers Sandra and Yasu Osawa. Also discussing the dancer, recognized was America’s first Prima Ballerina, was Pia Bouman, far left, whose ballet school is a west-end tradition; Kirsten Gunter, a friend of Back Lane Studios who is a student of the ballet and a dance writer, middle, and Ellen  Moorhouse, from Back Lane Studios. The screening was on Sunday, Jan. 26. Maria Tallchief,  was born in 1925 to the Osage community in Oklahoma, where oil wealth opened doors to opportunity but also brought on the “Reign of Terror,” the recent setting for Scorseses’ film Killers of the Flower Moon. Maria’s father was Osage; her mother was white of Scottish and Irish background. Both Maria and her sister Marjorie Tallchief became well known dancers. When the family moved to Los Angeles, Maria and Marjorie were fortunate to  train with Bronislava Nijinska, the sister of Vaslav Nijinsky. Maria was mentored by George Balanchine and later married him.  Her partnership with Balanchine helped create the New York City Ballet and changed the course of ballet in America. The documentary, made in 2007, includes interviews with Maria, who passed away in 2013, Marjorie and their contemporaries. Thank you, Sandy and Yasu for your film and for joining us.

Welcome 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.)

Read the article about OldTO in BlogTO!