MEDIA CITY FILM FESTIVAL: BRIEF HISTORY (1994–2024)

Media City Film Festival (MCFF) is a globally influential organization dedicated to the advancement of artists’ cinema, moving-image culture, and contemporary art from Canada and around the world with important commitments to BIPOC and marginalized creators. We are recognized as an award-winning, international leader in the creation, reception, exhibition, and dissemination of film and digital art worldwide.

Established in 1994, MCFF is a singular force in Canadian and global moving image art. We are the only media arts organization in the world that consistently operates on both sides of an international border: Windsor, Ontario, Canada, and Detroit, Michigan, USA. MCFF seeks to advance artists whose practices are experimental in form, genre, content, and aesthetics. Our programming and public engagement strategies are abundant, generative, and always accessible. All MCFF events are pay-what-you-like or free.

Media City Film Festival will celebrate its 30th anniversary edition in 2027.  The organization’s primary exhibition activity is the annual festival, which remains the centrepiece of our year-round artistic commitments, engaging emerging and established creators in a hotly-anticipated 5 to 21-day celebration of contemporary cinematic invention. Festival programming includes robust offerings, such as Opening Night Presentations, International Competition Programs, Regional Artist Screenings, Retrospectives and Artist Spotlights, Museum and Archival Exhibitions, Artist and Curator Talks, Gallery Tours, Lectures, Live Performances, Symposia, Retreats, Podcasts, Parties, and more.  Since the festival’s inception, MCFF has received more than 80,000 entries from over 120 nations, hosted hundreds of visiting artists and filmmakers, and engaged tens of thousands of audience members in public programs in Windsor-Detroit and internationally. Year-round, we also facilitate invitation-based fellowships, residencies, commissions, screenings, workshops, exhibitions, and other initiatives with some of the most respected artists of our time.

RETROSPECTIVE SPOTLIGHT presentations at Media City Film Festival have featured: Simone Leigh, Cecilia Vicuña, Ja’Tovia Gary, Yoko Ono, Tracey Moffatt, Ulysses Jenkins, Carolee Schneemann, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, Sergei Parajanov, Cauleen Smith, Alvin Lucier, Tony Cokes, Matana Roberts, Artavadz Pelechian, Warren Sonbert, Johan vander Keuken, Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Michael Snow, Friedl vom Gröller Kubelka, Malcolm LeGrice, Helga Fanderl, and countless others.

MCFF is recognized as crucial to the advancement of national and international moving image art and artists. We continue to make transformative contributions to the global contemporary media arts landscape, elevating Canada’s profile on the world stage. We are the only Canadian organization in history to be supported by John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and became one of only two non-American organizations to be supported by The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences since they founded their granting program in 1967. 

MCFF’s in-person cinematic events take place at the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Art Windsor-Essex, and numerous other venues on both sides of the border and around the world. The festival’s main venue is the historic Capitol Theatre and Arts Centre in downtown Windsor. MCFF annually attracts curators, filmmakers, artists, and scholars from across Canada and internationally.

 

MCFF Chrysalis Fellowship and Mobile Frames Residencies programs expand our activities to provide meaningful production support for artists and filmmakers year-round. We have produced dozens of award-winning films and installations with invitees including, Sky Hopinka, Kevin Jerome Everson, Ephraim Asili, Terra Long, Christopher Harris, Ayo Akingbade, Fern Silva, Malena Szlam, Daïchi Saïto, Ana Vaz, and countless others. Commissioned films have been exhibited at hundreds of venues, including La Biennale di Venezia, Tate Modern, Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and Toronto International Film Festivals.

MCFF’s world-class digital streaming platform, THOUSANDSUNS CINEMA features selections from hundreds of artists showcased by the organization over its thirty-year history. THOUSANDSUNS presents short and feature-length films, previously commissioned MCFF productions, fellowship screenings, retrospectives, and other cinematic endeavours connected with our activities since 1994. The platform was conceived to offer FREE worldwide access to some of the most inspiring moving image artists working today. It also functions as an ever-growing index, cataloguing artists operating in avant-garde film circles internationally.

Media City Film Festival has screened hundreds of artists and filmmakers over the years, including: Barbara Hammer, Raven Chacon, Akosua Adoma Owusu, Harun Farocki, Karimah Ashadu, Fox Maxy, Harry Smith, Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich, Sharon Lockhart, Alanis Obomsawin, Chick Strand, VALIE EXPORT, New Red Order, Basma Alsharif, Gustav Deutsch, Walid Raad, Andy Warhol, Peter Gidal, Dziga Vertov, Jang Minyong, Maria Lassnig, Joyce Wieland, Saul Levine, Rose Lowder, Deimantas Narkevicius, Tomonari Nishikawa, Ben Rivers, Narcisa Hirsch, Skip Norman, Ayana Dozier, Deborah Stratman, Simon Liu, Paul Sharits, Suneil Sanzgiri, Guy Sherwin, Tran T. Kim-Trang, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

Films produced and premiered by MCFF have had subsequent exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art, Centre George Pompidou, Tate Modern, Whitney Museum of American Art, Harvard Film Archive, International Film Festival Rotterdam, The National Gallery of Art (Washington), Toronto International Film Festival, Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), New York Film Festival, and countless other museums, microcinemas, festival, and biennales worldwide.

 

PREVIOUS AWARD WINNERS at Media City Festival Festival have included: Mati Diop, Ephraim Asili, Sky Hopinka, Robert Beavers, Peter Hutton,  Cauleen Smith, Kevin Jerome Everson, Nour Ouayda, Adam Piron, Camilo Restrepo, Shiho Kano, Peter Tscherkassky, Ute Aurand, Bruce McClure, David Gatten, Nathaniel Dorsky, Robert Fenz, Guy Maddin, Pablo Mazzolo, Ben Russell, Ana Vaz, and countless more.

A searchable database of all works presented throughout Media City Film Festival’s 30-year history is in the works. In the meantime, you can view selected print catalogues from previous editions of the festival (2008-2023) here.  Information about staff, board members, and partners is included on the Organizer’s Page associated with each festival.

Media City Film Festival (Legal: The House of Toast Film & Video Collective) was founded by Dierdre Logue, Christopher McNamara, Britta Poisson, Kim Truchan,  Dermot Wilson, and Windsor’s favorite drag queen collective, The Venus Boys.

For information about works from past editions, publications, commissions, and touring programs contact:

Oona Mosna, MCFF Artistic Director <mediacity@houseoftoast.ca>