2022–2025

Ben Donoghue (Canada) is an artist, filmmaker, publisher, curator, and cultural worker of Euro-settler heritage currently living on the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe, Chippewa, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation (Toronto, Ontario). Working primarily in analogue media, his practice explores a variety of themes and subjects, including histories of political and cultural resistance, the effects of macro-economic forces on the landscape, and the biopolitical subject in the built environment. His films and performances, including Nostalgia of my Pier (2018), Pierre Radisson – Fjord and Gulf (2017), Towers – Barranquilla (2016), and the series Downcast Eyes #1–12 (2004–2006) have been exhibited at galleries, festivals, and museums internationally, including Cinémathèque Québécois, Hamburg Short Film Festival, Duke University, Arkipel Film Festival, Toronto Palestine Film Festival, Images Festival, and the Montreal Underground Film Festival, among others. Selected curatorial projects have been presented at EXiS Festival, Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), Museum London, Pacific Cinematheque, Casa del Popolo, and elsewhere. Donoghue has been a leading advocate for artist-run collectives and media arts organizations in Canada for nearly two decades, serving as Executive Director of the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto (2007–2013), and the Media Arts Network of Ontario (2013–2022). He is currently undertaking a series of analogue film productions in Ireland, Newfoundland, and Colombia, slated for release in 2023–2025.   

Ben Donoghue has remained a stalwart of the underground and experimental film scenes for decades, preferring to operate below the radar and beyond the margins. His many radical and invaluable contributions, both artistic and organizational, have remained largely hidden from global view. Regardless, Donoghue’s tireless efforts have resulted in the continued vitality of artists’ cinema in Canada. His own multivalent, chiefly analogue film practice encompasses expanded cinema projects, installation, recurring series, and short and long-form productions. His recent feature, Pierre Radisson – Fjord and Gulf (2017), named after a founding member of the colonial enterprise the Hudson’s Bay Company, tracks the navigational routes, daily activity, and environmental path of a Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker through the Saguenay Fjord and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. – MCFF     

> ARTIST’S WEBSITE

> MAKING WAVES: SLOW OBSERVATIONAL FILM WITH BEN DONOGHUE

> CULTURAL MINING: PIERRE RADISSON: FJORD AND GULF