Film Performance with Lauren Oliver and Film Screening with MONO NO AWARE
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March 25, 2025
The Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto (LIFT) present
LAUREN OLIVER and MONO NO AWARE
Join us in experiencing a live 16mm film performance by Multidisciplinary Artist Lauren Oliver, followed by a screening of a small selection of films from MONO NO AWARE XVIII and a presentation by Steve Cossman, founder of Cinema Arts Non-Profit Organization MONO NO AWARE based in Brooklyn, NY.
This is an exciting opportunity to come together and watch a selection of excellent films created through the help of MONO NO AWARE, and we are beyond excited to share these films with the LIFT community. Lauren Oliver, MONO NO AWARE member and instructor, will be showcasing a selection of her work, namely a three-projector 16mm performance piece. We are pleased that she can be in attendance. We are also pleased founder Steve Cossman can join us to show a selection of films on 16mm, and introduce us to the world of MONO NO AWARE. This will be an evening of multi-projections, film explorations, performance, and more. This dual-program event will be held at LIFT, on March 29, 2025. Spots are limited, so be sure to arrive early!
LAUREN OLIVER: 16mm Film Performance
Lauren Noelle Oliver is a multidisciplinary artist who uses photography, filmmaking and performance to explore identity. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in photography from SUNY Purchase. Her photographs have been featured on i-D, Buzzfeed, F-stop Magazine, and The Luupe. Her first monograph, “Temple of the Self”, published by Monolith Editions in 2020, is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Thomas J. Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Lauren is an MFA candidate at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
“My work is a performance of self—an unfolding autobiography captured through movement, presence, and transformation. It explores intimacy, both shared and solitary, and the tension between visibility and concealment. Through film, I navigate the space where presence and absence collide, where the body is both subject and story. I challenge notions of the female body on display, rejecting imposed ideals by embracing its raw, unmanicured form. In resisting erasure, each frame becomes both a personal truth and a quiet act of defiance.” – Lauren Oliver
PRIÊRE DE TOUCHER (PLEASE TOUCH) / 3 min, 2018, 16mm
Prière de toucher (Please Touch) is a 16mm film inspired by Le Surréalisme en 1947, the exhibition catalog conceived by André Breton, Marcel Duchamp, and Enrico Donati. The original catalogue cover features a foam-rubber breast mounted on black velvet, enticing viewers to engage in an intimate, tactile gesture.
Rather than mimicking this faux flesh, the film shifts focus to the lush textures of various flowers, inviting viewers to imagine their tactile qualities and succumb to the temptation to touch.
STEPPING INTO THE FRAME (10 min, 2022, 16mm Triple Projection Performance)
Stepping into the Frame offers an intimate look at the paradox of self-portraiture in Oliver’s artistic practice. Best known for her still photography, she now turns the lens on her own process, using a 16mm Bolex to expand her self-portraits beyond the instant of capture. By doing so, she invites viewers into the space between intention and chance.
While Oliver meticulously pre-plans each shot, the necessity of stepping out of the frame to reset the camera ensures that no scene can be perfectly recreated. This inevitability highlights the ephemeral nature of her work, revealing the fluidity and freedom within her portraits. The performative aspect of her practice is further emphasized as she moves between projectors, threading them with new loops of footage — an act that mirrors the continuous evolution of her self-representation.
SPLIT ENDS (3 min, 2024, 16mm with live narration by the artist)
Split Ends is an animated addendum to the artist’s recently published book of the same title. Expanding on the text that inspired its themes, the film explores the artist’s relationship with her hair as a lens for understanding identity, lineage, and cultural heritage.
Using vegetable roots as metaphors for split ends — those often hidden or trimmed remnants of hair — the film reclaims them as symbols of age, complexity, and resilience rather than something to be discarded. Accompanied by a live narration from the artist’s diary, Split Ends offers an intimate exploration of these ideas.
MONO NO AWARE: Screening and Presentation
LABOR 2024, 16MM TIME LAPSE FILM BY JULIANA CERQUEIRA LEITE (NEW YORK, NEW YORK / UNITED STATES / BRAZIL) ORIGINAL SCORE BY NIK COLK VOID (LONDON / UNITED KINGDOM)
Labor continues sculptor Juliana Cerqueira Leite’s research into the ways repetitive movements construct and deconstruct the built world. Four former assembly line workers perform, from memory, the movements that defined their work. Labor uses long exposure photography and techniques pioneered by Lilian and Frank Gilbreth in the early 1900’s to draw parallels between the development of film and photography, and assembly-line based industrial manufacturing. The film and its original score by Nik Colk Void connect the material qualities of their mediums to memory and work, moving from animation to live action.
Juliana Cerqueira Leite is a Brazilian sculptor based in New York. She often works from the inside-out, producing indexes of movement. Her works in sculpture, drawing and video engage the complicated histories and possible futures of representing the human form. She has exhibited internationally since graduating from the Slade School of Fine Art (London) in 2006 as recipient of the Kenneth Armitage Sculpture Prize. Cerqueira Leite was awarded the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2019 in support of her solo exhibition Orogenesi at the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, Italy. In 2016 she was awarded the Furla Art Prize for her contribution to the 5th Moscow Young Art Biennale. She has exhibited her work in group shows in venues such as the Sculpture Center, (New York), Saatchi Gallery (London), the 2017 Venice Biennale Antarctic Pavilion, the Brazilian Museum of Sculpture and Ecology (MuBE, São Paulo), and Hordaland Kunstsenter for the 2019 Bergen Assembly (Norway). Recent solo shows include Instituto Tomie Ohtake (São Paulo), Nogueras Blanchard (Madrid), Alma Zevi (Venice), Galeria Casa Triângulo (São Paulo), and Proxyco Gallery (New York). Her work has been reviewed in publications such as Artforum and Frieze Magazines, The Brooklyn Rail and the MIT Drama Review.
DOVE STONE 16MM FILM BY RAINE ROBERTS (BROOKLYN, NEW YORK)
Dove Stone is an experimental documentary/dance film juxtaposing the erosive tendencies of human behavior and the erosive nature of our environment. Color portion shot on location at Fort Tilden beach; Black and White portion shot in studio.
Raine Roberts is a Chicago-born, Brooklyn-based, photographer, filmmaker, and multimedia artist. Raine earned her BFA in Film Productions and BA in Communications from the University of Colorado at Boulder (2019). After working in documentary filmmaking, Raine went on to study at the International Center of Photography (2023). She has exhibited her works locally and internationally, in solo exhibitions with Westlab+Gallery and APStudioBk; group exhibitions with WORTHLESS STUDIOS, Haus Am See in Switzerland, VisualAIDS, and Brooklyn Film Camera. Her work has been published locally and internationally in MuséeMagazine, Este País, Bushwick Daily, and BK Reader. She was the most recent Photographer in Residence for the FREE FILM PROJECT — leading free community-based workshops and developing her ongoing project. Raine is a member of the photography group SmallTable Collective.
MONO NO AWARE – Slideshow and conversation with Director STEVE COSSMAN (BROOKLYN, NEW YORK)
Cinema Arts Non-profit Organization MONO NO AWARE constitutes a vital resource for the exploration, exhibition and preservation of the cinematic arts. For the general public, MONO provides access to specialized tools, organizes affordable hands on workshops, intimate lectures and film presentations that foster an appreciation of the cinema; its histories, its practices, its technologies, and its possibilities. The MONO initiatives deepen our understanding of community and visual culture through our relationship to the moving image. Located in downtown Brooklyn, MONO has been serving the community since 2007.
Saturday, March 29, 2025
Starts at 8:00pm
Doors open at 7:30pm
Main Classroom, LIFT, 1137 Dupont St, Toronto ON M6H 2A3
Admission: Pay-What-You-Can (PWYC) for Non-members (Suggested $5.00)
Free for LIFT Members
CASH ONLY payment at the door
Join us after the performance for a short Q&A with the filmmaker and curator.
The Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto (LIFT) is Canada’s foremost artist-run production and education organization dedicated to celebrating excellence in the moving image. LIFT exists to provide support and encouragement for independent filmmakers and artists through affordable access to production, post-production and exhibition equipment; professional and creative development; workshops and courses; commissioning and exhibitions; artist residencies; and a variety of other services.
http://lift.ca
LIFT is supported by self-generated revenue as well as the following year-round funders: the Canada Council for the Arts (CCA), the Ontario Arts Council (OAC), Ontario Arts Foundation, the Government of Ontario and the Toronto Arts Council (TAC).
As a charitable organization, LIFT graciously accepts donations via our CanadaHelps page. If you would like to support our filmmaking community, please visit https://lift.ca/donate
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For additional information on the event, please visit https://lift.ca or e-mail LIFT Executive Director Chris Kennedy at director@lift.ca
Saturday 29 March 2025, 08:00 to 22:00
Non-members: Pay-What-You-Can (Suggested $5.00)
Members: Free
Location:
Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto
1137 Dupont St
Toronto ON Canada