WHAT: Toronto premiere of the film Examined Life
WHEN: January 23-29, various times (details here)
WHERE: Royal Cinema (608 College St. West)
If you were planning on engaging in some psychogeographic walking this weekend, maybe you should organize your trip to end at the doors of the Royal, so you can take in a screening of Examined Life. The film was shown at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, but is making its proper debut run here tomorrow until next Thursday.
From the film’s website:
Examined Life takes philosophy out of the darkened corners of academia and into the hustle and bustle of the everyday, a visual reminder that great ideas are born through profound engagement with the world around us.
It is directed by Astra Taylor, whose feature documentary portrait of world famous philosopher Slavoj Zizek, Zizek!, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2005.
Examined Life interweaves fascinating “walks†with philosophers through places that hold special resonance for them and their ideas — crowded city streets, deserted alleyways, Central Park and even a garbage dump.
Production photo courtesy of the National Film Board
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Here’s more info from the filmmakers on the event:
Deborah Cowen teaches geography and planning at the University of Toronto. She writes about cities, suburbs, citizenship and security.
Jane Farrow is the Executive Director of the Centre for City Ecology and Jane’s Walk, a series of free neighbourhood strolls held across the North America each May that honour the ideas of urbanist Jane Jacobs. Jane is also a writer and broadcaster and has hosted the CBC radio
programs Workology, Home, The Omnivore and, And Sometimes Y. She volunteers with Active 18, a residents group that advocates for good design and planning in the Queen West neighbourhood.
Doug Hutchinson has taught philosophy for 30 years, and is a co- editor of Plato: Complete Works (1997). His current research is
reconstructing the Protrepticus, a lost dialogue by Aristotle. Recently he was illegitimately attacked by the University of Toronto
for using cannabis; resisting successfully, he forced the authorities to provide him with the world’s first workplace medical marijuana
smoking facility. His website http://www.thepotlawhasfallen.ca/ provides counter-intimidation and counter-disinformation for Canadians
accused of cannabis ‘crimes’.
Kanishka Goonewardena is an associate professor of Geography and Planning at U of T with a focus on Critical theory and Marxist philosophy, Architecture and urban planning, Colonialism, imperialism, nationalism, and South Asia.