Fascinating films, family fun, and fabulous festivals
By Heather Kelly
For the family
Open Streets TO, the recreational program that opens our streets to people, returns August 19 from 10:00 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Bloor and Yonge streets. These active living events are a great way to enjoy walking, cycling, rollerblading, and dancing in the streets of our city!
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle has delighted generations of readers since 1969, selling more than 43 million copies worldwide. Now the timeless classic will be on stage at the Miles Nadal JCC Saturdays and Sundays throughout the summer, as Joseph Patrick Presents: The Very Hungry Caterpillar Show.
The Bata Shoe Museum continues its Summer Family Fun programs where children ages 3 to 12 can complete a shoe-themed craft, play I spy in the galleries, and try on some funky shoes.
New camp sessions start in August, too. 918 Bathurst hosts Theatre Direct camps at the end of July, and Alliance Française offers music, creative arts, photography, and theatre camp. Children can make music at the Royal Conservatory School at instrumental exploration camps, band camps, and free Smart Start classes on Saturdays.
Stay cool indoors
Dora award nominee Thom Allison directs Randolph Centre for the Arts’ third-year students in Stephen Sondheim’s masterpiece A Little Night Music, the Tony Award-winning musical inspired by the Ingmar Bergman film Smiles of a Summer Night. Set in 1900s Sweden, A Little Night Music whisks audiences away to a weekend in the country where infinite possibilities of new romances and second chances bring endless surprises. On stage at the Randolph theatre August 2 to 4 and 9 to 11.
Some of the most anticipated new documentaries of the summer will be on the big screen at Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema.
Discover the star-studded secrets of Manhattan’s most exclusive hotel with Always at The Carlyle. Go behind-the-scenes of the movie industry with Filmworker and Hitler’s Hollywood, or glimpse the historic process behind the Oslo Accords in The Oslo Diaries. Take a musical road trip across Elvis Presley’s America in Eugene Jarecki’s The King, and embark on a globe-spanning journey inside the lives of the international wealthy elite with Lauren Greenfield’s Generation Wealth. And for those of us who loved Mr. Rogers, screenings of Won’t You Be My Neighbour? start August 10.
Istituto Italiano di Cultura hosts the photo exhibition Melodramatic Realism, with photos from three masterpieces by Luchino Visconti. The first steps of Visconti and of Neorealism are documented in this exhibition, with photos by Osvaldo Civirani and Paul Ronald.
The Japan Foundation invites you into the universe of Noh Theatre through images of masks in Yokoyama Noh Theatre Photography. Designated as Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO in 2001, Noh Theatre has been an elaborate theatre form since the fourteenth century.
The travelling exhibition Manolo Blahnik: The Art of Shoes, a retrospective of one of the world’s most iconic shoemakers with more than 200 shoes and 80 original sketches from Blahnik’s personal archive, is a summer highlight at the Bata Shoe Museum. The fashion theme continues at the ROM with Iris van Herpen: Transforming Fashion, where metal umbrella ribs, magnets, and 3-D printing are some of the astonishing materials the Dutch fashion designer uses to create striking haute couture.
The Gardiner Museum is continuing Community Arts Space free programs. Each project considers how the city’s unique and varied local histories of art and social activism can be re-mapped for the future. Reclaiming Artifacts, co-presented with Art Starts from August 2 to 16, invites visitors to explore the “discovery” of artifacts found during the construction of a condo in the year 2050. Then the Gardiner Museum hosts a public opening for Maldewin Weskijinu / Blood Soaked Soil, an exhibition by artist Louis Esmé, on August 24.
Ashkenaz Festival opens on the Bloor St. Culture Corridor this year with a Yiddish Glory, a concert at Koerner Hall on August 28 featuring an all-star ensemble of virtuosi from the worlds of classical, jazz, and Roma and Jewish folk music. The songs were written by Holocaust victims and survivors in the Soviet Union during the Second World War, collected by a team of Jewish Soviet ethnomusicologists during the war, confiscated, then restored by University of Toronto Professor Anna Shternshis, who will introduce the concert.