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IMPORTANT NOTE: This event is happening at Innis Town Hall, 2 Sussex Avenue, Toronto.
VIVO Media Arts is thrilled to co-present Unstill Image at the Images Festival 2026.
A sovereign gaze always fixes us within a single frame, one shot, a capture—in the prison cell, on the border shoreline under watch, the street in revolt, or the city under bombardment. The works in Unstill Image both submit to and sabotage that capture. Here, vision is blurred, saturated, withdrawn, or blacked out altogether: a cinematic rehearsal of freedom; sight narrowed by exile; perception torn between what happens on the street and what is projected on the screen; an actress who withholds her image; and finally, the image’s disappearance into a black field that leaves only imagination. When power reduces each of us to a single frame, can we move out of it together by moving with moving images?
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Program details: imagesfestival.com/events/unstill-image
Ticket Link: goelevent.com/ImagesFestival/e/UnstillImage
Visit imagesfestival.com for a full description of this program and more information!
VIVO is located in the homelands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples in a warehouse space at 2625 Kaslo Street south of East Broadway at the end of E 10th. Transit line 9 stops at Kaslo Street on Broadway. From the bus stop, the path is paved, curbless, and on a slight decline. The closest skytrain station is Renfrew Station, which is three blocks south-east of VIVO and has an elevator. From there, the path is paved, curbless, and on a slight incline. There is parking available at VIVO, including wheelchair access parking. There is a bike rack at the entrance. The front entrance leads indoors to a set of 7 stairs to the lobby.
A wheelchair ramp is located at the west side of the main entrance. The ramp has two runs: the first run is 20 feet long, and the second run is 26 feet. The ramp is 60 inches wide. The slope is 1:12. The ramp itself is concrete and has handrails on both sides. There is an outward swinging door (34 inch width) at the top of the ramp leading to a vestibule. A second outward swinging door (33 inch width) opens into the exhibition space. Buzzers and intercoms are located at both doors to notify staff during regular office hours or events to unlock the doors. Once unlocked, visitors can use automatic operators to open the doors.
There are two all-gender washrooms. One has a stall and is not wheelchair accessible. The other is a single room with a urinal and is wheelchair accessible: the door is 33 inches wide and inward swinging, without automation. The toilet has 11 inch clearance on the left side and a handrail.
To reach the bathrooms from the studio, exit through the double doors and proceed straight through the lobby and down the hall . Turn left, and the two bathrooms will be on your right side. The closest one has a stall and is not wheelchair accessible. The far bathroom is accessible.
Arief Budiman is an artist and filmmaker based in Yogyakarta. His practice engages with fabricated realities, speculative history, public archives, and collective memory to uncover hidden narratives and erased histories. He uses archives and technology as tools to open up alternative ways of reading the past, blending fiction and non-fiction to create multi-layered narratives that function as forms of alternative history.
Çiçek Kahraman is an award-winning film editor and video artist whose credits include nearly thirty films, some of which have premiered and been awarded at festivals such as Berlinale and Venice. With an MA in Film and Television from Boston University, Kahraman continues her artistic practice between Berlin and Istanbul.
Elisabeth Subrin is a filmmaker and artist whose award-winning films and installations have screened at Cannes, Viennale, the New York Film Festival, IDFA, and the Whitney Biennial, among others. Known for her use of reenactment since her landmark film Shulie (1997), she directed Maria Schneider, 1983 (César for Best Documentary Short, 2023) and the feature A Woman, A Part. A Guggenheim, Fulbright, and Sundance Fellow, she is a professor of film and media artat Temple University.
Sofia Dona is a visual artist based in Athens and Munich. Her installations and video works challenge familiar spatial and social structures, focusing on interruptions, sudden breaks in historical narratives or everyday life that expose hidden systems of power and control. Her work has been shown internationally at venues such as Gropius Haus (Bauhaus Foundation), Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Instituto Municipal de Arte y Cultura (Tijuana), nGbK (Berlin), Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (Turin), and EMST (Athens).
Zeynep Dadak is a Berlin-based filmmaker and interdisciplinary artist. Her work merges fiction and non-fiction to examine questions of identity, memory, and politics of emotion. She holds a PhD in Film from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, and her films were screened at Berlinale, Rotterdam, and AFI among other major festivals.
