iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Shelly Kraicer

this is a truly bizarre review, written with clear ideological motive but totally unwilling to spell it out

Reposted by Shelly Kraicer

Today, on the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, people across Canada are gathering in remembrance and renewed determination to ensure ours is a country where every child matters.

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Shelly Kraicer @shellyk.bsky.social · 16h

Kent Monkman’s fantastic, monumental beaver sculpture The Colony is now installed in Toronto’s Biidaasige Park. The beaver hotel is based on an Italian engraver’s fantasy of a beaver lodge. There’s also a Venus beaver and other fun things. I think this is the best thing Monkman has made yet.

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Shelly Kraicer @shellyk.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Reading Tadeusz Borowski’s HERE IN OUR AUSCHWITZ. The most moving and provocative book I’ve read on the Shoah. Borowski was a prisoner in Birkenau. His wry, bitter, savagely ironic, sometimes extraordinarily funny stories about life in the camps is astonishing. 1/

cover of “Here in Our Auschwitz” by Tadeusz Borowski.

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Rachel Gilmore @rachelgilmore.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

NDP Leader Avi Lewis says Carney’s government is “flooding the zone.” “We are in a crisis moment. We’re under economic attack from the United States and we need a crisis response,” Lewis said. 1/2

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Nick Admussen @nadmussen.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Very strongly recognizing the narratives and feelings in this. Why do our best students get punished for speaking truth to power while those who loathe and abuse women get the benefit of the doubt? www.thecut.com/article/what...

thecut.com

What It Feels Like at Cornell Right Now

As a professor at the Ivy League school, Kate Manne has known many, many victims. There’s a palpable feeling on campus, she writes, that this is big.

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Tabatha Southey🇨🇦 @tabathasouthey.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

"They include — contrary to the premier’s anti-Trump rhetoric — a form enabling U.S. firms to participate." Doug Ford isn’t even promising to buy local vandalism.

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Alex Bozikovic @alexbozikovic.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Years of expensive construction, which will muck up car traffic, to make everything worse

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Shelly Kraicer @shellyk.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I remember this piece. It was satisfying to read, and I hoped you were going to change the amateur Chinese commentariat, but sadly no. It’s even worse with “Xi“ than it was with “Beijing”.

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Shelly Kraicer @shellyk.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

The Berlin Philharmonic @berliner-philharmoniker.de (and their glorious brass section). Today's live broadcast of the Mahler 2nd Symphony (cond. Daniel Harding, manhandling a beast of a piece towards the final movement's exultant payoff) showed again what's special about the Berlin Phil:

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Shelly Kraicer @shellyk.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Yuja Wang celebrated Glenn Gould’s birthday here in Toronto at his sculpture in front of the CBC building on Front Street. She looks deferential, attentive. There is Gould in her playing: his clarity, immaculate structural articulation, and a formal, unsentimental address. An entirely apt pairing.

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Shelly Kraicer @shellyk.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Interesting debate btwn Hébert & Coyne on Carney's unparliamentary attack on legislative delibaration and sovereignty. @acoyne.bsky.social shows us, again, that there's no crisis for which less regulation, lower taxes, and crippling union power is not the solution. www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmcu...

youtube.com

At Issue | Is Carney pushing project approvals through too quickly?

YouTube video by CBC News: The National

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Shelly Kraicer @shellyk.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

The women composers outnumber the men on this Tafelmusik concert: Sophie Gail, Louise Farrenc, plus Ludwig Van Beethoven. 2 to 1. Nice. More of this, please. Reminds me slightly of the kind of programming balance I aimed for at Vancouver and Rotterdam 😁

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Shelly Kraicer @shellyk.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Toronto’s best new public space: the astonishingly impressive Biidaasige Park, at the mouth of the Don River. With art, spectacle, monumental found objects, white egrets.

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Shelly Kraicer @shellyk.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Yuja Wang’s Prokofiev 3 with the Toronto Symphony was as expected: powerful playing, dazzling and fast, but maybe less introspective, less ironizing than it could have been. Lots of encores: Brubeck, Shostakovich, Mendelssohn, and 2 I didn’t know. Here she is with her encore iPad.

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Shelly Kraicer @shellyk.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I haven’t been to a Toronto Symphony Orchestra concert in over a decade, I think. Yuja Wang brought me out tonight. She’ll be doing one of her biggies, Prokofiev 3. Very loud, very fast, and pretty regressive for 1921. Looking forward to hearing her live for the first time.

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Mark Harris @markharris.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Try to live the kind of life that will make war criminals hate you.

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Shelly Kraicer @shellyk.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

My essay for the Austrian Film Museum's ongoing retrospective on early Chinese cinema is up on Letterboxd here. I've written brief introductions to each of the 12 films here: bit.ly/4xrLxzP letterboxd.com/aut_film_mus...

letterboxd.com

The Early Spring of Chinese Cinema 1922–1964

A story on Letterboxd.

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Shelly Kraicer @shellyk.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

So the Globe and Mail columnists and editorial writers are trying to smear NDP head Avi Lewis @avilewis.ca as somehow being a functional anti-semite for lamenting as a Jew, on Yom Kippur, Israel's destruction of Gaza (which Israel claims was done in the name of somehow protecting Jews worldwide). 1/

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Bruce Arthur @brucearthur.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

This column by @althiaraj.bsky.social is a good summation of the red flags around this bill. And I say that as someone who has been raising alarms about our particular moment in history for a while. www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...

thestar.com

Althia Raj: Whatever good is in Mark Carney’s Building Canada Strong Act is poisoned by the toxic rest

The Mark Carney government frames this law as part of its “Canada Strong” plan — and frankly, some parts are good — but toxic with good is still bad.

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Shelly Kraicer @shellyk.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

A beautiful essay, in typical Michael Sicinski style @msicism.bsky.social Michael helps us see these Wavelengths films from TIFF more deeply & think about them in different way. He opens doors, doesn’t lecture. And his framing, the politics of resistance, is essential. mubi.com/en/notebook/...

mubi.com

Toronto Dispatch: The War Against Memory

Short films and features from the festival’s Wavelengths section propose alternative ways of remembering and archiving.

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Charlie Angus @charlieangus104.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

The same CP journalist who pumped a story about Jewish people fleeing Canada (based on a doctor who shifted his medical practice) and promoted claims of virulent anti-semitism is turning on Avi Lewis the only Jewish national leader for speaking up about Gaza. Just another day of genocide denial.

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Rachel Gilmore @rachelgilmore.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

“But prime minister Mark Carney is using our fear and disorientation around the trade war to push through a series of unpopular measures that he did not run on, has no mandate for, and would never get away with under normal circumstances.” 2/2

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Shelly Kraicer @shellyk.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Excuse me Mr Carney: we didn’t vote for a less grim version of Stephen Harper. Why are we getting harsh neo-liberalism rammed down our throats under the pretext of “defending Canada”. This is *attacking* Canadians to defend capital.

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Shelly Kraicer @shellyk.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Film festivals’ pre-show “packages” ranked: 1. When I worked at Rotterdam’s IFFR, they showed two slides of sponsors. That’s it. That was the pre-show. Beautiful. Everyone, please emulate.

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Shelly Kraicer @shellyk.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Finished @ TIFF. My top 7 films (via critics' grid @ moir.ee/editions/tif... ) Life of Jorge Luis Borges, Mariano Llinás The Dreamed Adventure, Valeska Grisebach Forever...Forever, Johann Lurf Fireflies, Zheng Lu Xinyuan At Night, Beatrice Gibson A Girl Unknown, Zou Jing Splits in Two, Simon Liu

moir.ee

TIFF26

Grid of critic ratings for TIFF26 on MOIRÉE

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Shelly Kraicer @shellyk.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

DIARY OF A MAD OLD MAN. Wayne Wang. Rather fun, actually. Perhaps because I had low expectations, this gentle-paced film of archly presented "perverse" desires worked. Fan Bingbing wasn't quite able to integrate a character written in sections (or shards), but Wang and DP know how to photograph her.

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Shelly Kraicer @shellyk.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

The only glossy TIFF party i’ve been to.

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Shelly Kraicer @shellyk.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Dear Mayor Chow, Spending *more* money on policing in Toronto to address a shockingly corrupt institution is exactly the opposite of what is needed. 1) Defund (Toronto Police receive $1.5 billion of public funds every year) 2) dismantle 3) repurpose 4) reconstruct www.thestar.com/news/gta/oli...

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Shelly Kraicer @shellyk.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

It will not be surprising if we discover that the Toronto "shooters-for-hire" network and violence in tow truckers' and Metro garbage/recycling communities all can be traced back to Toronto Police, who appear deeply implicated. www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/artic...

theglobeandmail.com

Shooter-for-hire attacks linked to Toronto police constable’s licence plate searches, Project South documents allege

Constable Timothy Barnhardt was allegedly paid by criminal figures to search addresses that were later relayed to hired gunmen

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Reposted by Shelly Kraicer

Shawn Micallef @shawnmicallef.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I've received a few responses & seen others along the lines of the cops can't be beat, they will attack (they will & have) & Chow wise not to engage. But this is the job. It's a dereliction of leadership not to tackle this. Same with Ontario Liberal leadership candidates silent on it. Dereliction.

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Shelly Kraicer @shellyk.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

@hertzbarry.bsky.social on the contradiction of launching a U.S. industry-centred film festival during a U.S. trade war against Canada. " there was a cognitive dissonance in the geopolitical air that the festival could not help but uneasily brush against." Hertz is gentle here: ... 1/2

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Shelly Kraicer @shellyk.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

The NYT today is wondering why Israel might want 1000s of U.S.-made one-ton bombs (rather than accurate smaller munitions). I offer the Times reporters a solution to this perplexing mystery: to slaughter more Gazans. In the same piece, one of the most despicable paragraphs I've recently read:

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Shelly Kraicer @shellyk.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I read very recently (can someone point me to the relevant article?) that the now-abused term "anti-semitism" doesn't just spuriously include "anti-Zionism", but is starting to refer to that exclusively. The old meaning, hating Jews qua Jews, is being effaced, ... /1

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Shelly Kraicer @shellyk.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

DAU 2026 Ilya Khrzhanovsky (TIFF Market screening). A brilliant extension backwards in time as well as a distillation forwards of the immense and always fascinating DAU series of films, videos, installations … 1/3

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Shelly Kraicer @shellyk.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Going to watch the new DAU film by Ilya Khrzhanovsky (fortunately there’s a market screening). Unreasonably excited.

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Shelly Kraicer @shellyk.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

On his site Just Atad, @coreyatad.com take thoughts in my head and writes them down in nice sentences. He captures his exactly what’s so valuable about Andrea Picard and Jessie Cumming’s Wavelengths section at TIFF, “the festival’s beating heart”. www.justatad.xyz/p/tiff-26-da...

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Shelly Kraicer @shellyk.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

I don’t remember for voting for precipitous mass privatization of public assets when I voted for Carney as a gut well-placed to defend Canada. Post-Soviet Putinization guts Canadian resources and values; it doesn’t defend them.

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Shelly Kraicer @shellyk.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

I'm having fun participating in the MOIRÉE critics' ratings grid for TIFF this year. So far from me: one hot fire appreciation (Llinas), no bombs (yet, though I did experience a 0.5 out of 5, call me merciful). moir.ee/editions/tif...

moir.ee

TIFF26

Summary of ratings for TIFF26 on MOIRÉE

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Shelly Kraicer @shellyk.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Call me a philistine, but what a disappointment. Routine and predictable plotting (though undeniably well-crafted by Master Lee). What depressed me is the evident Netflix-ization (they’re the producers) of Lee’s craft 1/2 …

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Shelly Kraicer @shellyk.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

LIFE OF JORGE LUIS BORGES, dir Mariano Llinás. 324 minutes of fascinating, profound, and slightly crazy exploration of the life of the great Argentinian writer, filtered through Mariano‘s hilarious analytics. El Pampero Cine at its best. And the best film at TIFF for me.

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Shelly Kraicer @shellyk.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

With indie cinema queens Zheng Lu Xinyuan (Fire Flies @ TIFF Wavelengths; The Cloud in Her Room @ IFFR) and Deragh Campbell (every delightful recent Canadian indie I’ve seen) @deraghcampbell @zlxinyuan

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Shelly Kraicer @shellyk.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

GIRL UNKNOWN, Zou Jing. Impressive first film that starts quiet, carefully observed, and just grows and surprises and, at the end, kind of quietly soars. Zou Jing and her actress Li Gengxi do the hardest thing: how to show the turbulent emotional life of a character…

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Alex Bozikovic @alexbozikovic.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

This is also why North American cities need to be much faster and more aggressive with street redesigns. Tear off the Band-Aid. Work at the systems level and generate visible public realm results.

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Shelly Kraicer @shellyk.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

"What is needed is a package of proactive sanctions against senior Israeli officials in the Knesset, government, state authorities & security forces... The goal should be to force Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories & protect the rights of its Arab minority." thewire.in/world/to-sto...

"What is needed is a package of proactive sanctions against senior Israeli officials in the Knesset, government, state authorities and security forces, with a clear escalation ladder ... The goal should be to force Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories and protect the rights of its Arab minority.

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Yair Wallach @yairwallach.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

"Kahanism can no longer be viewed as the ideology of a small, defined and marginalized minority. It is now a spectrum encompassing large segments of the Israeli public and all the Jewish parties that represent them except the Democrats." Cogent analysis from Eitay Mack thewire.in/world/to-sto...

thewire.in

To Stop Israel's Ethnic Cleansing, We Need Proactive Sanctions – Not a Doomed Attempt to Freeze an Illusory Status Quo

Today, the question is no longer only whether a Palestinian state can be established, but whether Palestinians will physically remain in the territory at all, given the accelerating ethnic cleansing.

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Ryan Ho Kilpatrick 何松濤 @ryanhk.blue · 09/09/2026

Paying tribute to ex-CE Tung Chee-hwa, Henry Tang says Hong Kong was a "cultural desert" before the handover to China and Tung's appointment in 1997. That's right: HK was a cultural desert for 150+ years - even during the golden age of cantopop and HK cinema - until the politicians gave us culture!

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