Kalil Haddad, Filmmaker – Toronto
Kalil Haddad is an experimental filmmaker who has written, directed, and edited over a dozen short films, including The Beautiful Room is Empty (2020), The Taking of Jordan (2022), His Smell (2023), and Victim of Circumstance (2024). His work has screened at Festival du Nouveau Cinema, Indie Memphis, Kasseler Dokfest, London Short Film Festival, and Pleasure Dome. He Never Dies: The Films of Kalil Haddad, an on-going tour of collected works, launches this month at Spectacle Theatre in Brooklyn. His 2024 short film MUSCLE MONSTERS is screening as part of a new Toronto Underground program on July 3 at the Carbon Arc Cinema in Halifax.
- Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte
My favourite novel of the last few years. Painfully insightful, ultra-contemporary, and quietly tragic.
- The films of Lisa Brown
Outsider filmmaker and exploration auteur Lisa Brown is a Detroit-based writer and director whose work seems to be distributed exclusively by Tubi – the people’s streaming service. Low-budget and rough around the edges, Brown’s films address themes of gender, poverty, abuse,and addiction, all wrapped in the unreal camp of a soap-opera. Their earnest “amateur” affect only serve to heighten the tragedies that will inevitably unfold. Her 2023 film Sloppy Seconds is a modern-day Justine.
Home to some of the wildest, most eclectic programming in the city. For $5 a screening, you can be treated to the desperate worlds of such classics as The Hills Have Eyes, The End of Evangelion, Jumanji, Saturday Night Fever (where a fellow patron attempted to cruise a friend and me), or Clueless – all running simultaneously next door to each other.
- The music of Dominick Fernow
My favourite contemporary musician and a constant source of inspiration. I listen to something by him every day. My favourite material of his appears under the Vatican Shadow and Prurient aliases (his industrial-electronic and noise projects).
I always go with a Dr. Pepper or Sprite.