from images

Exclusive screening + Canadian Premiere of Miranda July’s new feature film The Future — followed by a Q&A with Miranda July led by CBC Radio’s Patti Schmidt

The Images Festival is pleased to present an advance screening of internationally renowned artist Miranda July’s newest feature film The Future on Tuesday, August 2 at The Royal located at 608 College Street in Toronto. The film premiered earlier this year at the Sundance and Berlin Film Festivals and will open in Toronto on Friday, August 5. This special evening will allow Toronto audiences a chance to get a sneak peek at July’s much anticipated second feature film, and to see Miranda July in person. CBC Radio’s Patti Schmidt (of Inside the Music and Brave New Waves fame) will lead an onstage interview and discussion with July following the screening. In addition to the screening and Q&A, Images will be offering tickets for a pre-screening VIP reception, where guests will enjoy reserved seating, refreshments, gift bags and hear remarks from the filmmaker. All proceeds from this fundraising event support the Images Festival’s year round activities.

The follow up to July’s widely acclaimed feature filmmaking debut Me and You and Everyone We Know, The Future tells the story of a narcissistic thirty-something couple (played by July and Hamish Linklater) who, on deciding to adopt a stray cat, change their perspective on life, literally alter the course of time and test their faith in each other and themselves. The film is narrated by the cat, sadly awaiting adoption while the man and woman veer off into awkward and magical encounters with other humans. July combines her pointed and efficient dialogue and wry sense of humor to create an idiosyncratic universe that moves between the slow mundanity of everyday life and moments of magical realism—a talking moon, the cat narrator and a living T-shirt.

BIOGRAPHY : Miranda July is a filmmaker, artist, and writer. Her videos, performances and web-based projects have been presented at sites such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and in two Whitney Biennials. July wrote, directed and starred in her first feature-length film, Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005), which won a special jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival and four prizes at the Cannes Film Festival, including the Caméra d’Or. Her fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, Harper’s, and The New Yorker; her collection of stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You (Scribner, 2007), won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and has been published in twenty countries. July created the participatory website, learningtoloveyoumore, with artist Harrell Fletcher and a companion book was published in 2007 (Prestel); the work is now in the collection of The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Eleven Heavy Things, an interactive sculpture garden she designed for the 2009 Venice Biennale, was on view in Union Square in New York in the summer of 2010. Raised in Berkeley, California, July currently lives in Los Angeles. Her new movie, The Future, premiered this year at the Sundance and Berlin Film Festivals.

The Future
(2011, Germany/USA, 91 minutes, 35mm) Film Rating TBA
With: Hamish Linklater, Miranda July, David Warshofsky, Isabella Acres and Joe Putterlik
Written and Directed by Miranda July

Canadian premiere with Miranda July in person: Tuesday August 2, 7 PM
The Royal, 608 College Street (between Clinton and Grace)