Sunset Kino is Canada's only outdoor, avant-garde film festival. Founded by Séamus Kealy in Austria in 2017. Introduced by the programmers and commencing at sunset, audiences experience a curated program of films and videos by Canadian and international artists.
This year’s program and theme builds on our current exhibition, To Fall, Patiently by renowned artist Ali Cherri who explores the entangled histories of artifacts, labour, environmental transformation, and the enduring struggle for survival in the aftermath of catastrophe. The various artists and works in this summer’s program focuses on what rises from the ruins, and includes an array of experimental video and film that shows the persistence of life through facism, occupation, war and sickness.
The first two Thursday evenings will showcase Cherri’s award-winning films including the acclaimed short, The Watchman, which explores the mind and imagination of a solitary soldier on nightly watch on a remote outpost between the Greek Cypriot south and the Turkish Cypriot north. These two evenings will offer a rare opportunity to view Cherri’s substantial body of film and video, reflecting on the artist’s profound understanding of the relationship between humans and land, and his penetrating ability to represent history.
All films are screened outdoors in Gairloch Gardens. Please dress appropriately and bring seating and blankets. With inclement weather, screenings will be indoors in the Studio, adjacent to the Gallery.
Oakville Galleries operates with support from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Trillium Foundation, the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario and the Corporation of the Town of Oakville, along with our many individual, corporate, and foundation partners.
Films by Ali Cherri
Programmed by Séamus Kealy
Pipe Dreams, 2011 (7 mins)
Two moments in the history of contemporary Syria that echo the situation across all Arab countries: a memorable phone call between the Syrian cosmonaut Muhammed Faris who was part of the Russian mission to the Mir Space Station and the late president Hafez al-Assad, and the removal of the statue of Assad by the Syrian government to prevent its destruction by the demonstrators.
Un Cercle autour du Soleil, 2005 (15 mins)
This film is a reflection on growing up in Beirut during the civil war years, and how to adapt to the “post war” life; accepting the body that is in ruin, and learning to live in the city that is always already in ruin.
The Disquiet, 2013 (20 mins)
Earth-shattering events are relatively par for the course in Lebanon, with war, political upheaval and social revolts. Lebanon stands on several major fault lines, which are cracks in the earth’s crust. The film investigates the geological situation in Lebanon, trying to look for the traces of the imminent disaster.
The Digger, 2015 (24 mins)
For twenty years, Sultan Zeib Khan has kept watch over a ruined Neolithic necropolis in the Sharjah desert in the United Arab Emirates. This film’s movement between day and night along with the soundscape of the man’s singing and his radio here resist an otherwise deep solitude.
Somniculus, 2015 (15 mins)
Filmed inside a series of empty museum galleries across Paris, Ali Cherri's Somniculus articulates the tension between the lives of dead objects and the living world that surrounds them
The Watchman, 2023 (26 mins)
Sergeant Bulut dutifully maintains a solitary guard atop a remote watchtower. Night after night, Bulut scans the horizon, awaiting an enemy that never materializes—until the sudden appearance of late-night visitors disrupts his routine.
25.6.2026
LOCATION
Gairloch Gardens
1306 Lakeshore Road East
Oakville, ON L6J 1L6
START TIME
8:30 PM
Image: Ali Cherri, still from The Watchman, 2023. Courtesy of the artist, Fondazione In Between Art Film, and Galerie Imane Farès, Paris.
