“It was on a Sunday afternoon that the portraitist came to me, not in search of any ransom, but out of pure admiration. I peered through the parlour window and squinted my eyes to clear my vision of the […]
José! The Migra, José, the Migra! Hurry up, just as you are, don’t even dry yourself off! What? The Migra! Come on, butthead, hurry, there’s no time for you to dry off! They’re on their way up to Doña Cira’s […]
‘In a way of living where fear and loathing is aided and abetted, the subtleties of wonder and contemplation are in the general weight of things, lost. Within a society that is just that, a conglomeration of a big group […]
Bombardier and refried beans The Québec government managed to pull $1 billion U.S. out of the ethers to bail out Bombardier, but for the 400,000 workers who “woman” our public education system, health and social services and the public service, […]
Love by Gaspar Noé “Can you show me how tender you can be?” Electra in Love Reading philosopher George Bataille’s Eroticism can practically be an erotic experience as he outlines the discontinuity humans have come to experience and our search […]
The 11th Edition of the Montreal International Black Film Festival [Sept. 29-Oct. 4, 2015] has chosen Martin Luther King III as recipient of the 2015 Humanitarian Award. This is a fitting tribute to the son of the man who led […]
As always, when editing an issue of Montréal Serai, there is a certain FEAR bordering on near paranoia that the theme that was chosen several months ago may not produce potent and relevant pieces. And as always, when we are […]
Tech and media workers for justice, and vice versa Director and filmmaker Laura Poitras has made another film worthy of award nomination by an elite ceremony honouring cinematic achievements. This past February, said latest documentary of Poitras’, Citizenfour, won an Oscar […]
They say everything happens for a reason. That’s what they say, but what they really mean is that you only know the reason why something happened when it’s too late. Take accidents, for example. If you turn your car to […]
There is a remarkable scene in Laura Poitras’ film Citizenfour, her prize-winning documentary on whistle-blower Edward Snowden. In the film, Poitras, the investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald, and the defense and intelligence correspondent of the British newspaper The Guardian, Ewen MacAskill, […]
If there is any truth to Bruce Cockburn’s line that “the trouble with normal is it only gets worse,” the great enabler of our deteriorating normality is the country’s sterile media consensus. Media then serve as a loudspeaker for a […]
The Amadou Diallo Diptych is a memorial divided between a section of darkness and violence, chaos, and a section devoted to Diallo’s suffering. A bleeding hole drips with his blood from the unwarranted barrage of police bullets that killed him in front […]
DISCONTENT AND ITS CIVILIZATIONS. Dispatches from Lahore, New York and London. Mohsin Hamid, Penguin, 2015. Discontent and Its Civilization, the title of this collection of essays by Mohsin Hamid, is a take-off on Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents, published in […]
Her name was Jane Houde. She was half French-Canadian and half-Irish. She was born in Quebec City and raised in a convent there. My parents found her through a newspaper ad. She came to live with us and to take […]
Parallels can be drawn between the ways in which medical screening (with mammography, for instance) can lead to over-reaction and over-treatment, and the ways in which socio-political screening for criminals or alleged “terrorists” (with social profiling and predictive policing) does […]
– “I haven’t come to the store since this started. I don’t feel safe here anymore.” – “I look around me and I don’t know who I can trust. I don’t know which side they’re on.” – “All this talk […]
Siddharth, 2013, Richie Mehta’s second feature film, opened the 5th South Asian Film Festival of Montreal on September 11, 2015. This festival is an annual feature of the Kabir Centre for Arts & Culture, a Montreal-based charitable organization whose mission […]
“At your age, you should consider screening,” the obstetrician said. She gave me an earnest look from behind her desk. Six months later you were placed on my chest: raven black hair, covered in blood and softly screaming. My reward […]
For five years between 2007 and 2012, Susan Dubrofsky and I ran Poetry Plus. These events were held six times a year at the Arts Café at the corner of Esplanade and Fairmount in trendy Mile End. Each event featured […]
The celebrated author, academic, and essayist, H. Nigel Thomas, says:“I write because reality mystifies me, and my temperament pushes me to explore it via my imagination. I know that my senses apprehend little more than the masks of reality. My […]
Medicine, Healthcare and the Raj. The Unacknowledged Legacy. By Daya Ram Varma. Three Essays Collective, 2015, Gurgaon, India. Dr. Daya Ram Varma (1929-2015) graduated with honours from the prestigious King George Medical University in Lucknow, India. He obtained his […]
When I wrote a poem inspired by the 1876 painting by Edgar Degas Dans le Café also known as L’Absinthe, I wasn’t aware that I was practicing a genre that originated in ancient Greece. Ekphrasis, from the Greek “ek” […]
“The penetration of society by the Internet and the penetration of the Internet by society is the best thing that has ever happened to global human civilization.” Julian Assange Aside from the across-the-board and simplistic generalization made by […]
Ideas are cheap. It is the physical actualization of a thought or a feeling that can be torturous, laborious and demanding but when ultimately achieved, and achieved successfully, that result, can be wondrous and mystical. As Mark Twain so […]
We regularly see, read or hear works of art only when they are completed or when they are considered finished by their creator. The following statements are from various visual artists who have previously been showcased on Montreal Serai […]
Elena Stoodley is a Montreal-based, multidisciplinary artist most known for her sultry, jazz and rhythm and blues infused vocals and sound art performances. I met Elena when she was hired as the sound technician for the Create Dangerously: […]
What will you be making when you make it? I was just in Mexico City. On my “must see” list were Diego Rivera’s murals – as many as I could see in three days’ time. In hindsight, I know that […]
“I view art as a system of action, intended to change the world rather than encode symbolic propositions about it.” Alfred Gell, Art and Agency In a 2014 lecture titled “Contemporary art: considered philosophically and poetologically” the eminent French philosopher […]
The musical group Mosaïque was attracted and inspired by the diversity of folk music of Bengal and that led them to undertake a trip for 4 weeks in Bengal in January 2015 in order to acquaint themselves with a different […]
They came from the Cordillera region in northern Philippines. Their families were grabbed of their ancestral lands. Without their own houses to live at and farmlands to till, they moved to another country to work in order to help their […]
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