Thur Nov 12 | 7 PM
Gas Station Arts Centre
445 River Ave, at Osborne
★ Noam Gonick Shorts
Curated by Solomon Nagler
Program duration: 61 mins
Followed by a Q&A with Solomon Nagler and Noam Gonick
We Sleep in the Light of the Golden Boy’s Ass; Accessing Noam Gonick’s Oeuvre
Internationally known as the enfant terrible of Winnipeg’s celebrated film scene, Noam Gonick’s remarkable body of work embraces a hyperasthetic of strikingly original transgressive camp with deep emotional undertones of care and social justice. His influence in our film community cannot be understated; as a mentor, a figurehead and beacon of light redirected from the light of queerness from a torch held high by the golden boy hovering nude in the prairie sky. This retrospective includes his first art video out of film school and a more recent tour-de-force ode to Winnipeg created in collaboration with Michael Walker. We also are proud to accompany this collection of projects with the restored version of Gonick’s groundbreaking underground feature film Hey, Happy! Screening Sat Nov 14 at 9 pm.
– Solomon Nagler
Tickets:
★ You can also order tickets by interac email to info@wndx.org and put your order details in the message
Films:
Exit/Portal
Noam Gonick | Manitoba
4:34 mins, digital file, 1993
This video art work (made upon returning from film studies in Vancouver and Toronto) looks at prairie fetish, ecstatic teleportation and shaving purification rituals on the riverbank in Winnipeg. Gonick was interested in domination and submission: how these notions were reflected in the queer kink community of the ‘90s, the era of globalization.
The Island of Hermaphrodites
Noam Gonick | Manitoba
3:31 mins, super8 / digital file, 2011
The social geography of Highway 59, as a Super-8 One Take. After the second shot, the ‘script’ for this film flew off the back of the truck. Gonick was starting to research the road trip movie, Assiniboine (2026), about a kidnapping that had happened five years before this shoot. He made a photo edition and was preparing to meet the real people involved in the crime, part of an all-encompassing development process.
Place for us
Noam Gonick | Manitoba
2:25 mins, super8 / digital file, 2012
Place for us documents the building of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights as a Super-8 One Take work, later re-edited. Carnivals, fairs and trans identities are recurrent themes for Gonick. He’d hoped that some day he would work with CMHR. Thirteen years after this film, he was commissioned by the museum to make the ballet video installation The Regulation of Desire (2023).
Tinker Town
Noam Gonick | Manitoba
:22 mins, 16mm / digital file, 1999
A mischievous ditty commissioned by MIX-NY Queer Experimental Film Festival. A nervous Winnipeg Film Group juror objected to the piece being named after an existing kid’s amusement park. Would our lassoed carney boys and exploding eye-vomit illicit objections from stakeholders? Video Pool’s administrator stormed the studio when the boyband started necking, making sure their parents had signed off on release forms. In the end, all that caution was unwarranted – Gonick was conjuring a pure confectionary delight.
Precious Blood
Noam Gonick | Manitoba
6:40 mins, digital file, 2007
Semaphore and prison architecture at the Winnipeg Remand Centre in this sculptural video installation. Friends and comrades of inmates gather on the street below, miming for their loved ones caught inside. Gonick used to walk past this prison every day and, after a while, he also started giving the silhouetted prisoners the ‘thumbs-up.’ Named after the prison’s architect Etienne Gabouray’s famed church and a nod to the jail’s demographics. Commissioned by David McIntosh for Nuit Blanche Toronto.
1919
Noam Gonick | Manitoba
8:25 mins, 16mm / digital file / 1997
Winnipeg’s cherished General Strike seen through the window of Wong’s steam bath & barber shop. Based on an actual site where we’d get our hair cut, often oblivious to the cruising antics in the basement sauna, Gonick imagined what role this ancient shop could have played on Bloody Saturday, June 21, 1919 – positing that the strike headquarters were inside Wong’s. Several years after this film came out, the building was burned to the ground by a tweaked-out flight attendant arsonist – wintertime towel-wearing ‘found-in’s’ plucked by fire dept ladders from the roof. The newspaper, in reporting the blaze, framed it as being the birthplace of the strike. Life imitates art.
The Regulation of Desire
Noam Gonick | Manitoba
10:23 mins, digital file, 2025
This ballet is set during Canada’s War on Queers — the “Purge” that instilled conformity and a push-pull within each of us while striving to express our sexuality. Based on true stories of gay ambassadors and lesbian soldiers who fought back against inequality and won. Gonick grew up around the ballet and was thrilled to create an expanded cinema piece for CMHR’s touring exhibition Love in a Dangerous Time.
Purple City
Noam Gonick, Michael Walker | Manitoba
19:44 mins, digital file, 2023
The legend of the Golden Boy as told by artists living across the street. From teenage acid rituals, to the origin stories of the name Two-Spirit, to hustlers cruising the legislative grounds, this film goes back to ancient Greece to posit that Winnipeggers are disciples of the ancient god Hermes. For 28 years, Gonick lived in Lincoln Towers, saying “We Sleep By the Light of the Golden Boy’s Ass.”