Curatorial Statement by

e 2022 Images Festival: Slow Edition was the organization’s rst-ever hybrid festival. It took place over four months, making it the longest festival in the organization’s history. e invited curators and I meditated on tenderness as transgression and modelled the festival’s framework within a similar ethos. In asking curators to engage in these themes, the form of the festival emerged. Rarely were two events back-to-back. Participants and Images team members could rest between each event, making time for re ection, recuperation, or well-being without compromising attendance at the festival. is organizing principle was at the forefront of both operations and programming.

ese learnings have been woven into the 2023 festival schedule, which o ers varying levels of engagement—ranging from online screenings to large-scale cinema presentations, intimate lmic showcases and performances to late-night parties, informal and responsive readings to more traditional vernissage, as well as workshops, exhibitions, and extended Q&A sessions. At the same time, the 2023 Images Festival takes an altogether di erent thematic approach by presenting a nestling of two concepts: ghost and host. ough inlaid, these two words suggest entirely di erent ontological states: one of spiritual liminality—an ethereal in-between on the way to elsewhere—and the other consequential, rooted and embodied. is complexity echoes the stu of moving images: present yet past, visible yet elsewhere, physical yet representative. And, despite their veracity, moving images can evoke powerful emotional responses. e medium itself does away with temporal binaries; a sort of once was and here and now sit together in ripe tension. A theme such as (G)hosts invites you to consider the links between spectrality and moving image culture, both in form and in content.1

Jaclyn Quaresma

Entwined, ghost and host have equal footing in the programs presented at the 36th Images Festival. Together they not only ask “What remains?”, but also “where might we nd it?” One might wonder about a spirit’s complex tethers: Can one conjure or haunt without a location, whether a body, place, or through an object? What or who can act as a host? What might the role of a host be, if not to receive something or someone? Must a thing be received (as opposed to perceived) in order to exist? Do only phantoms haunt? Can one conjure more than a memory? To engage with (G)hosts is to suspend disbelief, at least for a short while. As Jacques Derrida said, “you believe without believing, but this believing without believing remains a believing.” If this is the case, it leads me to wonder: is faith a pillar of moving image culture?

ere are as many readings of the theme presented in this festival as there are people involved. We encourage you to spend time with the catalogue and explore how each individual program interprets the theme by reading the accompanying micro essays. Guided by the invited lmmakers, artists, and curators, as well as the writing of Avery F. Gordon, Dionne Brand, Eve Tuck, Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Katherine McKittrick, Legacy Russell, María del Pilar Blanco, and more, there are countless ways that (G)hosts may still be interpreted. To this, we say welcome. Images encourages you to share your thoughts and feelings about this theme, and we look forward to speaking with you at one of our many events this season.

1 In a casual interview with the French film magazine Cahiers du cinéma, Jacques Derrida speaks about the “links between spectrality and filmmaking.” Images Festival is expanding this original connection beyond cinema and filmmaking to encompass moving images as a whole.