Noam Gonick

Canadian filmmaker and artist

Noam Gonick
Born	(1973-03-20) March 20, 1973 (age 51) Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Alma mater	Ryerson University
Occupation(s)	Filmmaker, artist
Notable work	Hey, Happy!, Stryker, To Russia with Love
Parent	Cy Gonick

Noam Gonick, RCA (born March 20, 1973) is a Canadian filmmaker and artist.^[1] His films include Hey, Happy!, Stryker, Guy Maddin: Waiting for Twilight and To Russia with Love. His work deals with homosexuality, social exclusion, dystopia and utopia.

Background

Gonick was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1970. His father, Cy Gonick, is an economist and former member of the Manitoba Legislature.^[2] Gonick graduated from Ryerson University in Toronto. He edited Ride, Queer, Ride (1997) a collection of writings on and by filmmaker Bruce LaBruce. In 2007, he was made the youngest inductee to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.^[3]

He has been on the board at the Plug-In Institute of the Contemporary Arts.

Film and television

Gonick's first film was the 1997 short 1919, a historically revisionist depiction of the Winnipeg General Strike from the window of a gay Oriental bathhouse.^[1] His next film was the documentary Guy Maddin: Waiting for Twilight, narrated by Tom Waits and featuring Shelley Duvall.^[1] The film captures Maddin as he begins production on Twilight of the Ice Nymphs (1997).^[4] In 1999, Gonick created the experimental short Tinkertown.

In 2001 Gonick released his first feature film, Hey, Happy!.^[5] The film premiered at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival,^[6] and had its Canadian premiere at the Inside Out Film and Video Festival,^[7] where it won the award for Best Canadian Film.^[8] In its subsequent Canadian theatrical release, it was screened with Guy Maddin's short film The Heart of the World.^[9]

In the early 2000s, Gonick directed a number of episodes of Canadian documentary television series KinK,^[10] before releasing his second feature film Stryker in 2004.^[11]

In 2007, Gonick wrote and directed Retail, a comedy TV pilot, followed by Hirsch (2010), on John Hirsch, and What If? (2011), on Leslee Silverman, artistic director of Manitoba Theatre for Young People.

In 2012 he won the Winnipeg Film Group's Manitoba Film Hothouse Award.^[12]

Gonick directed the documentary To Russia with Love, featuring LGBT athletes in the 2014 Winter Olympics.^[13] The film was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Documentary at the 26th GLAAD Media Awards,^[14]

In 2016 he was one of the directors of the documentary series Taken for Aboriginal People's Television Network, about murdered and missing Indigenous women.

Installation

Gonick's installation art began in 2005 with a collaboration with Rebecca Belmore at the Venice Biennale.^[15]

Wildflowers of Manitoba (2007) is a performance piece and film installation created with Luis Jacob. A geodesic dome is furnished as a teenaged bedroom, and includes images of homoeroticism. It premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival, and has been exhibited worldwide.^[16]

Precious Blood (2007), commissioned by the Ontario College of Art and Design, was a video of interviews with girlfriends and friends of inmates on the façade a scale model of the Provincial Remand Centre in Winnipeg.^[17]

Commerce Court (2008) is a satire on corruption in the financial industry. Projected originally onto a six-story building in Commerce Court, the world headquarters of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, it features a performance by Roman Danylo as a banker having a nervous breakdown. The installation premiered at Toronto's Nuit Blanche.^[18]

No Safe Words (2009) is a multi-channel video installation uses sports broadcasts to examine athletic stadiums as sites of violence.^[19] The piece, broadcast originally during Toronto's 2008 Pride March, has also been interpreted as a commentary on the deradicalization of the gay pride movement.

Gonick and Bernie Miller collaborated on Bloody Saturday, a public monument in Winnipeg commemorating the 1919 general strike which was unveiled in 2019.^[20] Bapiiwin, a design by Gonick and Belmore for the planned LGBTQ2+ National Monument in Ottawa, was named as one of the five finalists in the design competition in November 2021,^[21] although it was not ultimately selected as the final winner.^[22]

References

^ ^a ^b ^c Ingrid Randoja, "Gonzo Gonick". Now, May 31, 2021.
^ "Citizen raising Cain". Winnipeg Free Press, February 20, 2005.
^ Morley Walker, "8 Manitobans elected to academy of artists". Winnipeg Free Press, June 8, 2007.
^ Judy Gerstel, "A Gimli state of mind Winnipeg enigma talks of light and darkness, Icelandic ironies and working with ostriches". Toronto Star, August 30, 1997.
^ "Getting Happy before the apocalypse". The Globe and Mail, May 24, 2001.
^ "Indie films hit spotlight ; Category-defying originals dominate awards at Sundance". Toronto Star, January 29, 2001.
^ "Out of the closet, into the mainstream". The Globe and Mail, May 18, 2001.
^ "My Left Breast wins more film awards". The Telegram, May 30, 2001.
^ "My own private Manitoba". National Post, June 1, 2001.
^ "Director Noam Gonick on call for Kink". Winnipeg Free Press, March 1, 2002.
^ "Sad issues and a sadder film". Toronto Star, 22 July 2005.
^ "Filmmaker Gonick nabs $15K prize from WFG". Winnipeg Free Press, March 30, 2012.
^ "Filmmaker went underground in Putin's Russia to profile LGBT athletes during Olympics". Winnipeg Free Press, June 22, 2015.
^ "GLAAD Media Awards Nominees Unveiled". Deadline Hollywood, January 21, 2015.
^ Lee-Ann Martin, "The Waters of Venice: Rebecca Belmore at the 51st Biennale". Canadian Art, Vol. 22, Iss. 2 (Summer 2005): pp. 48-53.
^ "Back to Nature's Future". Border Crossings, Vol. 26, Iss. 2 (May 2007): pp. 14-15.
^ Amy Karlinsky, "Subconscious City". Border Crossings, Vol. 27, Iss. 2 (May 2008): pp. 87-89.
^ Sarah Milroy, "A night crawlers' guide to Nuit Blanche". The Globe and Mail, October 4, 2008.
^ Craig Takeuchi, "Full Frontal exposes naked truths about masculinity and sexuality". The Georgia Straight, April 16, 2013.
^ Darren Bernhardt, "Streetcar sculpture brings 1919 Winnipeg General Strike to life". CBC News Manitoba, June 3, 2019.
^ Matt Hickman, "Canada’s LGBTQ2+ National Monument is moving ahead, and here are the shortlisted proposals". The Architect's Newspaper, November 16, 2021.
^ "Thunderhead design chosen for LGBTQ2+ National Monument in Ottawa". CBC News Ottawa, March 24, 2022.