Inside an inner-city mall in Hamilton, you'll find this exhibition of experimental film

Cayley James · CBC Arts

· Posted: Jul 15, 2025 1:22 PM EDT | Last Updated: 7 hours ago

Over the past decade, buying malls person assumed a melancholy spot successful the corporate consciousness of North America. Once beacons of late-20th-century consumerism, they person been usurped by the convenience of online buying and the downfall of the anchor store. 

To enactment it simply, malls are passé. 

As their relevance fades, the nostalgia for them has go potent. Whether it's done documenting alleged "dead malls," celebrating them earlier they disappear, oregon unpacking their taste importance, their legacies are felt by anyone who has wiled distant an day model buying successful air-conditioned comfort.

One inner-city promenade holding connected is Hamilton's Jackson Square, which opened successful 1972 arsenic portion of the city's downtown revitalization program. It's an artifact of the halcyon days of 1970s optimism successful Ontario, and though it has mislaid its lustre, it remains the little city's municipality square. Connected to the Hamilton Farmer's Market, Hamilton Central Library and a fig of bureau towers, thousands of residents walk done the promenade daily. 

If you've been determination recently, you whitethorn person noticed a funny caller tenant. Tucked down the hallway from the Rexall and crossed from the Heroes N' Legends memorabilia store, a assemblage abstraction has sprouted.

In aboriginal June, Dandelion Film Collective launched their summertime exhibition, Midi Onodera: Landscaping, on until July 23rd, with a outer installation astatine Factory Media Centre moving successful tandem. Curated by corporate subordinate and Hamilton autochthonal Lesley Loksi Chan, it is simply a softly extremist experimentation that taps into the community-building imaginable of these bygone commercialized spaces. 

Landscaping is dedicated to the enactment of award-winning Toronto creator Midi Onodera. It is the 2nd instalment of the collective's Light Study series, which began past autumn with a spotlight connected movie creator Franci Duran. Inspired by the bequest of precocious Hamiltonian experimental filmmaker Josephine Massarella, the bid is dedicated to elements that were integral to Massarella's practice, similar quality (the Niagara Escarpment being a regular subject). Although landscapes are the anchor for this summer's exhibition, Loksi Chan was funny successful challenging what audiences whitethorn person travel to expect erstwhile they perceive that word. 

"When I started talking to [Onodera] astir landscapes, it was truly refreshing due to the fact that it benignant of challenged the emblematic presumption of what scenery is successful creation past and movie history," she explains. Onodera's films don't dwell connected the untamed wilderness of Canadiana. Rather, she focuses connected the municipality ecosystems and societal dynamics we inhabit, and the 5 films presented successful the accumulation supply a concise instauration to her implicit 40-year vocation that defies casual classification. 

Two Super 8 films connected show adjacent the beforehand doorway propulsion viewers successful with their studied regard connected the municipality landscape. 1984's Ville-quelle ville? and its travel up C'est à Qui, Cette Ville? from 2022 determination done the aforesaid Toronto locations 38 years isolated and supply ocular anchors for funny audiences drawn successful by the acquainted show of Becker's convenience store signs, streetcars and well-trod intersections. Onodera's camera captures a profoundly idiosyncratic terrain but leaves abstraction for the spectator to find themselves successful her imaginativeness of a city. 

The accumulation besides allows for the organizers to parse done their ain narration with the space. "The promenade is my scenery that I grew up in," says Loksi Chan. "So erstwhile we were reasoning astir venues oregon locations, due to the fact that I had been passing done Jackson Square each time connected my mode to work, and noticing each the bare spaces, there's astir a blank canvas benignant of prime to these bare storefronts."

The abstraction has been near raw. Monitors playing Onodera's films are stacked connected apical of woody pallets. An concern dolly with accumulation lit sits successful the centre of the abstraction and a pop-up cinema is tucked successful the backmost fractional of the country with a bid of ladders acting arsenic a partition. Despite the concern trappings of the space, there's an eye-catching show designed to gully model shoppers successful for a person look — similar immoderate bully shop. "We truly wanted to prosecute with the promenade audience," explains Onodera. "We were told this abstraction utilized to beryllium a crippled store wherever radical would travel and bent out. This was an inspiration to make a akin space."

"We're bringing successful radical who mightiness not travel into the mall, but we're besides bringing radical successful the promenade who mightiness not travel into this benignant of space," says Loksi Chan. Dandelion has go portion of the mall's scenery since it opened successful June, and these audiences person included young children returning to rewatch films with their parents, bureau workers connected lunch, assemblage students en way to the room and teenagers skipping people successful the last weeks of the schoolhouse year.

Recently, a radical of seniors stopped by the assemblage aft an lawsuit astatine the library. They watched A Canadian Ghost Story: The Quilt for Joyce Wieland (2025), and erstwhile it was done, they asked to person it projected again. Loksi Chan was much than blessed to oblige the enthusiastic patrons. "That is the programmer's ideal. Just adjacent being capable to play a movie again for an assemblage is precise refreshing." 

Onodera couldn't beryllium happier with the results. "By being here, creation and the depletion of it becomes an embedded portion of our mundane experiences," she says. "I don't deliberation creation has to beryllium a rarified commodity. If you privation to talk with radical done your art, you request to beryllium wherever the radical are. The Jackson Square patrons are wonderful. They're curious, brave and unfastened to experiencing thing unusual."    

This absorption connected assemblage is aligned with the overarching goals of the Dandelion Film Collective. Founded successful 2020 by section filmmaker and enforcement manager of Hamilton Artists Inc. Derek Jenkins, the radical has grown to see like-minded curators and filmmakers dedicated to lowering the barriers of entree for experimental movie and filmmaking materials. Having present hosted a fig of screenings and peculiar events, they are gathering capableness for artists moving with movie successful the region. "I deliberation folks successful wide are looking for carnal ways to prosecute the world, methodologies that are much tactile and possibly a spot slower," explains Jenkins.

"It's pugnacious to participate analogue accumulation and accumulation without a guide, and 1 happening I saw missing successful the Hamilton scenery was an introduction point. I deliberation if radical tin find a mode to attack this benignant of enactment that seems accessible, if idiosyncratic tin amusement them a mode successful and possibly constituent retired imaginable stumbling blocks, they're anxious to prime it up." 

With Landscaping, Dandelion is uncovering caller audiences done the curiosity of the model shopper, who whitethorn conscionable determine to measurement wrong and instrumentality a person look.

Midi Onodera: Landscaping is connected until July 23, Wed.-Sun., 11 a.m.-6 p.m. successful Jackson Square, Unit 55,  2 King St. W., Hamilton. A outer installation is connected presumption astatine Factory Media Centre.