Join us for an inspiring evening of literary exploration in the heart of the mountains, featuring readings by acclaimed authors and award-winning faculty, Charles Foran and Ayelet Tsabari, from the Literary Arts' Literary Journalism residency. 

Charles Foran, author of twelve books, including Just Once, No More, brings his expertise as a novelist, biographer, and essayist, offering insight into his richly varied works. Ayelet Tsabari, celebrated for her memoir The Art of Leaving and the award-winning short story collection The Best Place on Earth, will share her powerful and evocative storytelling. Admission is free—bring friends and immerse yourself in the magic of literature. Books by the featured authors will be available for purchase at the event.

Join us for an insightful conversation with Adrian Stimson as part of the Decolonizing the Narrative Conversation Series. In this session titled Not for the Faint of Heart: The Continuum of Decolonizing the Western Art Practice, Stimson will explore his artistic journey and the constant challenge of decolonizing his work in an often politically hostile world.

Stimson often tells people that art is not for the faint of heart, as it takes courage to face the colonial beast—an incessant and relentless process. He reflects on how, as Indigenous artists, we navigate the hostilities of a politically charged world, care for ourselves, and use our art to counter dominant narratives. He challenges us to consider: Are we truly decolonizing, or are we merely pawns in an ever-shifting game controlled by colonial powers? Akin to The Matrix, do we choose the white pill, the red pill—or simply become a pill ourselves?

Facilitated by Janine Windolph, Director of Indigenous Arts at Banff Centre, the session includes a presentation by Stimson followed by a discussion and a Q&A. This conversation will be recorded and shared following the event, but the Q&A portion will remain unrecorded. Sessions may share experiences and ask difficult questions.

About the Decolonizing the Narrative Conversation Series

The Decolonizing the Narrative Conversation Series is a bi-monthly conversation session inviting leading Indigenous Art creators to discuss their practices and processes. The series engages an Indigenous lens across various art forms, including Literary Arts, Film and Media Arts, Digital Media, Visual Arts, and Performing Arts such as Theatre, Dance, and Music. These sessions offer a space to explore and deepen your understanding of how Indigenous artists use their disciplines as tools to decolonize artistic processes and creation.

Visit the Decolonizing the Narrative Conversation Series page to access recordings of previous talks and learn more about upcoming sessions.

Join us for a free virtual webinar to hear from our Program Directors themselves as we launch our slate of programs for Spring and Summer 2025. Hear their vision, ask questions, and find out how Banff Centre could be part of your or your colleague's creative future. 

Whether you're an artist, a leader, or someone passionate about fostering creativity and innovation, this event promises valuable insights and inspiration into your next professional development opportunity. 

Register now for the Zoom webinar to learn more about the following subject areas: 

• Indigenous Leadership
• Cultural Leadership
• Literary Arts
• Music 
• Indigenous Arts
• Leighton Artist Studios
• Visual Art Residencies
• Theatre, Opera & Dance
• Professional Training Programs
• Mountain Culture

Register for Webinar

The Visual Arts Lecture Series presents talks by leading Canadian and international artists, curators, and academics.

Join Howie Tsui, acclaimed multidisciplinary artist and faculty for the Visual Arts Thematic Residency - The System and Other Universes for an afternoon talk.

Howie Tsui (徐浩恩, b. 1978, Hong Kong) is based on unceded Coast Salish territories. His multi-disciplinary practice spans ink brush painting, sound sculpture, lenticular lightbox and installation. Tsui constructs tense, fictive environments that undermine revered art forms and narrative genres, often stemming from the Chinese literati tradition. He employs a stylized form of derisive and exaggerated imagery as a way to satirize and disarm broadening regimes and their programs of cultural hegemony. The most notable branch of his practice involves the use of algorithmic animation sequences to raise questions around order, chaos and the potential of social harmony through self-organized societies. Tsui synthesizes diverging socio-cultural anxieties around superstition, trauma, surveillance and otherness through a distinctly outsider lens to cast light onto liminal and diasporic experiences.

Recent solo exhibitions include: Hanart TZ (Hong Kong, 2024), Glenbow Museum (2023), The Power Plant (2020); with group exhibitions at the Macao International Art Biennale, Tai Kwun (Hong Kong), Art Gallery of New South Wales. Public collections include: National Gallery of Canada, Vancouver Art Gallery, McMichael Art Collection. Tsui was awarded the Joseph Stauffer Prize (2005), and long-listed for the Sobey Award (2018). He holds a BFA from the University of Waterloo.

To learn more about Howie Tsui visit howietsui.com.

The Visual Arts Lecture Series presents talks by leading Canadian and international artists, curators, and academics.

Join Shary Boyle, celebrated multidisciplinary artist and faculty for the Visual Arts Thematic Residency - The System and Other Universes for an afternoon talk.

Shary Boyle is the recipient of a 2021 Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the Ontario College of Art and Design University where she graduated from in 1994, developing a multidisciplinary practice centered on drawing, sculpture and performance. Boyle’s work considers the social history of ceramic figures, animist mythologies, and folk-art forms to create a symbolic, feminist and politically charged language uniquely her own. Boyle activates her practice through collaboration and mentorship, engaging other creative communities and disciplines with a characteristically inclusive spirit. 

Shary Boyle has received the Gershon Iskowitz Prize, 2009, the Hnatyshan Award, 2010, and represented Canada at the Venice Biennial in 2013. Her solo exhibition Outside the Palace of Me organized by Toronto’s Gardiner Museum travelled to The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (2022), the Vancouver Art Gallery (2023) and the Museum of Art and Design in NYC (2023/24).

To learn more about Shary Boyle visit sharyboyle.com.

The Visual Arts is supported by the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Outstanding Artist Program.

Reel Time features some of the best films from the Toronto International Film Festival. Organized by Banff Centre, Reel Time has brought alternative cinema to the Bow Valley for over fifteen years.

In the Summers
2024 ‧ Drama ‧ 1h 35m
Director: Alessandra Lacorazza

Siblings Violeta and Eva live in California with their mother, but every summer they travel to Las Cruces, New Mexico, to spend time with their loving but unpredictable father, Vicente (René “Residente” Pérez Joglar). Over the course of four formative summers that span adolescence to early adulthood, Violeta and Eva learn to appreciate their father as a person, his flaws and limitations inseparable from his passion and tenderness. Lovers come and go, the backyard goes to seed, but the idea of home remains knotty and elusive. This powerful and deeply personal directorial debut from Alessandra Lacorazza offers a nuanced study of young people questioning their place within their families, their communities, and their identities. Winner of the US Dramatic Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, In the Summers shares both an emotional capsule of growing up within a fragmented family and a love letter to the resilience needed to survive.

Banff Centre gratefully acknowledges our partnership with Film Circuit, presented by TIFF, and its sponsors and supporters. For more information about Film Circuit and to view a full list of their sponsors and supporters, please visit www.tiff.net/filmcircuit.

Tickets: $14 each
Buy all 4: $46 at the Door (Feb/March/April/May)
February 3: Small Things Like These
March 3: All We Imagine as Light
April 7: Universal Language
May 5: In the Summers

Reel Time features some of the best films from the Toronto International Film Festival. Organized by Banff Centre, Reel Time has brought alternative cinema to the Bow Valley for over fifteen years.

Universal Language
2024 ‧ Comedy/Drama ‧ 1h 29m
Director: Matthew Rankin

In a mysterious and surreal interzone somewhere between Tehran and Winnipeg, the lives of multiple characters interweave with each other in surprising and mysterious ways. Gradeschoolers Negin and Nazgol find a sum of money frozen in the winter ice and try to claim it. Meanwhile, Massoud leads a group of increasingly-befuddled tourists through the monuments and historic sites of Winnipeg. Matthew quits his meaningless job in a Québecois government office and sets out upon an enigmatic journey to visit his mother. Space, time and personal identities crossfade, interweave and echo into a surreal comedy of misdirection.

Banff Centre gratefully acknowledges our partnership with Film Circuit, presented by TIFF, and its sponsors and supporters. For more information about Film Circuit and to view a full list of their sponsors and supporters, please visit www.tiff.net/filmcircuit.

Tickets: $14 each
Buy all 4: $46 at the Door (Feb/March/April/May)
February 3: Small Things Like These
March 3: All We Imagine as Light
April 7: Universal Language
May 5: In the Summers

Reel Time features some of the best films from the Toronto International Film Festival. Organized by Banff Centre, Reel Time has brought alternative cinema to the Bow Valley for over fifteen years.

All We Imagine as Light
2024 ‧ Drama/Narrative ‧ 2h 3m
Director: Payal Kapadia

The light, the lives, and the textures of contemporary, working-class Mumbai are explored and celebrated by writer/director Payal Kapadia, who won the Grand Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for her revelatory fiction feature debut.

Centering on two roommates who also work together in a city hospital — head nurse Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and recent hire Anu (Divya Prabha) — plus their coworker, cook Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam), Kapadia’s film alights on moments of connection and heartache, hope and disappointment. Prabha, her husband from an arranged marriage living in faraway Germany, is courted by a doctor at her hospital; Anu carries on a romance with a Muslim man, which she must keep a secret from her strict Hindu family; Parvaty finds herself dealing with a sudden eviction from her apartment.

Kapadia captures the bustle of the metropolis and the open-air tranquility of a seaside village with equal radiance, articulated by her superb actresses and by the camera with a lyrical naturalism that occasionally drifts into dreamlike incandescence. All We Imagine as Light is a soulful study of the transformative power of friendship and sisterhood, in all its complexities and richness.
 

Banff Centre gratefully acknowledges our partnership with Film Circuit, presented by TIFF, and its sponsors and supporters. For more information about Film Circuit and to view a full list of their sponsors and supporters, please visit www.tiff.net/filmcircuit.

Tickets: $14 each
Buy all 4: $46 at the Door (Feb/March/April/May)
February 3: Small Things Like These
March 3: All We Imagine as Light
April 7: Universal Language
May 5: In the Summers

Reel Time features some of the best films from the Toronto International Film Festival. Organized by Banff Centre, Reel Time has brought alternative cinema to the Bow Valley for over fifteen years.

Small Things Like These
2024 ‧ Drama ‧ 1h 38m
Director: Tim Mielants

Oscar® winner Cillian Murphy delivers a stunning performance as a devoted father in this film based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Claire Keegan. While working as a coal merchant to support his family, he discovers disturbing secrets kept by the local convent — and uncovers truths of his own — forcing him to confront his past and the complicit silence of a small Irish town controlled by the Catholic Church.  These incidents are drawn from the real-life Magdalene Laundries, in which Catholic nuns around Ireland separated unmarried and pregnant women from their children, until the last one closed in 1996. 
 

Banff Centre gratefully acknowledges our partnership with Film Circuit, presented by TIFF, and its sponsors and supporters. For more information about Film Circuit and to view a full list of their sponsors and supporters, please visit www.tiff.net/filmcircuit.

Tickets: $14 each
Buy all 4: $46 at the Door (Feb/March/April/May)
February 3: Small Things Like These
March 3: All We Imagine as Light
April 7: Universal Language
May 5: In the Summers

Reel Time features some of the best films from the Toronto International Film Festival. Organized by Banff Centre, Reel Time has brought alternative cinema to the Bow Valley for over fifteen years.

Divine G (Colman Domingo), imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit, finds purpose by acting in a theatre group with other incarcerated men. When a wary outsider joins the group, the men decide to stage their first original comedy in this stirring true story of resilience, humanity, and the transformative power of art, starring an unforgettable ensemble cast of formerly incarcerated actors.

Banff Centre gratefully acknowledges our partnership with Film Circuit, presented by TIFF, and its sponsors and supporters. For more information about Film Circuit and to view a full list of their sponsors and supporters, please visit www.tiff.net/filmcircuit.

Tickets: $13 each
Buy all 3: $35 at the Door (Oct/Nov/Dec)
Crossing | Oct 7 
Wicked Little Letters | Nov 18 
Sing Sing | Dec 9