The eyes of the literary world are on Canada as the guest of honour country at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2021, with a delegation of authors, artists and publishers travelling to Germany. Each year, the Frankfurt Book Fair names as its guest of honour a country whose literature and culture are showcased during the fair as well as throughout the preceding months. The Guest of Honour country participates during the entire year leading up to the book fair in various cultural events and projects in Frankfurt and Germany, including literary activities, art and culture exhibitions, and music, dance, theatre and film programs to celebrate the talent and diversity of Canadian creators.
The Goethe-Institut Toronto is accompanying CFBM 2021 with a number of initiatives in Frankfurt, Toronto and online.
Frankfurt-Toronto Street Art Exchange
In 2019, the Goethe-Institut Toronto and the partner cities of Toronto and Frankfurt brought Frankfurt street artist Justus Becker to Toronto to create a downtown mural in collaboration with Toronto street artist Alexander "Bacon" Lazich.
2019 Sister Cities Artist Exchange Program - Justus Becker
In 2020, Lazich headed to Frankfurt to create a mural with Becker at “Messe" subway station to mark Canada as guest of honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2021/21.
Frankfurt-Toronto Street Art Project: Goethe-Institut interview with Alex Lazich
Making of Mural, Stadt Frankfurt am Main
The artists’ work and exchange will be reflected at the Goethe-Institut booth at the fair.
Schöneberg: A Meditation by André Alexis
A literary exploration in four parts, Berlin 2021
Commissioned & presented by the Goethe-Institut Toronto
with the Berliner Künstlerprogramm of the DAAD
Join Giller Prize winning Canadian author André Alexis, part of the official CFBM delegation, for an audio-visual exploration of Berlin-Schöneberg, the neighbourhood he got to know during his DAAD artist residency in 2020/21. In a series of IGTV videos launched on the Goethe-Institut Toronto's
Instagram each Tuesday in October, Alexis invites the audience into a literary mediation on arrivals and departures, real and imagined/interior and exterior spaces, Schöneberg and Alexis’ home in Toronto’s Parkdale, and the traces artists leave behind and take with them when they change places.
Writing the Land: A Celebration of Canada’s Writers, Poets and Storytellers
German-Canadian documentarian Stephanie Weimar produced the four-part TV series Writing the Land for ARTE and the CBC in 2020. From October 2019 to October 2020, German Film @ Canada checked in with director Weimar as she developed and realized the series and let us in on her treatment, funding, the beauty and challenges of Canada's vast geography and diverse literatures and their intersections.
Introducing Stephanie Weimar & WRITING THE LAND at German Film @ Canada - Goethe-Institut Toronto
The Making of: "Writing the Land" premiere - German Film @ Canada - Goethe-Institut Toronto
In a follow-up conversation, we spoke with Weimar and CanLit authors Catherine Hernandez (Scarborough; Crosshairs) and Uzma Jalaluddin (Hana Khan Carries On) about being part of Writing the Land as well as both authors’ forthcoming film adaptations, Scarborough’s TIFF 2021 world premiere and Hana Khan’s Amazon Prime adaptation by Mindy Kaling
#Booktofilm People: Frankfurt book fair Edition
Jumping off our popular #BerlinalePeople series of portraits of media industry movers and shakers, we are shining a light on three book and media industry leaders who shape the Frankfurt Book Fair's extensive global Arts+ and cross-over intiatives. Posted on the Goethe-Institut Toronto's German Film @ Canada blog throughout October 2021.
The Jemand Society: Interventions from Futures
Developed & presented by the Goethe-Institut North America with Rosy DX, Dusseldorf
A new hybrid project exploring artistic utopias and dystopias then and now. The Machine Age (1889) by Nobel Peace Price winning pacifist author Bertha von Suttner serves as a launchpad for the creation of global art interventions —or Zukunftsvorlesungen— by three invited artists: Jeremy Bailey (Toronto), Lucie Freynhagen (Dresden), Sam Lavigne (New York). How do we reconcile our fragmented selves in the digital age? Can art and literature revive emotions in our digitised and atomised bodies?
The Jemand Society, based on von Suttner’s anonymized pen name, stands for the awakening of the self in the digital sphere, for a new sensual age of hybrid living.
We are collaborating with the
Goethe-Institut Finland on an international online panel discussion on
Diversity in the children’s book market, including Gayna Theophilus, Acquiring Director at Toronto’s Annick Press with a special focus on expanding the list of creators from underrepresented communities and to develop titles that amplify BIPOC voices.
Oct 2021-Jan 2022
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