Straight from Canada’s Venice Biennale Pavilion this year, Mark Lewis: In a City features the North American premiere of three new filmed artworks by Mark Lewis.

Commissioned by the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery and co-produced by the National Film Board of Canada, these new works will be presented in the context of a selection of Lewis’s works about Toronto. The exhibition traces his experiments with stripped down cinema techniques to comment on the history of visual art, architecture and cinema. Lewis’s exquisitely beautiful films utilize minimal camera movements to reveal unexpected stories within familiar landscapes.

Curated by Barbara Fischer. Presented with special project support from the Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts and the Toronto Arts Council.

Lewis will speak about his work at a special public lecture at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery on September 8 at 6 pm.

From September 9 to October 26, 2009, at Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, Hart House, University of Toronto, 7 Hart House Circle

Monday through Friday, 11 am to 5 pm Thursday until 8 pm and Saturday and Sunday, 1 pm to 5 pm.

Mark Lewis joins NFB producer Gerry Flahive and executive producer Michael White at the JMB Gallery from 4 pm to 5 pm on Saturday, September 12 and Wednesday, September 16.

There will also be collateral events related to Mark Lewis and his work:

In conjunction with Mark Lewis: In a City, special screenings of Lewis’s Backstory (2009) and Cinema Museum (2008) take place during the Festival on Thursday, September 10 and Friday, September 11 at the Cineplex Odeon Varsity Cinemas, 55 Bloor Street West, 2nd floor.

The Art Gallery of Ontario will feature three recently acquired works by Lewis from September 9 to January 3, 2010 (paid admission).

During TIFF Cinematheque’s upcoming Fall season, Lewis will present five examples of masterful rear projection filmmaking along with a limited run of Backstory in October, 2009. Details will be available as of September 22 at tiff.net/cinematheque.