Lane Name Proposal for: Funnel Lane

Proposing that the lane that runs east off Bright Street be named Funnel Lane. This lane is opposite the newly named lane: Joyce Wieland Lane that runs west off Bright Street.

A Brief History of The Funnel

published by John Porter (2006)

Kodak introduced super 8 film in 1965, then super 8 sound film in 1975. In 1975, many young artists at the Ontario College of Art (OCA) in Toronto were holding super 8 parties which led to the publicly-funded, annual Toronto Super 8 Film Festival (1976-1983).                 

Some of those OCA artists joined the radical and seminal, publicly-funded, artist-run centre The Kensington Arts Association (KAA), later named the Centre for Experimental Arts and Communication (CEAC) (1973-1978). In 1974 the KAA, at 4 Kensington Avenue, showed a 20-minute “standard” 8mm film by local artist Darryl Tonkin, and in 1975 it began showing 16mm, 8mm and super 8 films regularly. The CEAC, at 15 Duncan Street, helped to found the short-lived Canadian Super 8 Distribution Centre in 1976, which in turn published a Directory in 1977 with 118 super 8 films, some 8mm films, and some videos, by 50 Canadian artists.

The CEAC’s regular Super 8 Open Screenings and other film screenings led to their founding of The Funnel Experimental Film Theatre (1977-1989), in their basement on Duncan Street which they had previously used for their punk music club the Crash ‘n’ Burn. One co-founder of the Super 8 Festival, the Super 8 Distribution Centre and The Funnel was filmmaker Ross McLaren. He also taught filmmaking at OCA until 1990, inspiring many interesting super 8 filmmakers who became associated with The Funnel.

In 1978 the CEAC was “banned in Canada” so The Funnel moved independently to the front of the ground floor of 507 King Street East where its 30 members built a state-of-the-art 100-seat cinema with raked, fixed theatre seats, a projection booth and sound recording studio, darkroom, art gallery, library and office. Eventually with public funding, it provided 16mm, 8mm and super 8 film production, distribution and exhibition facilities, for personal film artists only, excluding the all-consuming crowd of conventional filmmakers.

The Funnel hosted 60 public events per year, with many legendary “avant-garde” filmmakers visiting from around the world with their work, including a 5-night performance by Jack Smith from New York City. Many of them said that it had the best-quality super 8 projection they had seen. Its two distribution catalogues in 1984 and 1987 listed 320 films and other media, almost half of them on super 8, by 80 artists. It inspired an unequaled amount of super 8 filmmaking in Toronto.

The Funnel’s unique philosophy was explained in this excerpt from its introduction to The Funnel Film Collection Catalogue:                                                

“For various reasons an artist may never make copies of his or her work. A film or tape may change from presentation to presentation as the artist re-edits the piece; the nature of the film stock or material may preclude its reproducibility; in the extreme a film may exist only as a sculptural entity to be viewed on rewinds. Each presentation of a work of this nature is a unique performance. Accommodation of the diverse existing and possible future formats is a policy of the Collection, and a reflection of an historical and contemporary practice of artists’ film.”

But The Funnel was long a victim of the Ontario Film Classification Act. Partly because of that, it suffered a political split in 1986, then the remaining members made an ill-timed move to the front of the second floor of 11 Soho Street in 1987. Public funding was reduced, forcing them to dismantle their newly-built theatre a year later, but the group held rare screenings at OCA and The Euclid Theatre until 1989. Its collapse left a vacuum in Toronto still felt today. All of its equipment, and some artists’ original films, disappeared, and many of Toronto’s finest small-format filmmakers, such as Jim Anderson, Sharon Cook, Fast Wurms, and Villem Teder, stopped making films.

End.

Below is a letter of support from David McIntosh, Former Executive Director of the Funnel:

January 24, 2026

TO: John Goodwin

FROM: David McIntosh, Professor Emeritus, OCADU

RE: Naming of laneway for The Funnel

Thank you John for the work you and your community have done to recognize Joyce Wieland's tremendous contribution to Canadian art and culture with the naming of Joyce Wieland laneway near her former home on Queen St E. I knew Joyce well, as she visited me regularly in my office as Director of The Funnel Experimental Film Centre at 507 King St E, where Joyce had her studio.

I'm writing now to support your effort to name another laneway in your community for The Funnel, a crucial local, national and international arts and culture centre at 507 King St E, that occupied that space from 1978 to 1989. I was the Director of The Funnel between 1982 and 1984.

A lone outlier from the centre of Toronto art activity on Queen St W in the 1970s and 1980s, The Funnel was an artist-run centre, part of the Canada Council funded national artist-run centre network that underpinned much of Canadian art production and exhibition from the 1970s through the 1990s. The Funnel was a unique member of this network in that its focus was film by artists, involving an integrated approach to production, distribution, exhibition and publications.

The Funnel collective members built a 99-seat cinema on the first floor of 507 King E, where twice weekly screenings of films and film performances took place. The range of work screened at The Funnel was immense, works not seen anywhere else in the city, including films by the most recognized names in the contemporary art world, including Andy Warhol, Marguerite Duras, Kenneth Anger, Chris Marker, Sally Potter, John Cassavetes, Laura Mulvey, Robert Frank, Peter Greenaway, the Kuchars, Alain Resnais, William Burroughs, and the infamous Jack Smith of Flaming Creatures fame, to name just a few. The Funnel also highlighted local and national film and video artists including Joyce Wieland, Michael Snow, Bruce Elder, Al Razutis, Paul Wong, Kay Armatage, Peter Dudar, Patricia Gruben. The Funnel also presented film screenings by artist-members and held monthly Open Screenings, where anyone who walked in the door could screen their work.

The Funnel also maintained a full professional production equipment base, cameras, sound recorders, editing equipment, a film processing lab, in 16mm and Super8; many local filmmakers made their first work at The Funnel, including John Greyson, Bruce LaBruce, Jane Siberry, Brenda Longfellow, among many others. (Fun fact, John Goodwin and I performed in Midi Onodera's Ten Cents a Dance, a film shot at The Funnel which traveled the world's film festivals in the mid-1980s.) 

The Funnel distributed films around the world, based on an extensive collection of artists' films built up over a period of years. The Funnel also published numerous catalogues of original film criticism by nationally and internationally acclaimed writers, and if that weren't enough, the centre operated a more traditional gallery space where local artists, from Rebecca Baird to GB Jones, staged exhibitions of their installations and works on paper.

The only comparable experimental/film art centres in the world were The London Filmmakers Coop and the New York Filmmakers Coop, both of which interacted with The Funnel regularly. The Funnel was a vital and effervescent art centre.

In addition to this crucial artistic role, The Funnel was engaged in groundbreaking social activism, being the first and most constant target of what was then the Ontario Film Censor Board, a thankfully disbanded Ontario Government organism that screened every frame of any and all films and videos to be exhibited publicly and decided what the people of Ontario could see, including cutting of entire scenes and the outright banning of many films. The Funnel screenings were at one point shut down by police, and charges of not complying with Censorship laws by showing films not approved by the Censors were laid. (Fun fact, the then head of the Censor Board Mary Brown was missing a finger on one hand, leading to speculation that it was lost in a frenzy of cutting films.) In collaboration with a wide range of supporters, an anti-censorship coalition formed, and the Ontario Censorship laws were challenged in the Ontario Supreme Court, which found the Ontario prior approval/censorship laws unconstitutional in 1984. This fight was well worth the freedoms it gave every film and video viewer, but it was a major burden for the Funnel's artist-members.

There are many stories to share about The Funnel, many documented in a range of books and historical papers, and I am happy to offer more detail as you might require. The Funnel was a unique local arts centre that put the Corktown neighbourhood on the global arts map. As memories of pre-2000 Toronto continue to be buried in the rubble of massive redevelopment, commemorating the existence and the legacy of The Funnel is a welcome act of asserting our collective creative past in the present.