Ontario Jewish Archives (OJA) Executive Director Dara Solomon and FENTSTER Curator Evelyn Tauben will discuss the history of the Standard Theatre (at the north-east corner of Dundas and Spadina), the subject of their 2018 joint exhibition featuring multi-disciplinary Toronto artist Shellie Zhang. The theatre served as a cultural destination for both the Jewish and Chinese communities, opening as a Yiddish theatre in 1922 and five decades later presenting Chinese cinema as the Golden Harvest Theatre. Sharing materials pulled from the OJA collection as well as other private and public archives, the conversation will explore how the theatre connected Chinese and Jewish immigrants with their distinctive cultures and native languages. Discover the surprising backstory of this heritage building and how nearly 100 years after its opening, Zhang represented two significant cultural institutions through a much buzzed-about neon art installation.

VIEW FULL EVENT HERE:

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The event is free but advanced registration is required, please click here.

Presented together by the Ontario Jewish Archives, Blankenstein Family Heritage Centre, Heritage Toronto and FENTSTER

[IMAGE: Movie poster for Yizkor: Thou Shalt Remember starring Maurice Schwartz, Standard Theatre [ca. 1925]. Ontario Jewish Archives, Blankenstein Family Heritage Centre, accession 2012-10-4.]