A presumably Gen-Z security guard looks onto a crowd of mostly white women my age, slowly hordeing his way. Working specifically at Ontario Place, he quips to his coworker “I guess a lot of people like Janet Jackson”. First of all, this is slander, but Janet Jackson performing at Ontario Place is a double whammy of nostalgia. Ontario Place wasn’t just a concert venue for artists that Gen X-ers and millennials used to and still love. Ali Weinstein’s Your Tomorrow tomorrow is a time capsule that shows Ontario Place in all its facets. Ontario Place was a place where people came in and did their own art on all hours of the day. There’s a warmth Ali Weinstein’s observational approach, capturing Ontarians relationship to a land we didn’t know was scarce.
Sometimes she depicts people as shadows, others like people in a Georges Seurat painting, but contemporary and with more flesh. They may be lovers looking down at the lake, quiet because sometimes people don’t need words to stay connected. In that sense or any sense, Your Tomorrow shows Ontario Place as both timeless and relevant to modern citizens. Anyone could just walk on the beach and do their own nighttime impromptu photoshoots or just watch people pass. This relevance makes the documentary sadder because it’s another part of the province with a steel fence guarding it. The silhouettes we see are forever that, this is true even in a documentary that easily tugs on emotions.
- Rated: NR
- Genre: Documentary
- Release Date: 9/13/2024
- Directed by: Ali Weinstein
