John Porter

Biography

John Porter has been a filmmaker, performer, photographer and writer in Toronto since 1968. He has made 300 films, mostly super 8, and performed 100 solo shows internationally. He studied Film and Photography at Ryerson University, has received several government arts grants, taught many filmmaking workshops, and spoken in many university film classes. He has been actively involved with several artist-run centres in Toronto since 1978, including serving many years on Boards of Directors, such as at The Funnel, Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre, Pleasure Dome, CineCycle, and A Space. He has co-organized dozens of Monthly Open Film Screenings, and he made and projected super 8 films with Toronto band Fifth Column throughout the 1980s. His continuing community activism includes photographing, writing and publishing reports and histories of local alternative film activity, including a book of his "documentary portrait" photos of film artists covering 40 years, published by the8fest in 2015. And for the last 15 years he has been daily updating his website super8porter.ca with upcoming film events by other artists. He advocates film projection, $100 film budgets using super 8 film and other analog formats, and resisting the dominance of the film industry and the Ontario Government's Film Review Board and Film Classification Act.