This year was the 20th Images Festival, and it seemed like something of a coming out party for this until-recently underground scene. With great venues stretching across Toronto and all kinds of mixed media and diverse programming, it seemed like a sure fire hit. Maybe I missed out on some of the more cutting edge programming (see Jesika Joyí¢â‚¬â„¢s article in this section on her video project, which screened at the Images Festival this year), or maybe it was just bad luck. Either way, I was treated to some pretty mediocre programming.

I had circled two events that I thought would be no-brainers: í¢â‚¬Å“The World As We Know It,í¢â‚¬  a suitably high-minded title for a series of short films curated by Jan Schuirjen, which showcased Dutch filmmakers working in and outside of the Netherlands, and the much-talked about (and sold out) Momentum 9, billed as a conversation between two video artist, Afghan-American video artist Lida Abdul and Toronto-based video artist John Greyson.

While the stills on the Images Festival website of the films featured in í¢â‚¬Å“The World As We Knew Ití¢â‚¬  piqued my interest, reality set in once the lights went out. The four shorts, interspersed with what can only be described as í¢â‚¬Ëœmicro-filmsí¢â‚¬â„¢ by Tomas Schats, offered little in the way of coherence or depth. Roy Villevoyeí¢â‚¬â„¢s í¢â‚¬Å“Beginningsí¢â‚¬  was an almost 20-minute long piece that first followed two members of the Asmat people of Papua New Guinea as they walked naked around a jungle landscape. This was juxtaposed with similarly pedantic filming of two white Europeans as they walked around a park naked. While there was some suggestion that the piece was a commentary on conceptions of nudity, economy and í¢â‚¬Ëœthe savageí¢â‚¬â„¢, it all seemed secondary to watching naked people walk slowly around greenery.

Ití¢â‚¬â„¢s not even really worth delving into either Yael Bartanaí¢â‚¬â„¢s í¢â‚¬Å“You Could Be Luckyí¢â‚¬ , a rather snooty look at racetrack culture in Europe, or Jeroen Kooijmansí¢â‚¬â„¢ í¢â‚¬Å“New York is Eating Me and the Cactus Danceí¢â‚¬ , an unbearably long vanity project that seemed content with showing audiences little other than a) that the director was a successful Dutch video artist living in New York, and b) that moustaches are funny. Oh, and there was some 9/11 content thrown in for good measure.

The only standout was Guido Van der Werveí¢â‚¬â„¢s í¢â‚¬Å“Number Fourí¢â‚¬ , a beautifully shot film that has at its centre a simple, and stunningly beautiful image of a man playing piano on a floating dock in the middle of a lake.

While Jan Schuirjen seemed like a nice man and was clearly plugged in to Dutch video art, there was something about all of the videos that gave me the sense that his curation was simply mirroring the films, which seemed a little sloppy, a little off the cuff, and a little too meaningless.

No matter, I thought, as I headed to the sold-out Momentum 9 at the Prefix Gallery, excited at the prospect of learning more about the enigmatic (and, incidentally, stunningly beautiful) Lida Abdul. While billed as a conversation between two artists, the night played out as a short retrospective of both Abdulí¢â‚¬â„¢s and local Toronto video artist John Greysoní¢â‚¬â„¢s work. This seemed more out of necessity than by design, as Greyson admitted from the top that he and Abdul had only spoken for the first time that afternoon. This seemed like a great opportunity lost, as Greyson and Abdul clearly struggled at engaging in a dialogue, with Greyson asking pat questions like, í¢â‚¬Å“who are your inspirations?í¢â‚¬  and Abdul asking little, if anything, of Greyson. No real effort was made to draw more than the barest links between their respective oeuvres, which involved films about being a Muslim woman and the state of Afghanistan on one side and being a gay man on the other, and because Abdul and Greyson preferred to structure the event as a retrospective, the audience was frequently offered short snippets of longer works, which ultimately felt unsatisfying. It was nevertheless a treat to watch Abdulí¢â‚¬â„¢s work and particularly her more recent work filmed in Afghanistan, which paints a stark portrait of a country in which seemingly everything has been destroyed.

Clearly, the Images Festival is about pushing boundaries. But this year, judging from the events above and particularly in the case of Momentum 9, which focussed a lot of media attention on the festival, some of the programming just wasní¢â‚¬â„¢t as inspired as it seemed on paper.