Date Night Ideas for the Week of Oct 16

Take your design-savvy sweetheart to see a new take on fashion week, a Toronto filmmaker’s vision of modernist Brasília, and a landmark exhibition from a designer-feminist-poet-painter at the AGO

By Sara Cunningham

Eye on Brasília
First-time Canadian director Bart Simpson follows three urbanites as they navigate Brazil’s capital city, Brasília, designed in the 1950s by architect Oscar Niemeyer and urbanist Lucio Costa as a modernist utopia. The documentary shows us what happens when the best-laid architectural plans — constructed on a previously uninhabited desert — encounter the bustling, messy reality of urban life. Can vibrant communities flourish alongside ‘rational’ city planning? You’ll have to see the film to find out.

Brasília: Life After Design, Canada/Brazil/United Kingdom, 2017, 88 min. Presented by the Planet in Focus Film Festival. Sponsored by KPMB Architects.

October 20, 7:20 PM, Innis Town Hall

Fashion Upstarts
Startup Fashion Week (SFW) is the buzzy new addition to the city’s style scene. Merging fashion with entrepreneurship and technology, SFW’s week-long calendar of events, culminating in a glitzy runway show, aims to promote new fashion labels, shine a light on wearable technologies, and provide a platform for future business upstarts to connect. A great entry-point to the fashion world for designers and clothes hounds on the up and up.

October 16 – 20, www.startupfashionweek.com

Woman for All Seasons
The AGO presents an exuberant collection of paintings, drawings, ballet costumes and set designs from 20^th century modernist-extraordinaire Florine Stettheimer (1871-1944) in an exhibition that set New York critics a tizzy when it first appeared at the Jewish Museum earlier this year. On display are the painter’s spellbindingly inventive, colourful, and sometimes personal compositions that have had an enduring influence on fellow artists and viewers. A not-to-be-missed opportunity to discover a collection of rarely viewed gems from a multifaceted talent.