November 18-24, 2004

mixpicks

Northern Exposures

Citizenship Test (Canadian Div.)

With an impressively short turn-around time, the Philadelphia-based Small Change Film Screening Collective presents "U.S. Without Us: A Primer for Secession" tomorrow night at Vox Populi. Working from the assumption that the overwhelming majority of Philadelphians who didn't vote for Bush are morbidly depressed right now, Small Change offers an evening of helpful information for would-be Canadians: a dozen or so Canada-themed experimental video shorts (one of which, Sex, numbers Peaches among its collaborators) and a Q&A with American-in-exile (in Canada) Astria Suparak, filmmaker and curator, who last hosted a Small Change event in April. Attendees will also receive miniature American-Canadian dictionaries. Stick around afterwards for It's the End of the World as We Know It, a rapture-inducing, millennially themed dance party hosted by Miss Meow and DJ Julia Factorial of WPRB and Homos Outta the Hacienda infamy.

All of the above are designed to lure us towards our northern neighbor, where public transit is beyond reproach, iPod muggings are unheard of and the government lavishes funding upon experimental filmmakers.

Like City Paper when we offered a step-by-step post-election guide to obtaining Canadian citizenship, it appears that the Small Change collective is, at most, half-joking. Maybe not even half.

U.S. Without Us: A Primer for Secession, Fri., Nov. 19, 9 p.m., $6, all ages, Vox Populi Gallery, Gilbert Building, 1315 Cherry St., fourth floor, 215-568-5513.

—Joel Tannenbaum