The three inaugural releases from Black Zero, a new archival label dedicated to Canadian experimental cinema, are unified by their mystique and uncompromising, adventurous spirit. This new enterprise is particularly exciting because it’s supervised by Stephen Broomer, an author, director, film preservationist, and programmer who has spent many years championing the Canadian avant-garde, and he’s evidently approached this project with the utmost seriousness. Restored and presented on Blu-ray, accompanied by essays and commentaries that provide crucial context and insight, these films are here given the treatment they’ve always deserved.
The most immediately exciting work is (1967), a dual-screen film by John Hofsess. Inspired by Andy Warhol’s , a multimedia performance he helped bring to McMaster University in Ontario, Hofsess recognized the sort of sensorial ecstasies that could be brought to his own practice. In his essay “Towards a New Voluptuary,” which comes packaged with the release, Hofsess makes clear that he values the filmic medium for its potential therapeutic properties. What “cinematherapy” entails is not some sort of ambient reverie a viewer can reside inside, but something more complex and participatory: Hofsess wants his images to “penetrate the censorious mechanisms of the mind and explode,”
