Crack, Brutal Grief screening with director

AD HOC #60: Crack, Brutal Grief with R. Bruce Elder, in person! Screening and Blu-ray launch

Innis College, Innis Town Hall

June 16, 2024, 7PM

Free admission

Crack, Brutal Grief came in response to the tragic suicide of the filmmaker’s friend, an event that led him to a formative encounter with the grotesque imagery of the early Internet. In response to this inhumanity, the artist poses an alchemical possibility, to confront and redeem raw scenes of death nd suffering, in the process achieving catharsis.

Filmmaker R. Bruce Elder is one of Canada’s most celebrated experimental filmmakers and critics. His films have assumed the form of the epic, after Pound. They reflect an exhaustive tour of history, philosophy and vision, quality that led Jonas Mekas to call him ‘ the most important North American avant-garde filmmaker to emerge during the 1980s.’ In Crack, Brutal Grief, Elder brings that critical acumen to bear on the age of the Internet.

Program:

Crack, Brutal Grief (130 minutes, 16mm-on-digital, DCP, colour, sound)

TRT: 130 minutes

AD HOC aims to rethink what an experience of cinema can be. We seek to reposition historical landmarks and buried treasures within the on-going tradition of experimental and other non-commercial modes of filmmaking, drawing on work from Toronto, throughout Canada, and internationally. Within these parameters, we aspire to diversity in programming, as well as to multimedia and interdisciplinary screening events that bring together varied communities.

AD HOC = Stephen Broomer, Madi Piller, Jim Shedden, Tess Takahashi, Bart Testa.

AD HOC is made possible thanks to the sponsorship of Innis College and the Cinema Studies Institute at the University of Toronto. AD HOC would like to thank James Cahill, Denise Ing, Eyan Logan, Sean Rogers, Charlie Keil, and the staff of Innis College and the Cinema Studies Institute.