Most Toronto cinephiles in the past four decades have probably seen a Reg Hartt program at least once in their lives. Hartt has shown uncensored cartoons, surrealist shorts and silent features in the backs of bars, and then from his own Cineforum, aka- his Bathurst Street living room. My first Reg Hartt screening was, appropriately enough, within the first four months of moving to the big city for school.
The Surrealist Hallucinatory Anarchist Shock Sinema Fest was a four-hour program that played downtown at a back room lounge in The Diamond Club (now The Phoenix). As per its namesake, it showed a lot of abstract, surrealist, and Dada shorts, finishing with the legendary Bunuel-Dali combo: the notorious short, Un Chien Andalou, followed by their feature film, L’Age d’Or. This night offered a crash course on Man Ray, Germaine Dulac, Maya Deren, Len Lye, Fernand Leger, and several others. I saved the little fanzine / program guide that I picked up that night… seen in all its xeroxed glory below.
Enjoy the gallery below, and remember, “Love sets its throne in the house of excrement”. (Click on any image to view it in lightbox mode, and use your arrow keys to navigate back and forth.)
Greg Woods
Greg Woods has been a film enthusiast since his teens, and began his writing "career" at the same time- prolific in capsule reviews of everything he had watched, first on index cards, then those hardcover dollar store black journals, then an old Mac IIsi. He founded The Eclectic Screening Room in 2001, as a portal to share his film love with the world, and find some like-minded enthusiasts along the way. In addition to having worked in the film industry for over two decades, he has been a co-programmer of films at Trash Palace, and a programmer/co-founder of the Toronto Film Noir Syndicate. He has also written for Broken Pencil, CU-Confidential, Micro-Film, and is currently working on his first novel. His secret desire is for someone to interview him for a podcast or a DVD extra.