Moderated by writer and professor David Douglas, creator of the Pioneers in Independent Canadian Cinema Project
Join us for a special artist talk with the legendary Larry Kent, Canada’s first underground feature filmmaker, presented as part of our celebration of the ground-breaking director as this year’s recipient of Fantasia’s Canadian Trailblazer Award.
Cited by David Cronenberg as “a heroic figure,” Larry Kent made films “so ahead of their time” (to quote Atom Egoyan) that many eventually fell out of official circulation. Situated somewhere between the vivid indie dramas of John Cassavetes and the lurid melodramas of Doris Wishman, with atypical protagonists and narratives that compassionately (and confrontationally!) addressed a multitude of social issues, Kent’s films brought new vitality to Canadian cinema — and time has only added to their potency.
Kent’s career is a unique window into nearly every foundational aspect of Canadian independent cinema and his work across six decades of history has given him a dozen lifetimes of adventures. A famously wonderful raconteur, he is a man with a multitude of stories to tell that shed personal light on the people and events that shaped much of what we know today as Canadian independent film. You won’t want to miss this.
