Clearcut comes to the Cinematheque: UPDATE ON MERCH

UPDATE:

Severin films will be present and selling merch at the Friday screening of Clearcut. The folk horror box, All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror, which packs 19 feature films (including Clearcut) and countless extras, will be available for $150. It starts on Severin's website at $249 US, which is already a discounted price, so $150 is a pretty amazing deal (see my interview with Severin's Kier-la Janisse about it, linked below; I believe she will be handling the merch table herself...).

If you already have the Severin box, or are on a budget, standalone blu-rays of Clearcut will be $20 (again, packed with extras). That will also be the price of Kier-la's authoritative documentary on folk horror, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched, also on the box, but a must-see. Barring some impossibly lucky thrift store encounter, you will not find physical media of these films for less. Ample links below, and again, the merch table will be present on the Friday, November 3rd screening only. 

End update! As I had written in the initial post, I am so glad that Clearcut is getting its day. It couldn't be more timely. If you have somehow missed it, the film is a potent, confrontational, violently political survival horror film, shot on location in temporal and geographical proximity to the Oka crisis, about how it is not enough just to have the right liberal opinions about Indigenous issues; you also have to DO something. There's also, of course, a spiritual/ folk horror element to the film, which enriches it further and got the film included in Kier-la Janisse's superb documentary, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched (discussed here). The first-ever official North American digital release of the film was on the epochal Severin All the Haunts Be Ours box set. Picked by many as the standout film in the box, it is now subject to a standalone blu-ray edition with all the extras included. 

As Alienated in Vancouver followers know, I've been advocating for the release of this film for a very long time now, starting in about 2012, but I have run out of new ways to plug it; I am very grateful that Severin made a long-wished-for prayer of mine come true, and that I got to be involved in it (thanks, Kier-la!).  Here's a big blogpiece I did with tons of screengrabs from the film, about my involvement; there's also Adrian Mack interviewing me about the last theatrical screening in town, back in 2015, which I organized and hosted, and which article was essential to Kier-la's reaching out to me (she didn't realize at the time that I would have a commentary track with director Ryszard Bugajski, pictured below, on offer). Whatever more I can say about the film, I will be saying in front of the November 3rd screening, one of three at the Cinematheque in November (our second attempt to present the film, note, after the previously-scheduled one, back in 2019, got cancelled due to a certain pandemic).

Clearcut director Ryszard Bugajski

Though I sure am glad it happened, note that that 2015 screening was off a considerably weaker source  than what the Cinematheque will be presenting. There *IS* a surviving film element in Toronto -- one of two prints known to exist, the other being in Poland -- but believing they had the only surviving print, the TIFFpeople were unprepared to share it with us. I can understand that, but with no choice, at the Vancity Theatre in 2015, we played a German DVD prepared from the Polish print (the director's own 35mm copy, also impractical to ship). That German DVD was the only way to see the film at the time that wasn't just a rip off the shitty-looking pan-and-scan VHS. It looks okay, but is very dark, with lots of visual artifacts and the contrast set way too high. It looks WAYYYY the hell better as presented by Severin; we'll be screening, at the Cinematheque, their new restoration based on a 4K scan of the same print of the film (Bugajski's own). It looks beautiful. If you've only ever seen the film as a bootleg or on Youtube, which was basically your easiest option prior to Severin's involvement, trust me, the widescreen restoration is a vast improvement. This is a very good-looking film! 

Of course, people who really want to prepare for the screening, who want to see it in the context of Bugajski's whole career, which is discussed on one of the commentary tracks for the blu, might also find The Interrogation, his previous feature, quite interesting; that came out on a nice region-free blu through Second Run this past year (there's a not-bad version of that film on Youtube, note). It's an angry anticommunist film with a feminist aspect, very different from Clearcut, but very powerful. Neither film is for the fainthearted; both include scenes of torture. Neither one is gratuitous in that regard, however, or exploitive. Bugajski (who died in 2019) was very concerned as a filmmaker with our inhumanity to each other, which also comes up in the features he made after he repatriated to Poland, like The Closed Circuit, General Nil and Blindness (none of which are available in North America, alas).  

For the Cinematheque screenings on November 3rd, note that besides the Severin merchtable (see above), Shane Harvey, the composer who scored Clearcut and several of Bugajski's later films, will also be on hand to answer questions; I will be there too. Do not miss this film -- even if you can't be there on the 3rd, you have two more chances thereafter. It's essential, and screens far too infrequently.

RIP, Ryszard! (You would be very happy).