Hello, everyone, your old friend Will here. On this special interview episode, I'm happy to welcome back to the show, Stephen Broomer, a Toronto-based filmmaker, film historian, educator, and preservationist.

He's the founder of Black Zero, an essential Blu-ray label that preserves and makes available important but underseeing work from the history of Canadian

experimental and avant-garde cinema. When I think of experimental film, with the exception of local boy

Michael Snow, I've always tended to think of American figures like Stan Brackage, Andy Warhol, Maya

Darren, Kenneth Anger, but Black Zero has done phenomenal work bringing Canadian

filmmakers to the canon. These Blu-rays are more than just the films. They're like film

school in a box, with hours of interviews, commentaries, and video essays produced with full

participation of the filmmakers, all providing illuminating context into these works.

Back in 2023, my co-host, Justin, interviewed Stephen about the first wave of Black Zero releases,

and I encourage everyone to check out that episode to learn more about Stephen's past work.

Today, we'll mostly be talking about Black Zero's three latest releases,

Michael Cardish's Slow Burn,

and collections of films by Richard Kerr and Christine Lucy Latimer,

all of them available now on Black Zero.ca.

With work spanning over 40 years,

these three filmmakers offer wildly different visions of what cinema can be,

and I'm happy to have Stephen

here to help explain.

I have a way he walks down the street, that's the way he shuffles his peak.

My hold is head up high when he goes walking by, he's my guy. I have a vivid memory of when I was in high school going downtown.

I grew up in Etobico, going downtown to the old Cinematheque Ontario at Jackman Hall to see a film called Andy Warhol's exploding plastic inevitable.

You know, a sort of experimental documentation of one of Warhol's happenings.

...