PROGRAM NOTES

Entering the days of a still frozen Montréal April, one feels the immense weight of an ever delayed spring waiting to burst forth. This period of great gestation — the end of an academic term before graduations and the half thaw of long-iced eaves and greens — was where we began with this month's program, "Potential Energy". We are looking at films in which the nucleus of the work is found in shadow, without the satisfaction of narrative release.

Therefore, to celebrate the release of the third issue of Narrow Margin, we are presenting a film traced almost entirely in the negative space between expressions of forbidden love, Rita Azevedo Gomes' Fragile as the world. And to cap off the semester, the release of this tension with the totally kinetic and liberatory experience that is Larry Cohen's The Ambulance. A film of camaraderie and grace, the story follows a man — played by the ridiculous and wonderful Eric Roberts — driven by love and justice to save a woman abducted by a mysterious ambulance snatching innocent bystanders off the streets of New York. Two short films starring the great Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck will precede the feature.

Program notes by Matthew Haas and Lore Schwartz