Canada / 2017 / 67 minutes / NR
A world-renowned critic and committed political activist, Harry Alan Potamkin died from complications of starvation in 1933. In the criticism he left behind, he argued for film’s revolutionary potential.
Canadian director Stephen Broomer excavates Potamkin’s thoughts and experience in this work, reworking films that the critic discussed to build something like a found-footage biography. Manipulated scenes from Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1927) and other films give, in Broomer’s words, “an impression of erupting consciousness,” just as their threatened disintegration mirrors the tragic end of Potamkin’s short life.
