Tales of Cin­e­ma No. 3 – The Paper Trail

Inspired by Miguel Gomes’ tac­tic of sto­ry col­lect­ing for Ara­bi­an Nights, we set out in search of off-the-beat­en-path true tales in the hope of glimps­ing the soul of cin­e­ma today. These are sto­ries of obses­sion, acci­dents, gam­bles and mortality…

A qui­et tragedy is cur­rent­ly unfold­ing in Canada’s biggest city – Toron­to. There’s an atmos­phere of increas­ing­ly steril­i­ty; a gen­tri­fied land­scape of con­dos and busi­ness tow­ers is dri­ving artists away in droves to neigh­bour­ing indus­tri­al towns such as Hamil­ton or Detroit where rent is dirt cheap. Yet if the air­less, alien­at­ing feel of liv­ing in Toron­to bor­ders on not just ​“uncool­ness” but rather some kind of para­noia, there at least remain some sur­face traces which remind us of the city’s glo­ri­ous past.

Reg Hartt is pure Toron­to old guard. He’s a for­mer stu­dent-run alter­na­tive cin­e­ma stud­ies instruc­tor who, for over 40 years, has made his mark on Toronto’s film scene. He does this not entire­ly through his uncon­ven­tion­al views on the medi­um, but more explic­it­ly through fliers placed around town, adver­tis­ing his per­son­al­ly organ­ised screen­ing insti­tu­tion, the Cineforum.

These fliers still man­age to dec­o­rate street­lamp poles and the urban bul­letin boards oth­er­wise known as the Pub­lic Mes­sage Cen­tres that stand across the city. While the aver­age board is over­whelmed with plugs for tutors or home phi­los­o­phy class­es, the longevi­ty and ubiq­ui­ty of Hartt’s fliers have cer­tain­ly made the biggest impres­sion – a drawn repli­ca even made the cov­er of a 2004 ​‘Pun­ish­er’ comic-book.

Most notably, they’ve been all put up by Hartt him­self and not a team of young interns or devot­ed fans. The fliers are often entire­ly in black-and-white, with­out a notice­able pic­ture or focus. Bold let­tered head­lines such as ​“LSD” (read the small­er print and you’ll see not for sale, just a class on its mean­ing in cin­e­ma) or ​“Jane Jacobs” (the name of a Toron­to-based urban activist and author of the sem­i­nal ​‘The Death and Life of Great Amer­i­can Cities’ with very like­ly lit­tle pres­ence to mil­len­ni­als) act as sell­ing points, though it’s dif­fi­cult to fig­ure out why so. Pos­si­bly, it’s this very lack of graph­ic design panache that has lent them an almost unin­ten­tion­al­ly ​“alter­na­tive” edge. Yet it helps that it’s all at the ser­vice of such a strange venue.

Open­ing in 1992, the Cine­fo­rum is a 40-seat screen­ing room in the front par­lour of Mr Hartt’s own town­house. A most-fre­quent­ly screened list sets out tastes like­ly to scare off non-cinephiles; sem­i­nal silent films (Metrop­o­lis, The Birth of a Nation) or selec­tions from the avant garde, and all topped off with an accom­pa­ny­ing lec­ture from Hartt. One thing you’ll nev­er find in any uni­ver­si­ty film class is Hartt’s most fre­quent­ly adver­tised and per­haps per­son­al screen­ing item; Kid Drac­u­la, his own ​“fan edit” of FW Murnau’s Nos­fer­atu which bears the dis­tinc­tion of being scored to both Radiohead’s ​‘OK Com­put­er’ and ​‘KID A’. The Ger­man actor Max Schreck could be his poster boy.

Yet even for Hartt’s bold con­fi­dence, such as hav­ing pub­licly com­pared his venue to both Andy Warhol’s Fac­to­ry and Hen­ri Lan­go­is’ Paris Cin­e­math­eque, in the mil­len­ni­al age of the Holy Facebook/​Twitter/​Instagram Trin­i­ty, his chief form of self-pro­mo­tion, his fliers, can’t help but seem pal­try, even if only speak­ing to a prospec­tive audi­ence of forty.

That said, clear­ly far more have noticed than film fans, in par­tic­u­lar city hall. In 2010, Hartt was tar­get­ed by Toronto’s Licens­ing and Stan­dards divi­sion over the omnipres­ence of his fliers around town, call­ing into ques­tion the aggres­sive mar­ket­ing of what they con­sid­ered an ​“ille­gal”, unli­censed busi­ness. When­ev­er Hartt faced this prob­lem in the past he turned to his liai­son with the city’s high­er-ups, the afore­men­tioned Jane Jacobs, after her death in 2006 he found an unlike­ly defend­er in the city’s noto­ri­ous for­mer may­or Rob Ford (a reminder, the one who made inter­na­tion­al head­lines for his crack smok­ing). In ear­ly 2011, Ford over­ruled the vio­la­tion against Hartt, though iron­i­cal­ly in the next year Ford made a point of decreas­ing the pres­ence of posters around town; issu­ing a strict reminder of by-laws stat­ing what can and can­not be ​“pro­mot­ed” (chiefly cul­tur­al instead of busi­ness-relat­ed ser­vices) and where items can be placed.

Hart and his fliers haven’t sim­ply opposed author­i­tar­i­an forces. Since 2010 they’ve fall­en vic­tim to a smear cam­paign from some­one who Hartt claims to be a rival adver­tis­er. Posters around the city have accused Hartt of sex­u­al deviance, as well as put out threats of vio­lence (even offer­ing cash rewards for doing so) against him. But despite the few polit­i­cal allies (chiefly city coun­cil­lors) he’s got­ten on his side, in the past few years, his only way to fight on is to sim­ply keep post­ing fly­ers and run­ning the Cineforum.