Black Zero

21/05/2025

This is "Freedom to the Filmmaker: Madi Piller and Pix Film" by Black Zero on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

26/04/2025

The Latin palindrome, “in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni,” cuts into the heart of R. Bruce Elder's Crack, Brutal Grief - at night we go down into the gyre and are consumed by fire. In the video essay on the disc, I described this lyric as "a declaration of the collective march into misery that is conducted in the dark night of the Internet." This is a harrowing collage, a harrowing of the hell that is the Internet - such as it was, such as it would become. In that same video essay, I offer the argument that this is a mondo film - the most personal of mondo films, full of that familiar mixture of real terror and dramatic artifice (from proto-FailArmy clips to scenes from Class of Nuke 'Em High and Doppelganger). Do you love Faces of Death and Mondo Cane, but you're looking for something that will make your heart ache a little more, or that will challenge your eyes with its abstractions, like an optical illusion puzzle? Give this film a shot.

A common response to this disc among our customers has been that they cannot recommend the experience because of how hard it goes, how confrontational and traumatic and despairing it is, and yet, many have said that it has given them an unforgettable experience. Like John Hofsess's Palace of Pleasure, it is a psychotherapeutic experience - the exorcism that comes in a confrontation with grief. You may not be healed by it - but ye shall be changed.

Buy it today at www.blackzero.ca.

02/04/2025

Keith Lock’s Everything Everywhere Again Alive. Available now on Blu-Ray Disc from Black Zero!

15/02/2025

Our disc Richard Kerr: Field Trips includes the great Canadian film scholar Bart Testa's first video essay! Made in collaboration with Stephen Broomer, Invitation to the Voyage (29mins) is a study in Kerr's American films. Here's a sample!

06/02/2025

Our disc Richard Kerr: Field Trips includes, among its bonus features, this video essay by the great Canadian film scholar Bart Testa. Invitation to the Voyage (29 mins) is a comprehensive discussion of Kerr's American films. Watch an excerpt below, and get the full thing with Black Zero's release of Richard Kerr: Field Trips, available now!

06/02/2025

Extra episode out now! As well as being a filmmaker, teacher, publisher of great Canadian experimental films, producer of video essays and numerous other talents, Stephen Broomer is a prolific writer and editor. Here, we discuss two of his major book publications (one as author and one as co-editor) with a third due to be published soon. These books are both available from .

The first of these books is Imprints: The Films of Louise Bourque, () which he co-edited with Clint Enns ()and which collates a host of essays and supplementary material about Bourque’s films. Louise has appeared previously on this show and the book was an invaluable resource for this episode, as well as a great starting point for any viewers interested to learn about her work.
Buy this title here: https://www.blackzero.ca/products/imprints-the-films-of-louise-bourque

The other title authored by Broomer is Codes for North: Foundations of the Canadian Avant-Garde Film, which charts the development of Canada’s distinctive experimental film cultures including the work of artists like Jack Chambers, Michael Snow and Joyce Wieland.
Buy this title here: https://www.blackzero.ca/products/codes-for-north-foundations-of-the-canadian-avant-garde-film

27/01/2025

If you've not yet had a chance to hear it, check out this fantastic interview with Black Zero's Richard Kerr! Thanks to Daniel Adams of How to Enjoy Experimental Film.

How to Enjoy Experimental film is your approachable user-guide to some of the most unusual and extraordinary moving image works ever created. Aiming at the newcomer to experimental films as much as those who love them already, presenter Dan Adams interviews artist filmmakers, film experts and progra...

23/01/2025

03/01/2025

Palace of Pleasure (John Hofsess, 1967). A long-neglected classic of Canadian experimental cinema, a triumph of erotic art, a film about which Gene Youngblood once wrote, “See it and you’ll see a window on the future..." Available now in our online shop!

19/12/2024

Our disc of Home for Christmas includes Notes from Home: Getting Personal in Rick Hancox's Home for Christmas, a new video essay by Stephen Broomer about the film and the legacy of personal filmmaking. The full video essay is also available to patrons of Art & Trash!

12/11/2024

Black Zero's Stephen Broomer presents a program of Canadian experimental film groups with the Winnipeg Film Group! If you're in Winnipeg, you can buy our discs at WFG.

The Winnipeg Film Group invited Black Zero founder Stephen Broomer to its annual Gimme Some Truth documentary film festival. This introduction, to the programme…

05/11/2024

Election Day - time to review America so far, with Richard Kerr as yer guide… manifest destiny, remote warfare, liberty n freedom for some, miniature American flags for others…

On blu-ray, available at www.blackzero.ca.