re:assemblage collective

― DIFFUSION 2: Like Grieving an Egg, 70' ―

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Indoor Screening
Friday 09 August 2024 · 6:00pm screening
Bachir / Yerex Screening Room · 452-401 Richmond Street W., Tkaronto

Entrance by donation at the door

Wheelchair accessible venue

“There was a profound sadness that felt so familiar, like grieving an egg that was cracked abruptly open, lost.” -T.W.Y

The four films in this program posit personal reflections of grief, taking us from inner visions to outer worlds of our ultimately ephemeral existences.

eggshells · Teo Wey Yinn What Humans See as Blood, Jaguars See as Chicha ·
Luciana Decker Orozco How to Run a Trotline · Carl Elsaesser Flash, Track · Yuqian Li

How to Run a Trotline

Directed by Carl Elsaesser
USA · 2024 · 18'00

What falls to men, what falls from men.

"Despite the didactic promise of its title, Carl Elsaesser’s new film will not teach you how to complete this obscure action. The phrase itself, at once ridiculous and noble, is pleasure enough, and its tone fits perfectly on a work that walks a thin, dandyish path down the border of farce and elegy. Another pleasure: it isn’t about anything, though it’s of quite a lot. Of fathers (who might teach one how to run a trotline, or sit on a porch, or disappear); of other films (particularly a pair by adopted fathers Michael Snow and William E. Jones); of at least two kinds of cruising; of the winter in Maine and the streets in New York and the many kinds of light to be found in and around both (ranging from snowy diffusion to snare-hit clarity). But one needn’t know these films or Maine or New York, not any more than one need know what a trotline is, to be hooked by the ongoing oddness of Elsaesser’s rhythms, which move gently, languidly toward new raptures of illumination." - Phil Coldiron

Carl Elsaesser (1988, USA) lives and works between midcoast and interior Maine and Brooklyn, NY. He has made several short films which have screened at festivals in New York, Berlin, Michigan, Amsterdam, Korea, Brazil among many other places. In his work, Elsaesser mixes genres and materials to produce work that critically investigates the overarching presence of the historical without losing sight of individual experiences of human connection. [↗]