Join us on May 5th at 6 pm EST for a double bill of lo-fi Canadian Epics.
Broken Pencil and Online Canzine in association with The Laser Blast Film Society and Gold Ninja Video present a special online double bill of DUEL ON THE RIVER and OPEN DOOM CRESCENDO. Tune in at: https://www.twitch.tv/brokenpencilmag
6 PM – DUEL ON THE RIVER (2021)
A maniac in a boat terrorizes innocent kayakers on the Detroit River. It’s a duel… on a river… and it rules! Trading plymouths and tanker trucks for kayaks and motorboats, Isaac Rathé’s no-budget debut is a rip-roaring tribute to the Steven Spielberg cult classic. But dispense all pretensions of production values aside; this vehicle is fueled entirely on DIY ingenuity and an inspired comedic charisma that sneaks up on you across an increasingly outrageous, and infectiously endearing trajectory.
7:45 PM – OPEN DOOM CRESCENDO (2022)
Set in a desolate wasteland, two super-powered souls, KeiKei (Xinkun Dai) and Rev (Terry Chiu), fight for the absolution of their existential pain via the search for a prophesied and quite literal Embodiment of Angst. Forging an alliance with an enigmatic man who roams the wasteland within a giant mobile cardboard boombox, their search for answers collides them with a barrage of weird and wicked gangs, each one personifying a conflicting school philosophy. All the while, the most hideous being in the universe subsumes his desire for intimacy with a corrupting nihilism that threatens to swallow all the players on this peculiar plain of existence.
Propelled by Chiu’s densely ratatat dialogue, subtitled in both English and Simplified Chinese, the film viscerally crescendos from climax to climax in an episodic parade of striking compositions and madcap set pieces that are as infectiously hysterical as they are disarmingly profound.