Filmmaker Keith Lock's experimental documentary (not to be confused with the Oscar-winner Everything Everywhere All At Once) was something of a landmark in its native Canada, making it quite the niche item—experimental film and Canadiana. Add to that Lock being a pioneering Chinese-Canadian heritage filmmaker and one has niches within niches.
But the deluxe Blu-ray edition released by Black Zero, loaded with extras, makes the highly personal feature accessible—providing keys to its Lock, one might say.
The ostensible subject is one that was a la mode for the time period, scrutinizing a makeshift commune of Canadian youth at rural Buck Lake. Two disaffected young construction laborers on a back-to-nature impulse built the cabin and determined to learn animal husbandry. A set of Canadian college students (including Bolex-toting film student Lock) joined them for the adventure.
Following the seasons of a year, Lock's silent 16mm footage (enhanced off and on with an electronic-music soundtrack, plus synchronized audio from a cassette tape recorder) may strike some initially as little more than home movies. But, using a jerry-built optical printer, the filmmaker interposes sequences of the rustic homestead routine—farming, swimming, syrup-tapping—with material quite out of his own idiosyncratic vision, including typographical characters and frame lines, moments of solid color, the overlap of a circuit diagram of a crystal radio, and occasional 90-degree tilts of the scenery.
A major influence, Lock states in his feature commentary, was the 1971 experimental feature La Region Centrale, by Michael Snow, which depicted (in unconventional fashion) a series of Canadian landscapes bereft of human presence. There are people here at Buck Lake, of course. Viewers might be warned in advance of a sequence showing the slaughter of a lovingly raised hog (named Raymond), and later, scenes of suffering, downed horses - according to Lock, lensed incidentally in the course of documenting animal cruelty for a police investigation.
Eventually, the months come full circle, and that's it. Ancillary material does a good job explaining the somewhat cryptic images, and Lock is a lucid narrator when it comes to explaining how and why what we see ended up on screen (he states everyone at Buck Lake save for himself was involved in so-called "primal scream" therapy).
A featurette, "Return to Buck Lake," reunites Lock with original commune member Tom Brouillette, providing the backstory that (predictably), the settlement thinned out with the decline of Age of Aquarius hippiedom, and the farm residents at Buck Lake later retained dim, distorted memories of a "cult" in the neighborhood. Lock proceeds to host the first-ever screening of Everything, Everywhere, Again Alive at Buck Lake itself for the current community, hopefully setting the record straight.
Other extras include more Keith Lock short films and a video essay by Stephen Broomer. This feature may not be for mainstream tastes, but the ace presentation clarifies why it is well-remembered in the annals.
What public library shelves would this title be on?
Experimental/abstract shelves would be ideal, though Canadian-centric enclaves are a natural habitat.
What academic subjects would this film be suitable for?
Experimental cinema and film appreciation courses should have this on their syllabus.
What type of classroom would this documentary resource be suitable for?
College-level and above would be preferred audiences, and even then, the more avant-garde (and/or proudly Canadian) ones.