SLOW RUN (1968)

Slow Run is a raw, lyrical portrait of New York City as seen through the eyes of a young Canadian exile. The filmmaker, Larry Kardish, at 23 years old, had made his first and only film as a candid love letter to the city, a litany of fascinations and complaints. Kardish blends dreamlike street photography, intimate portraiture, and a rhapsodic monologue performed by the filmmaker's fictional surrogate, a young Canadian ex-pat (Saul Rubinek in his first film role). The narration accounts the lives and relationships of a group of young Bohemians, and unfolds in parallel to the imagery rather than in dialogue with it, creating a tension between voice and vision, presence and distance.

When Slow Run was released, Jonas Mekas asked, "is Larry Kardish a lyrical realist?" It is a film of such contraditions: romantic and disenchanted, spontaneous and composed. Slow Run captures a fleeting moment in time—New York in its grand beauty, as seen by an alien.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• A new digital restoration approved by filmmaker Larry Kardish

• From Sandy Hill to Ottawa, a new interview with Larry Kardish

• Blind Alleys: Slow Run and the Tropic of Manhattan, a video essay by Stephen Broomer
  

• Liner notes by poet and filmmaker David Spittle

• English subtitles