TORONTO — Hollywood Suite announced today cult movie fans will be treated to two newly restored Canadian film classics this month.
The 4K restoration of Tales from the Gimli Hospital (above right, 1988) from director Guy Maddin will have its broadcast premiere on Hollywood Suite’s 80s channel on Nov. 9 at 9 p.m. ET, and the 2K digital remaster of Zale Dalen’s cult hit Skip Tracer (above left, 1977) will premiere on the broadcaster’s 70s channel on Nov. 29 at 9 p.m. ET. Both movies are available to stream on Hollywood Suite On Demand.
“The Maddin restoration is part of a broader movement to make hard to find Canadian art-house films accessible to a new generation of movie lovers,” explains a press release.
“In Maddin’s surrealist, Manitoban-set feature debut Tales from the Gimli Hospital, a lonely fisherman stricken with smallpox (Kyle McCulloch) embarks on a fierce competition with a fellow patient (Michael Gottli) to vie for the affections of Gimli Hospital’s angelic young nurses,” reads a description in the release.
The Toronto International Film Festival picked the restoration of Tales from the Gimli Hospital to premiere at this year’s festival as part of Telefilm’s Canadian Cinema – Reignited initiative to restore and re-release Canadian films of historic and cultural importance, the release says.
The digital remaster of Skip Tracer was produced by Justin Decloux of The Great Canadian Cinema Library, using materials from Library and Archives Canada.
“Set in 1970s Vancouver, a debt collector (David Petersen) vies to win his company’s ‘Man of the Year Award’ at any cost, only to be faced with the consequences of relentless and brutal tactics,” a synopsis of the film says.
“Considered today to be an essential entry in the Canuxploitation oeuvre, Dalen’s feature film debut was the first Canadian film programmed at the New York Film Festival in 1979 and proved an exciting calling card for the young writer/director. It has been said to have influenced subsequent cult films including Alex Cox’s Repo Man (1984),” according to the release.
“Something that Canadian cinema excels at is a ready-made oddball, DIY, cult mode — both Guy Maddin’s Tales from the Gimli Hospital and Zale Dalen’s Skip Tracer are prime examples of this,” said Alicia Fletcher, producer of originals and curatorial advancement at Hollywood Suite, in the release.
“With their debut features, both directors proved their singular, surrealist penchants for genre and bucked the rules and expectations of commercial Canadian filmmaking. The restoration and accessibility of important works from Canada’s 70s and 80s cult canon has never been more important if we’re to understand and celebrate the past half century of Canadian filmmaking, for its ground-breaking moments.”
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Images provided by Hollywood Suite.
