Canary

(USA, 2008, 93 mins, HDCAM)

English-Canadian Premiere

PROD: Marya Murphy, Alejandro Adams, Amanda Davis
SCR/ED: Alejandro Adams
CAM: Alejandro Adams, Ali Alliè, Marya Murphy, Roger Cole, Ryan Thomas, Casey Wilms
Cast: Carla Pauli, Eli Kramer, Chloe Latch, Jennifer Latch

Canary Industries is a quality assurance institution that helps maintain the working condition of organs under lease throughout North America. If an organ client is not in compliance with the Conscientious Usage contract, an Organ Redistribution Expert may be authorized to remove the organ in order to preserve it for the future use of the community.

"[Canary is] one of the most original variations yet on the future-is-now science-fiction dystopia. In Alejandro Adams' bleakly comic vision, organ harvesting is an open industry and ad execs plot to position the Canary corporation as "the Coke of organ redistribution." If that calls to mind a genre piece along the lines of Parts: The Clonus Horror or Repo! The Genetic Opera, Adams's decentralized narrative elides anything as obvious as kidney-swiping or body-slicing. Instead, the movie concentrates on the world ignored in those films: seemingly random glimpses of workplace behavior, rendered with pitch-perfect realism; domestic scenes in unsubtitled Russian and German; vignettes of conversational one-upmanship--all of which take on an eerie cast whenever a white-jacketed Canary employee (Carla Pauli) materializes wordlessly in the crannies of the frame. Something subtle and irreplaceable in the post-Canary world has altered the meaning of being human--and the richly detailed sound design and insinuating compositions suggest that the something responsible is just outside or behind the frame. Micro in budget, macro in ambition, accomplishment, and scope, Adams' slyly withholding film prompts multiple viewings--and deserves them."--Jim Ridley, Village Voice

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