The Cinematheque

New Restoration

“The Bitter Ash is not a happy or hopeful film, but it is, even with all its technical shortcomings, an honest and genuinely amazing one.”

Geoff Pevere, The Globe and Mail

In 1963, a UBC student named Larry Kent wrote and directed Vancouver’s first modern and completely independent Canadian feature. Produced for a mere $5,000, this scandalous drama set against the sexual revolution was also, arguably, the first modern Canadian feature period, predating Don Owen’s Nobody Waved Goodbye by a year. Kent’s brash film follows the sexual shenanigans of a young man torn between adult responsibility and the freedoms offered by the emerging counterculture. Set to a free jazz score and imbued with New Wave visual energy, The Bitter Ash announced itself as something new and vital in Canadian cinema. A notorious nude scene saw it banned in many locales, but also made it a must-see on Canadian campuses! ​“A big piece of Canadian and BC film history … The Bitter Ash is to Vancouver what La Dolce Vita is to Rome” (Brett Enemark).

“Kent owed nothing to the NFB’s tradition of documentary, nor was he a child of CBC drama … The Bitter Ash bears more resemblance to Robert Frank’s Beat classic Pull My Daisy or John Cassavetes’s Shadows. It is an authentic Canadian Beat-cinema moment.”

David Douglas, Fantasia 2023