AL PURDY WAS HERE – March 19: 1 pm

March 19th: 1 pm        Al Purdy Was Here
Director: Brian D. Johnson
CANADA, 2015
English     92 minutes
With: Margaret Atwood, Joseph Boyden, Leonard Cohen, Bruce Cockburn, Sarah Harmer, Katherine Leyton, Michael Ondaatje, Eurithe Purdy, Tanya Tagaq

An icon of English Canadian letters, Al Purdy was equal parts rock star, raconteur, and rabble-rouser: in other words, all poet. Coming to prominence in the 1960s alongside a crop of other extraordinary talents (including Leonard Cohen, Margaret Laurence,
Margaret Atwood, and Michael Ondaatje), Purdy scorned the tired tales of rural life that had dominated Canadian literature and set out to create a different language, one that came from the contemporary Canadian experience.

Purdy’s impact on Canadian culture is detailed in this documentary by Brian D. Johnson, the former film critic for Maclean’s. Al Purdy Was Here artfully combines archival footage, including some of Purdy’s priceless television appearances, where he played the eccentric contrarian with everyone from Adrienne Clarkson to William F. Buckley, Jr., with readings and reminiscences from Purdy’s friends and colleagues, as well as performances by Bruce Cockburn, Tanya Tagaq, and Sarah Harmer, who set Purdy’s words to music.

What emerges is a far more complex portrait of Purdy than was suggested by his
public persona as the boisterous lover of booze, brawls, and verse, immortalized in his best-known poem “At the Quinte Hotel.” While Johnson does not skimp on anecdotes about Al’s delightful debauches, the Purdy he presents is a diligent, hard-working writer, and one of the first in English Canada who was actually able to make a living off his work. Underlying the whole of Johnson’s affectionate elegy, and investing it with a sense of urgency, is the realization that the fiercely proud cultural nationalism that Purdy
embodied has not been seen in Canada for decades — and perhaps never will be again.


The Trailer: