[Être]

Overview

[Être] was a thrift shop and eventually underground screening space in Montreal's Mile-End district. The space featured as its main attraction objects picked-up on garbage nights and accrued over many years by proprietor-curators Alek Gruszczynski et Ewa Zbroch. To be inside [Être] was like being hermetically sealed-off with a proliferation of objects, and objects containing objects, an accumulation of things and surfaces and scents that invariably activate all the senses. Shot in the basement and on the main floor of [Être] just before it closed its doors forever, this film gives a sense of what it was like to be inside a space that functioned like one of the many suitcases that covered an entire wall. Like [Être] itself, this film is a celebration of the madness of objects.