Saturday, March 15 / 1:00 pm / ByTowne Cinema

Program: Buses Don’t Stop Here Anymore, Grand Tour

Feature presentation \

At the start of the 20th century, European tourists craved the sensorial delights of the Grand Tour of Asia. Those who voyaged to the distant continent found themselves on a Quixotic journey, exploring different cultures, foods, and language barriers on their picturesque escapades. Over a century later, renowned Portuguese director Miguel Gomes (Tabu, Arabian Nights) pays homage to the stories and countless travelogues which emerged from the tourist phenomenon with his poetic drama, Grand Tour. The film follows Edward, a frightened civil servant with a dotish expression who arrives in Rangoon, after escaping from his wedlock responsibilities. Fleeing from his fiancée Molly on the day of their marriage, a wild cross-continental chase ensues between the couple. As they traverse the vast East-Asian landscapes of China, Japan, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, and Vietnam, Gomes finds humour and humanity in his characters’ doomed marriage. Grand Tour effectively mixes screw-ball comedy with the avant-garde. Before Gomes wrote the script for his film, he decided to experience the Grand Tour of Asia first-hand with his crew. Cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom (Challengers, Uncle Boonmee) captures the lush scenery of contemporary Asia with colourful film stock, brilliantly registering the customs of the present day while cross-cutting between the monochromatic dramatization of the past. The fluidity of time, space, memory, reality, and fiction coalesce into a one-of-a-kind travelogue that patiently meditates upon the resurrective fabric of the cinematic medium. 

- David Cuevas

Short film \

Buses Don’t Stop Here Anymore

2024 / 7 minutes / Ontario
Director: Penny McCann
Language: English

Buses don't stop here anymore is a chronicle on Super 8 of the closure, abandonment, and demolition of Ottawa’s Greyhound bus station. Once an important site for coming and going, an emotive epicenter, the camera observes the building’s erasure, dismantled by machines that writhe in the dust of demolition. Optical printing translates the act of observation into a requiem for a building, once so present and vital, now a ghost of the past.