Uncut is a 1997 Canadian docudrama film written and directed by John Greyson.[1]

Uncut
Directed byJohn Greyson
Written byJohn Greyson
Produced byJohn Greyson
StarringMichael Achtman
Matthew Ferguson
Damon D'Oliveira
CinematographyKim Derko
Edited byDennis Day
Music byAndrew Zealley
Distributed byMillivres
Release date
  • November 1997 (1997-11)
Running time
92 mins
CountryCanada
LanguageEnglish

Set in Ottawa in 1979, the film stars Matthew Ferguson as Peter Cort, a researcher writing a book on male circumcision, and Michael Achtman as Peter Koosens, his assistant who has a sexual obsession with Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and regularly doctors photographs to depict himself and Trudeau in romantic entanglements.[2]

They later meet Peter Denham (Damon D'Oliveira), a video artist who sets his films to Jackson Five songs. After Denham inserts photographs of Koosens and Trudeau into one of his videos, the three are arrested for copyright violation by an opera-singing police officer, put on trial in a courtroom scene set to La Habanera, and sent to a prison boot camp.

The film is also intercut with documentary footage of artists such as John Oswald, A. A. Bronson, Linda Griffiths and Thomas Waugh discussing censorship, as well as Trudeau himself invoking martial law during the 1970 October Crisis.[2]

The film was inspired in part by the then emerging debate about outing closeted LGBT people, while the copyright themes were inspired by Greyson's battle with the estate of Kurt Weill over the use of parody versions of Weill songs in his early short film The Making of Monsters.[3]

Cast

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References

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  1. ^ "Uncut takes provocative look at gossip and libel: Director Greyson uses Pierre Trudeau, Michael Jackson and circumcision to address tabloid culture". Montreal Gazette, June 27, 1998.
  2. ^ a b "Greyson cuts through culture of sampling". Toronto Star, July 3, 1998.
  3. ^ "John Greyson, an Uncut above". The Globe and Mail, May 30, 1997.
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