Tragic Diary of Zero the Fool, The (1970)

Winner of the Grand Prize at the 1970 Ann Arbor Film Festival, Canadian director Morley Markson’s strikingly original first feature, The Tragic Diary of Zero the Fool, is one of the "lost" gems from a period in which narrative and formal experiments in film were at their height. Three characters in search of love, self-expression, and the muse find themselves trapped inside the dramatic process of a movie of their own making. Penelope, her lover, and her Fool begin by playing roles based on characters of the Tarot, but as the film unfolds the actors perform their own characters, and the line between acting and reality becomes blurred. Ultimately, differentiation becomes impossible: all is real and all an act as everything in this tragic diary dissolves into insubstantiality.