Seriously Moving Images

The little-known experimental film residue 2, credited to one “Angus Hanson,” is something of an enigma. “Angus Hanson” may have been a pseudonym used by film buff and cineaste Oscar C. Burritt (1908-1974), who worked in Vancouver film before moving to Toronto in 1947. He later worked for CBC Television in Toronto, and was a co-founder of the Toronto Film Society (TFS).

residue 2 is a collage film that combines seemingly random found footage (on mixed film stock) with film that has been hand-painted or scratched, in the style of Len Lye or Norman McLaren. No readily identifiable locations are shown. However, available evidence suggests that residue 2 was probably made during the 1940s, in Vancouver or Toronto. Some of the found footage used in the film resembles sequences in other Burritt films, including Three There: Galiano Island 1940 and [Pier D fire, Vancouver].

residue 2 is also somewhat similar — in content, style, and technique — to the experimental film “and-“ [ca. 1940-41], made in Vancouver by Dorothy Fowler and Margaret Roberts. (Oscar Burritt married Dorothy Fowler in January 1942.)

In 1948, the Toronto Film Society Newsletter published a letter from one “Angus Hanson” of Galiano Island, BC. It offered a sardonic review of Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible, Part 1 (1945), which had recently been screened by the TFS. The Galiano Island address and the humorous tone of the review suggest that the writer was likely Oscar Burritt.¹

Here’s a random selection of digital frame grabs from the film:

1. “Film Record: residue 2,” AMDB, Amateur Cinema; entry revised July 11, 2025. https://www.amateurcinema.org/index.php/film/residue-2 ↩︎