DREAMSPEAKER - THE BOOK AND TV FILM

Ian Tracey in "Dreamspeaker".

Back in January of 1977, as part of my ongoing super-devouring-enriched self-education in cinema, I watched a superb telefilm directed by French-Canadian filmmaker Claude Jutra. The name of this eye-opener was titled Dreamspeaker, and it was shown as part of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's "For the Record" series. (I never missed an installment of the anthology program as it was something I always looked forward to.)

The film left me moved and stunned, partly because of the young Ian Tracey's knock-out performance -- he was "Peter", the kid. As years passed I sometimes wondered what happened to him. Of course in the pre-Internet days it was more difficult to monitor an actor's continuing credits.

For years now I've been meaning to read Cam Hubert's 1978 book Dreamspeaker. I found a copy in a box of discarded "free books". Wonderful. That was about a year ago; this past weekend I decided to start digging in. When I'm done I'm going to want to see the film again, no question.