Uncle Bardo: the death and rebirth of Bruce Frazer

Uncle Bardo tells the story of Bruce Frazer’s time spent in a coma. Frazer maintains none of what he experienced was a dream. Instead, he says that he woke up in the coma and just kept living.

In the winter of 2018, Bruce Frazer went out to run some errands.

While walking along Sandford Avenue South in Hamilton, Frazer suddenly couldn’t breathe. He started doing the what he calls the bob and weave before passing out on the sidewalk.

Frazer was taken by paramedics to Hamilton General Hospital where, shortly after being admitted, he was declared clinically dead.

It turned out, Frazer had double pneumonia so he was put into an induced coma.

What happened next has been reconstructed by Frazer’s nephew, Luke Mistruzzi, into a brilliantly crafted 14-minute film called Uncle Bardo, that mashes up interviews, animation and puppetry with archival photographs and film.

The induced coma lands Frazer in what he calls an alternative reality where recollections intersect with what is happening in the world outside.

Frazer is on a mission to find a safe place and that ultimately is home, because home is Hamilton and Hamilton is where you’ll find family.

After two weeks in hospital Frazer is sent home thanks to the work of the doctors and nurses at Hamilton General as well as the grounding voices and support of visitors.

Frazer was once married to Mistruzzi’s father’s sister. Mistruzzi remembers being really close to Frazer until his aunt and uncle divorced when he was 12-years-old.

Interactions were sparse after that until Frazer fell off the radar when Mistruzzi was 22-years-old. Then, Mistruzzi just got the odd update from a cousin or his aunt.

Fifteen years later, Mistruzzi ran into Frazer walking down a street in Hamilton only to discover they lived very close to one another.

Mistruzzi took the opportunity to ask his uncle about his coma experience and Frazer, being a legendary storyteller, was more than happy to share his wild adventure.

“Bruce tells stories with such passion and animation,” Mistruzzi told Small Change during a recent interview.

“Bruce was so passionate about family despite being estranged from our family at the same time,” he added.

That encounter spurred Mistruzzi to apply for a grant from the inaugural Hamilton City Enrichment Fund and that money set the project in motion.

“It was a lesson to be careful what you apply for, because seven years later I was still working on that same seed of an idea and the project had greatly changed from that initial pitch,” Mistruzzi shared.

The focus of Uncle Bardo eventually became Frazer’s memories from time spent in the coma. Frazer maintains none of what he experienced was a dream. Instead, he says that he woke up in the coma and just kept living life in his new reality.

Mistruzzi made the conscious artistic decision to inject subconscious thought within the telling of the story. Mistruzzi drew inspiration from events in Frazer’s life that were probably inspiring the new coma reality.

The working title of the short film was, ‘Never say Uncle,’ a nod to the fact that Fazer never gives up. That evolved into Uncle Bardo combining family (uncle) with the state of ‘bardo’.

In Tibetan culture, bardo represents the transitional state between death and rebirth. That ‘gap’ must be traversed in order to find peace which very much parallels Frazer’s journey from being declared clinically dead, then going through different levels of consciousness including times when the doctors and nurses imposed themselves into his coma world and then finding peace when he came out the other side – or, was reborn.

Because Frazer is a great story teller, ‘Bardo’ is also a reference to the bard – William Shakespeare.

There is absolutely no doubt that Uncle Bardo was filmed in The Hammer. From the opening panoramic shot of Hamilton’s industrial waterfront with its iconic orange flame with seagulls and cormorants soaring above the water and mountains of black coal used for making steel, to my favourite bridge of all time, the Skyway, until the closing shot of snow softly falling at the intersection of Wilson and John Streets – it’s Steeltown from beginning to end.

Mistruzzi describes the closing shot as, “One of those happy accidents where it just happened. There’s some subtle stuff in the background. You’ll notice the signs are very telling of the culture in Hamilton. The billboards in the background are largely about health and death. It was a good place to just end it and come back to reality with that little hint that it’s not really reality there.”

That corner is also home to the Gary Proctor Building built by Wilfred Proctor after his 22-year-old son, Gary, died in 1968 after being injured in a hockey game. Wilfred wanted to make sure that Gary would always be remembered. And, even though the Proctor family sold the building years ago, it’s still called the Gary Proctor building today. And, that, to me, is Hamilton – a little down at the heels, a little sad, but always remembering what it came from and what it values and that, pure and simple, is its people.

When the credits roll be sure to listen for Frazer’s voice singing a song he wrote in the late 1970s called, So I’ll go. Turns out Mistruzzi’s father and uncle ran a record shop together and were in a couple of local bands.

Frazer, the lead singer and song writer, even got one of his songs, Streetcar rider by the BACKROADS, recorded on Q107 Homegrown Vol. 3 back in the day. Check out song #2.

Mistruzzi says everyone who hears So I’ll Go, takes away something different. What came through loud and clear to me was the phrase, “Only love is the salt of the earth.” That sums up the people of Hamilton as well as Mistruzzi’s film Uncle Bardo that was made with love, great attention to detail and showcases storytelling at its finest.

Uncle Bardo is available for viewing online as part of the San Francisco Documentary Festival from May 30 through to June 9, 2024.

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Before co-founding Powerline Films, Luke Mistruzzi worked as a commercial editor and stop motion animator for clients, including Disney, MTV, Koodo, CBC, Dairy Farmers of Canada, YTV, Nickelodeon and more.

Since co-founding Powerline Films, Mistruzzi has produced projects in Canada, the United States, Mexico and Europe. He enjoys telling stories that celebrate innovation and creatively educate the public.

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