L'HUMANITE SCREENING

"Bruno Dumont's flawed masterpiece ... You probably won't feel comfortable when HUMANITE is over, but as you leave the theater you will feel more alive than when you entered."
-Stephen Holden, NEW YORK TIMES

"Ought to be seen, because it's a work of moral and spiritual mystery as stubbornly challenging as GONE IN 60 SECONDS is morally anesthetizing."
-ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

L'HUMANITE begins with the epitome of the abject, a corpse.  Investigating the rape and murder of an 11 year-old girl, Pharaon De Winter struggles with himself and the harsh realities of the world.  Directed by Bruno Dumont, the film is symbolic and contemplative as it presents the landscape of the body and the body as landscape.  Paralleling the investigation, De Winter becomes intertwined in a bizarre love triangle between himself and his neighbors Domino and Joseph.  De Winter witnesses a similar crude brutality between Domino and Joseph as he tries to find a murderer.  Inbetween police procedural and avant-garde meditation on humanity, L'HUMANITE won three of the biggest prizes at the Cannes Film Festival in 1999.

Suggested Secondary Screenings:  MOUCHETTE (Robert Bresson, 1967) and TWENTYNINE PALMS (Dumont, 2003).

ABJECT POP CULTURE

Lady Gaga's latest music video for BORN THS WAY abounds with abject imagery, from monstrous birth to altered human bodies.

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Since skin has become such a prominent feature in the films we have been studying, I thought this report on a book covered in human skin would be interesting.  The book, covered in the skin of a convicted murderer, is currently on display as part of a history exhibit in the United Kingdom. 

The book in question is an 1852 edition of THE POETICAL WORKS OF JOHN MILTON.  The text is an example of anthropodermic bibliopegy.  Most common in the 18th and 19th centuries, the process was often used to bound medical texts.

If only Esther could have figured this process out. 

Here is the article.

TIRESIA SCREENING

"Full of powerfully emotional scenes, even if it's almost entirely untouchable -- obtuse, bewildering and almost agonisingly slow."

-Rich Cline, SHADOW ON THE WALL

"The overall intention remains inscrutable, despite the strong presence of the performers and Bonnello’s attempt to will significance into the material by holding each shot over a glacial time-span."

-TIME OUT LONDON

"Intense, intriguing, beautifully framed and intellectually challenging, TIRESIA defies easy categorisation (much like its principal character)."

-Anton Bitel, EYE FOR FILM

In a film movement linked by the connection between transgression and transcendence, Bertrand Bonnello's TIRESIA stands out as one of the New Extremes most difficult, frustrating, and rewarding works.  A film that demands you meet it more than half way as well as requires a fair knowledge of Greek mythology, TIRESIA is steeped in classical traditions as well as modernist filmmaking.  Following the imprisonment of a pre-op transsexual prostitute and her subsequent blinding and gift of prophecy, the film touches on the abject and issues of fate.  As an in-between body, on that challenges preconceived order, such as gender, Tiresia, the character, and TIRESIA, the film, are an interesting addition to transgender film.

Suggested Supplemental Screenings:  TRANSAMERICA (Duncan Tucker, 2005), HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH (John Cameron Mitchell, 2001), ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER (Pedro Almodovar, 1999), XXY (Lucia Puenzo, 2007), BOYS DON'T CRY (Kimberly Peirce, 1999)

ABJECT ART

Following the publication of Julia Kristeva's POWERS OF HORROR, in which she outlines her theory or theories of abjection, numerous artists emerged experimenting it what became labeled as abject art.  It is an interesting movement that parallels a lot of the themes we are seeing and will see in this course.  In 1993 the Whitney Museum in New York created the exhibition Abject Art: Repulsion and Desire in American Art, which combined numerous artists producing work in the 1980s and 1990s.  The art often denotes an interest in the body or corporeality and especially transgressions of the body and our sense of cleanliness and propriety.  Abject artists toyed with ideas of censorship and obscenity:  what is deemed inappropriate for display and discussion.  Often noted for a feminist context, a challenge to patriarchal social order, abject artists such as Cindy Sherman, Louise Bourgeois, Gilbert & George, Paul McCarthy, and Carolee Schneemann, provoked audiences and changed the course of modern art. 

(Birth-Bourgeois-1994, Untitled-Sherman-1992, Cunt Scum-Gilbert & George-1977)

Assignment:  After briefly researching Abject Art, find a work that is part of the movement or you think ties in with the movement.  Simply explain why you are interested in that particular work and how it ties into some of the issues we have been discussing in class.  Due Tuesday March 1st.

The remaining films we will screen will have a noticeable preoccupation with the body and the intertwined experiences of desire and disgust.  These films stress the fragility of the body as well as our own fascination and fear of transgressing boundaries in context of violence and sexuality.  Below is a music video for the Klaxon's TWIN FLAMES, directed by Saam Farahmand, which touches on the abject through an orgy of conjoined bodies.  It is a video that is haunting, disturbing, and strangely beautiful: in essence, abject. 

OZON SHORTS

Francois Ozon began his career making short films.  First he used a Super8 video and shot silent films using friends and family.  He continued making shorts during film school and after graduation until REGARDE LA MER.  Even with his impressive output, he makes a feature or two each year, he has returned to the short format.  Looking over his short films, it is easy to see that he is working through his technique and thematic interests.  From watching his feature films, one can see that these shorts are often the genesis of his ideas that he revisits again and again.

The first is LES DOIGTS DANS LE VENTRE (translated to 'Fingers in the Throat or Belly') made in 1988.  A young woman wanders through Paris spending most of her time eating all the junk she can: in a fast-food, out of a tin can and so on. She steals some more food in a supermarket, meets a friend who gently caresses her belly in the street, then goes back home where she makes herself vomit in the toilet. She is then ready for the family dinner.  The film touches on the abject, especially Kristeva's comment on food and bodily fluids, as well as showcases Ozon's perverse sense of humor.

Ozon - Les Doigts Dans Le Ventre
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The second, X2000, made ten years later, is more abstract and surreal.  A man groggily awakes from an apparently wild New Year's Eve party to find both slumbering party guests and unexpected activity. 

Ozon - X2000
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REGARDE LA MER SCREENING

"Profoundly unsettling!  An impressive new filmmaker with a flair for implicit mayhem... owes strong debts to Chabrol and Polanski."
-Janet Maslin, NEW YORK TIMES

"Ozon may be a new master!... Think Rohmer meets Hitchcock!"
-Armond White, NEW YORK PRESS

"A menacing masterpiece!"
-Dennis Dermody, PAPER MAGAZINE

As James Quandt sees it, REGARDE LA MER is part of Francois Ozon's 'immature' period.  Despite this dismissive assessment, the film brought a new attention to Ozon's work as he transitioned from a short to feature filmmaker.  The film's disturbing story and infamous images should not overshadow Ozon as a true cinematic talent that communicates volumes through is frames and use of montage.  REGARDE LA MER centers around a young mother living with her infant daughter in relative isolation and the mysterious backpacker that interrupts their idyllic surrounding.  The film touches on Kristeva's notion of the abject as a disruption of system, identity, and order.  What unfolds during this terse 52-minute film is a violent exchange of identity that leaves the spectator restless, breathless, and disrupted.

Suggested Supplemental Screenings:  PERSONA (Ingmar Bergman, 1966) and BLACK SWAN (Darren Aronofsky, 2010)