Arthouse Vulgarity
Programmed by: Tony George
When do the "low" genres of pornography and exploitation ascend into the "high" intellectual category of the art film? What is the value of the vulgar and obscene to cinematic expression, and who defines the trash versus the treasure? Through their production contexts, critical reception, or retrospective re-appraisals, the films in this series explore the complex dimensions of cinema’s fetishistic impulses and fascination with the perverse.
Bypassing easy definitions of genre, this series highlights a variety of filmmaking techniques and styles. Narrative features from cult directors – like Paul Verhoeven’s Elle – are in conversation with the fragmentary pornography of Fred Halsted. A selection of 16mm experimental shorts showcase filmmakers who play with the haptic textures and sensuality of physical film to explore the outer limits of sexual experience. Newly restored and available theatrically in the U.S., Hisayasu Satō’s Re-Wind exemplifies the pink film director’s bleak world of alienation and sexual obsession. The mockumentary, Mouse Klub Konfidential, is an unflinching political satire on Nazism and American pop culture, while In A Glass Cage portrays the disturbing aftermath of sexual abuse at the hands of a Nazi doctor.
Each screening offers an opportunity to sit with discomfort and interrogate the tenuous boundaries drawn by the arthouse canon. Beyond an initial shock appeal, what do these films express about the dark contradictions of human desire? How do these films challenge preconceived ideas around the kinds of art worthy of critical engagement? The gazes of the filmmaker, actor, cinephile, and pervert are all the same in the dark.
Elle (2016)
Paul Verhoeven · 131m · DCP
From the very first frame, Elle confronts its audience with a stark and violent scene of sexual assault, setting the tone for this intense psychosexual thriller starring the incomparable Isabelle Huppert. Huppert’s Michèle – a stoic, cold business woman – appears unaffected by the attack., but hHer paranoia grows, however, as she seeks out the perpetrator while her familial and romantic relationships unravel.
Thursday, March 26 9:30 PM · Saturday, March 28 9:30 PM
Spring Breakers (2012)
Harmony Korine · 94m · DCP
Four college students travel to Florida for spring break vacation, only to be seduced into a neon-soaked, crime-ridden nightmare by a local drug lord (James Franco). Casting former Disney stars Vanessa Hudgens and Selena Gomez as leads, Harmony Korine’s provocative and hazy depiction of an innocence shattered by spring break hedonism challenges expectations of both commercial filmmaking and vulgar exploitation.
Thursday, April 2 9:30 PM · Friday, April 3 9:30 PM
Sex Garage / LA Plays Itself (1972 / 1972)
Fred Halsted · 35m / 55m · DCP
Fred Halsted solidified his legacy in the history of gay cinema with LA Plays Itself, a pornographic film that juxtaposes the idyllic and sadistic sides of gay male eroticism in gritty 1970s LA. Its avant-garde sound design and editing set it apart from other gay films of the era, and Halsted even donated a print to MoMA in hopes of bridging the divide between erotica and arthouse. Its companion short, Sex Garage, condenses Halsted’s aggressive vision of sexuality into a brutal clash of chrome and leather.
Thursday, April 9 9:30 PM
The Holy Mountain (1973)
Alejandro Jodorowsky · 113m · DCP
The Alchemist guides The Thief on a pilgrimage towards enlightenment in this surrealist vision of humanity’s quest for self-actualization. The Thief and his compatriots – seven people who personify the planets of the solar system – must perform a series of strange mystical rites in a bid for immortality. Jodorowsky’s tableaus of hedonistic pleasure clash with divine ascetic principles in this psychedelic fever dream.
Thursday, April 16 9:30 PM · Friday, April 17 9:30 PM
Moment / removed / Re-Wind (1968 / 1999 / 1988)
Stephen Dwoskin / Naomi Uman / Hisayasu Satō · 13m / 6m / 65m · 16mm / 16mm / DCP
These three films interrogate the camera’s objectifying eye in representations of female sexual subjugation. Moment is an unbroken shot of a woman’s face before, during, and after orgasm – challenging classical cinema’s construction of viewer identification. In removed, Uman uses nail polish and bleach to conceal the body of an actress in a vintage porn film, rendering her perspective absent. Re-Wind is a softcore porn about the circulation of a snuff video tape amongst a network of perverse characters, each fascinated with violence and tortured by destructive desires.
Thursday, April 23 9:30 PM
What’s On / Lift Off / The Color of Love / Fuses / Baby Doll / Mouse Klub Konfidential (1997 / 1998 / 1994 / 1967 / 1982 / 1976)
Martha Colburn / Martha Colburn / Peggy Ahwesh / Carolee Schneemann / Tessa Hughes-Freeland / James Robert Baker · 2m / 3m / 10m / 29m / 3m / 16m · 16mm / 16mm / 16mm / 16mm / DCP / DCP
Martha Colburn’s chaotic collage style is on full display in the raunchy space-themed Lift Off and TV-addiction satire What’s On? Fuses celebrates the messy, euphoric rhythms of erotic experience through hand-painting and collage, while Color of Love utilizes a deteriorated Super 8 stag film to express the vulgar beauty of sexuality. Baby Doll documents the perspectives of Go-Go dancers in 1980s New York City. Finally, Mouse Klub Konfidential is a perverse mockumentary satirizing Disney kitsch and Nazi fetishism in gay BDSM pornography – a bombastic ending to this program of transgressive shorts.
Thursday, April 30 9:30 PM
Anatomy of Hell (2004)
Catherine Breillat · 77m · DCP
Situated around the complicated erotic dynamic between an anonymous woman and gay man, Breillat’s film is a confronting look at the misogynistic engine driving sexual culture. The woman (Amira Casar) hires the man (Rocco Siffredi) to "watch her when she’s unwatchable," leading to an escalating series of intense sexual encounters.
Thursday, May 7 9:30 PM
In a Glass Cage (1986)
Agustí Villaronga · 112m · DCP
In a Glass Cage follows the dark relationship between Klaus, a former Nazi doctor living in an iron lung, and his caretaker – a young boy named Angelo. This art-horror film pushes at the limits of acceptability with its bleak images of sexual torture and vengeful violence. The haunting, cold color palette leaves the viewer stranded in the fatalistic claustrophobia of this cycle of abuse.
Thursday, May 14 9:30 PM
Blind Beast (1969)
Yasuzō Masumura · 84m · DCP
A blind sculptor obsessed with touch kidnaps a model and imprisons her in his cavernous studio. Surrounded by looming sculptures of disassembled female body parts, the model and sculptor become involved in a game of pain and pleasure, blurring the lines between devotion and exploitation in artistic practice.
