SFCINEMATHEQUE

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Sunday, March 11, 2007

Oppositional and Stigmatized Cinema

Program 2: Cinema of Shock

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts





These films are shocking, appalling and transgress limits circumscribed by mainstream taste, morality, and commodifiable art practices. In Kurt Kren’s 16/67: September 20th Gunter Brus, we experience the intake and outflow of bodily fluids, via strange camera angles and editing. Jon Moritsugu’s Mommy, Mommy, Where’s My Brain? references AC/DC and Jacques Derrida in its attack of academic film theory. In Remote, Remote, Valie Export tortuously takes the act of self-mutilation to an extreme. Zock-Exercises by Otto Muehl, is an “Vienna Actioniste” collaborative project consisting of manifestos, films, and performances that, according to Muehl, has “no dread of chaos, rather it fears forgetting to annihilate something.” Stan Brakhage’s The Act of Seeing With One’s Own Eyes inhibits the production of illusion by depicting autopsies without explaining them or containing them within a narrative. Through framing and editing, the audience is confronted ceaselessly with the raw actuality of these cadavers. (Caroline Savage and Janis Crystal Lipzin) Just added: special bonus feature, Shuji Terayama’s Japanese film Emperor Tomato Ketchup.

Download program notes