This is actually the first year I have been a part of the programming group of the at Brussels, Belgium. The festival starts on Wednesday, March 7th, and I am proud to show you the pleasures we have in store for you.
Offscreenings
The Offscreenings program presents a selection of unique, fresh and unreleased movies, offering a platform at the very edge of cinema to movies. These films are noted for their imagination vision and way of genre and the medium.
You can locate the Offscreenings program here.
Our guests for this module include Vicky Krieps (actress, Gutland &Phantom Thread), Kevin Janssens (actor, Revenge) along with Govinda van Maele (director, Gutland).
Genre Cinema all’Italiana
Through the 1960s and 1970s, Italy was at the forefront of such popular film genres like peplums, spaghetti westerns, thrillers, police action, and horror. Many directors (Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci), cinematographers (Vittorio Storaro), along with composers (Bruno Nicolai, Ennio Morricone) made their titles in this golden era of literary genre cinema, or “filone”, a word to its cross-pollination between various film customs, cycles, movements, and trends contributing to the richness and diversity of favorite Italian cinema. Also prominent in this era of tremendous creativity and growth had been the festival’s guests of honor – Enzo G. Castellari along with Sergio Martino. Actor Luc Merenda will likely be current. Offscreen will be showing a number of their films. Have a look at the program here.
Thierry Zéno
The most subversive filmmaker, Thierry Zéno of Belgium, passed away due to a lingering illness, on June 7, 2017. This multidisciplinary performer is leading the director of the unsettling, contentious feature film Vase de noces (1974). Back in 1976, a new documentary triggers shockwaves: the frequently unbearably distressing Des morts, which deals with burial rites around the world and isn’t suitable for sensitive audiences. He will go back to this ethnological approach with documentaries like Chronique d’un village tzotzil (1992) and also Ya basta ! Le cri des sans-visage (1997), while his fascination with Félicien Rops along with other artists is reflected in his works Les muses sataniques (1983), Ce tant bizarre Monsieur Rops (2000) and also Eugène Ionesco, voix et silences (1987).
Vampires Suck!
No supernatural monster was depicted as often in cinema history. Everyone bloodsucker, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, has racked up almost 200 different movie looks. Even today, the vampire continues to fascinate, guaranteeing that the box office success of businesses like Twilight along with Underworld. The flipside of this popularity is that the creature has gotten recognizable and too hokey. Indeed, to quote the exact title of a Single Twilight spoof, Vampires Suck! But they are also exceptionally versatile, since Offscreen reveals with a variety of 21 transgressive vampire films which turn the genre conventions upside down, breaking with all the clichés of Gothic castles, garlic and crucifixes to depict the creatures as hyper-realistic, contemporary, exotic, and hybrid, odd, or simply deranged. These films offer twists and also inject the genre using compelling tales about the human state.
You can see a list of all the vampire films we’ll be playing at the Offscreen Film Festival at Vampires Suck: 21 Most Unusual Vampire Movies.
Director Harry Kümel will be present at the screening of the Daughters of Darkness.
Adult Animation from the 1970s: Ralph Bakshi & Co
Ralph Bakshi (°1938) positions up there with such masters of animation as Walt Disney and Tex Avery. He pioneered adult-themed animation interwoven with political commentary and satire, stirring up controversy with his feature debut, the X-rated animated adaptation of Fritz the Cat. His next two movies, Heavy Traffic along with Coonskin, proved equally contentious. His work is hysterical although daring, profane, disgusting dark, but stunning. Bakshi will likely be present at the festival through a Skype connection.
This Bakshi homage forms part of a night of animation. There has been a spike in taboo-breaking movies in the late 1960s, along with other animators producing politically incorrect, amoral cartoons like from Charles Swenson (who will also be present at the festival through video conference). Porno chic and hardcore also abounded in the shape of short sextoons, or at live action porn like Sex in the Comics, which pays tribute to the Tijuana Bibles or “filthy” comic novels. An night that is adults-only that is unforgettable.
Hands Off!
Forget Ash’s possessed hand at Evil Dead II or Thing T. Thing, the helpful hand from The Addams Family. The hands stealing the show within this B to Z are another breed of five-fingered monster entirely.
starts off at a little city in Mexico, homeland of the film’s director Alfredo Zacarias (whose ), and tracks the damn progress of a demonic hand which serially possesses a variety of individuals, including a plastic surgeon and also a priest. Never has an improved body element revealed creativity!
Back in The Hand, another extremity turns homicidal after being violently severed in an auto accident and even begins to sabotage the mental wellbeing of its former owner (Michael Caine). This second feature from writer-director Oliver Stone (Natural Born Killers, JFK, World Trade Center) is a barking mad psychological thriller with splashes of horror and just some slapstick.
Which films are you really looking forward to watching at the Offscreen Film Festival?
