Incestuous Masquerade: Freya & Freyr

"Set me on fire and never ever put me out
I never knew that it was possible to feel this way"

(Paatos / Gasoline)

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HSP - A Haiku Teaser

The sheer scope of Rouzbeh Rashidi's oeuvre dwarfs many of the modern filmmakers, with Homo Sapiens Project alone encompassing the incredible number of 199 installments (and still growing!), their lengths varying from 1 to 120 minutes. Writing about this 'ongoing series of personal experimental video works'  for the past few days (currently musing over the fourth volume), I've been facing the greatest challenge ever since I started reviewing films. I've also realized that Rashidi's 'trial and error' approach results in oft-indefinable 'something' which inspires in mysterious ways. Therefore, I reveal one of the three haiku-esque poems written after the brief, yet memorable encounter with HSP (34) and serving as a teaser for the upcoming (voluminous) article.

Amorphous nightmare
Opens the mind of a bird
In evanescence.

Still Shot from HSP (34)

A Secret Entrance to Cinelandia

Watching and writing about Rouzbeh Rashidi's extensive Homo Sapiens Project has given me a new boost of inspiration to continue creating collages on a (more or less) daily basis, in spirit of hyper-productivity the aforementioned filmmaker is often associated with, and comparable to the likes of Katsushika Hokusai, if I might add (though he hasn't approached the number of 30,000 works... yet). My latest piece, A Secret Entrance to Cinelandia, may not be as 'alien and distant' as HSP, but it does pay a modest and heartfelt homage to a small portion (approx. one tenth) of the anthology I've explored so far.

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Black and White Compete for the Highly Sophisticated Gray

That dawn had the face of a patient who suddenly realized the doctor didn't exist at all. It pulled a hair out of its eye and whispered a secret: "Forever breathes heavily." Not even the night that had already fallen asleep could have dreamt of any possible meaning of those words. And the wind of two nightmares was just sitting there in the corner of perseverant nowhere...

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Boarding School (Boaz Yakin, 2018)

☼☼☼☼☼☼☼(☼) out of 10☼

Jacob is almost 13 which is 'called 12', his night terror involves a young woman with bloody teeth and his mother's nervousness caused by the poor boy's regular wake up scream suppresses her maternal instincts. 'You go to sleep, or I will kill you!' hardly qualifies as comforting words, but thankfully there's a rather composed step-father to keep the family as functional as possible. However, when he catches Jacob dressed in his recently deceased grandmother's gown and opera gloves, dancing to gramophone-played tango, he decides it is time for some serious re-education, so he enrolls his stepson to a mysterious boarding school.

The institution is led by even less staff than the one from Lucile Hadžihalilović's extraordinary debut Innocence (which might have served Yakin as one of the sources of inspiration), with Dr. Sherman (Will Patton, utterly creepy from the initial appearance) as principle and sole teacher, and his much younger Mrs (Tammy Blanchard whose wide smile warns us that something is weirdly off) preparing meals and correcting the children's grammar. The 'unique young people' brought there are also small in numbers - Frederic suffers Tourette syndrome, Elwood likes to snort his scrambled eggs (!), Phil (played by a girl) is a horribly disfigured burn victim, Indian twins are abandoned by their white adoptive parents, and Christine is a bratty nymphet with highly masochistic tendencies.

And not to mention that the building is situated deep in a forest and surrounded by electric wire, with no cell phones and internet available in case of emergency, considering that the time period falls in the early 90s. In spite of the lavishly decorated interiors that pay a loving homage to the Italian master of horror Mario Bava (whose Black Sabbath is shown on late night TV at one point), the claustrophobic compound controlled by a religious disciplinarian zealot is the last place you would want to spend your days, even if only for two weeks of 'striving for clarity'. Observed through the eyes of the deeply traumatized, emotionally distressed and sexually confused, yet somehow unwavering Jacob (Luke Prael, in a 'hypnotized' performance corresponding with the film's hard-to-describe tone), that transitional microcosm, so to speak, as well as both the childhood and the adulthood are akin to hell by way of the grimmest of Grimm fairy tales. The hellishness of our little hero's surroundings is portended in the opening credits showing cityscapes bathed in fiery reds and the coldest of blues.

His coming out and of (psychotic?) age story - not always as layered as it wants to be, but still captivating and somewhat reminiscent of Till Kleinert's Der Samurai (must be the dress and flames) - is told from his own perspective and further puzzled by the element of Jewish heritage and Yakin's insistence on leaving some questions unanswered. Deliberately paced, laced with metaphors and sprinkled with twisted, unexpected humor (including Dr. Sherman's cartoonish accent), the unconventional narrative is closer to irrationality than reality which makes Jacob's nightmare utterly unpredictable, with the best twists saved for the bloody climax. The film itself has more in common with the European arthouse than the American horror, and its creator doesn't shy away from the B-movie / exploitative qualities in increasing its entertainment value and simultaneously, its discomforting atmosphere. A peculiar beast indeed, Boarding School is also commendable for its beautiful cinematography by Mike Simpson and subtle, unobtrusive score by Lesley Barber.

The Artist is Naked

Experimental films appear to have a strange hold on me. So, in a big leap out of my comfort zone (as announced in the previous post), I take a stab at 'art modelling' to create a couple of odd self-portraits in wich 'self' is pretty much bare.

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In Search of Scorpion's Stone

In my 7th article for EFS Publications, I set on a quest for Scorpion's Stone - an enigmatic relic (or maybe only a concept?) of Maximilian Le Cain's latest and most ambitious film. As challenging as 'a 6-hour experimental film' sounds, this avant-garde (anti)epic has the ability to push you out of your comfort zone in a way you couldn't have imagined (or maybe you could, but didn't want to admit) which is soon to be proven in one of my upcoming collages.

Read the essay here: In Search of Scorpion's Stone

Vicky Langan in Scorpion's Stone