Black Biscuit (Fabrizio Federico, 2011)

☼☼☼☼☼☼ out of 10☼

And now, here's a recipe that you won't find in Jamie Oliver's cookbook (or any other cookbook for that matter).

Ingredients:

- a filmmaker who answers only to himself, bares his all for an art class in a retirement home and has no job recommendations, so he willingly subjects to an experienced S&M dominatrix and her novice student;

- La Dolce Vita poster in a pot rollin' scene, presumably as a comment on life's bitterness;

- a cute ballerina captured in high-contrast monochrome or as the late Pina Bausch used to say: "Tanzt, tanzt, sonst sind wir verloren."

- one ridiculous flowery hat;

- a beautiful brunette pulling a bat-shaped kite, disguising as a ghost and sleeping next to the aforementioned director, while their bed is approached by a man acting like a dog;

- a pimp of Greek origin wearing tight, cheetah-print pants;

- the myriad of guerrilla-style sequences spiced with a pinch of stock footage;

- a handful of swans, glitches, beatboxing and dial-up connection noise;

- an avid Johnny Depp fan and an Austin Powers impersonator;

- one realistic dildo;

- a group of junkies;

- four shameless modern musketeers;

- the photos of dead animals who were not harmed during the making of the film;

- and a little bit of everything else, but the kitchen sink.

Directions:

Arm yourself with punk attitude, improvise to your heart's content and serve whatever you get out of your oven cold. Spread the hot passion syrup over it and sprinkle with lots of nuts!

Shot on mobile phones and children cameras, Black Biscuit is a clear or rather, perfect reflection of Pink8 Manifesto's rule No. 17 - bewildering, vague, self-indulgent, plot-less, risky, egotistical, limpid, raw, ugly and imperfect. However, it is also varied, unaffected and unpretentious in its crazy idiosyncrasies, charming naiveté and patchwork aesthetics.

Ballsy and wonderfully pointless, yet infused with all kinds of meanings and themes, it provides a no makeup and no holds barred look into the underbelly of British society. At first sour, it becomes sweeter with each subsequent bite, but only for the initial hour and a half. The last quarter (37 minutes, to be precise) outstays its welcome due to the film-within-film's unapologetically meandering nature.

Firmly holding the stick of anarchy and rebellion, Federico balances on the top of the fourth wall pierced with many holes and creates a work of documentary fiction which is in equal measures inspiring and slightly frustrating. His energy is infectuous and his weird, mostly improvised vignettes are essentially one disparate juxtaposition after another tied into a Dada-like whole which surprisingly never falls apart in its striving for cult status.

Black Biscuit is available at the author's YouTube channel.