Café Flesh 11/3, 19.30, Cinema Nova
Porn that is so psychedelic, intellectual, artistic, and surreal that porn lovers come flocking. That is the reputation of this 1982 avant-garde cult film. Director Stephen Sayadian used to work for the famous porn magazine Hustler and he paved the way for Alt Porn. He is coming to Brussels to introduce this dystopian story about a world in which almost everyone becomes terminally sick from having sex.
The Devil’s Sword 24/3, 23.30, Cinema Nova
We have no idea what kind of grass was being smoked during the making of The Devil’s Sword but it must have been pretty good stuff. A nymphomaniac underwater queen sends an army of crocodile men, warriors, and wizards to fight a hero with a devil’s sword. The trailer alone will show you that the realisation of this 1984 Indonesian pulp film is much crazier than the plot might sound. But only on a big cinema screen will you be able to enjoy the gawky crocodile costumes, the 1,001 decapitations, and the psychedelia in all their hilarious glory.
Lucifer Rising 17/3, 23.30, Cinema Nova
The Summer of Love did not last long. In 1969, the flower children exchanged their dreams of free love for bad and psychotic trips. Offscreen is dedicating a section of the festival to the horrors and madness of 1969 with biker films such as Werewolves on Wheels (see cover), stories about the murderous cult leader Charles Manson, and an actual black mass. The Apocalypse 69 Night will climax with Lucifer Rising, a psychedelic tribute to paganism by Kenneth Anger, the anti-pope of experimental cinema. Amen.
Prevenge 24/3, 19.30, Cinema Nova
Horror is (sometimes) a far too beautiful and adventurous genre to leave it up to the guys. Take two. British director Alice Lowe (Sightseers) was heavily pregnant when she took the role in her own film of a heavily pregnant woman whose unborn baby incites her to murder. The Guardian called it “A nightmarish twist on post- and prenatal depression,” while Empire wrote that it was “a psychological study of the alienating effect of pregnancy.”
Contes immoraux 17/3, 21.00, Cinematek
We’d better not even start on the improper use of cucumbers in this erotic four-part film about virginity, female masturbation, blood lust, and incest. Your mind would go in the right direction, but you would draw the wrong conclusions. This is one of the smutty films with which the Polish erotomaniac Walerian Borowczyk elevated erotic film to a higher level by focusing on aesthetic refinement, stunning visuals, and curiosities.
The Wailing 25/3, 21.30, Cinema Nova
If the characters spoke English instead of Korean, the media wouldn’t be able to stop talking about The Wailing, and people would be falling over themselves to buy tickets. This countryside thriller is simply that incredible, exciting, and continuously surprising, and it gets darker and more intense by the minute. In every respect, director Na Hong-jin (The Chaser was just as brilliant) is as good as his more famous countrymen Park Chanwook and Bong Joon-ho. Among other things, there is an exorcism in this film that will make your hair stand on end for at least 666 months.
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