Film-maker Daniel Cockburn, in The Invocation (2024)
This year’s festival has a complementary No-Film Programme, considering films that can’t be seen, because they’re lost, withdrawn, fragmentary, never-made or completely imaginary. We commissioned film-maker Daniel Cockburn to produce a pair of video essays considering the Goncharov phenomenon and the vanished, Glasgow-filmed Batgirl.
THE INVOCATION We know what it’s like to procrastinate on a project by surfing the net, letting yourself fall down hyperlink rabbit holes. At least I do. But what do you do when a project requires you to surf the net, when the essential task is to purposely fall down a rabbit hole?
What if you’re making a video essay about the Goncharov phenomenon, that Tumblr thing from a few years back where suddenly everyone started pretending that there was a Scorsese/Garrone movie from 1973 with Robert De Niro and Cybill Shepherd about the Russian Mafia in Naples, and the internet filled with reminiscences and discussions and exegeses on the topic of this movie that never existed, and now if you care to, you can find endless dissection of its themes and enumerations of its motifs and readings of its coded sexual politics, and so if you need to make a video essay about that, the only way forward is down the rabbit hole, so I repeat my question, what do you do?
If doing the job is surfing and losing yourself in the unending chain of not-really-free association, then every moment of attempted productivity feels like it’s actually just procrastination, and you feel that familiar shame and guilt of avoiding work even though you’re actually working – but if you want to escape that feeling, what do you do? Procrastinate and surf the net? What a mess.
The Abjuration (Daniel Cockburn, 2024)
THE ABJURATION also can we pls talk about the word “canon” and what it used to mean vs what it means now and whether the cultures of fandom and corporate IP have a little more influence on our language & thought than would be optimal xthxbai
Daniel Cockburn
The Invocation and The Abjuration can be viewed in our No-Film Programme, which screens on a loop throughout our festival weekend. The Invocation will also screen with our opening night event, Make Good Choices: An Evening of Interactive Cinema, and The Abjuration with our closing night event, Overchoice: The 5-to-1 Game.
Daniel Cockburn is a Canadian moving-image artist based in Glasgow. His work deals with rhythm, language, and thought experiments, drawing on sources spanning video games, literature, power ballads, and sci-fi/fantasy/horror. His 2010 feature film You Are Here has been described as “a new kind of narrative for a new technological era” (Mark Peranson, Cinema Scope), “a major discovery” (Olivier Père, Locarno Film Festival), and “a whatsit” (Gavin Smith, Film Comment). He’s currently working on a live performance about medieval music and a movie adaptation of Mark Vonnegut’s memoir The Eden Express.
In 1993, writer/cinematographer/director Scott King found a beat up 1950s paperback called The Man Who Never Was. It tells the true story of two British agents who procure a dead body, dress it up as an officer, chain a briefcase full of phony invasion plans to its wrist and drop it in the Mediterranean. The Germans found the body and proclaimed the intelligence in the briefcase to be “beyond reproach.” Adolf Hitler himself gave the order to move the troops according to the plans found in the briefcase.
While this may have been the most successful counterintelligence campaign of any war, that’s not the part of the story that interested Mr King. For as the two men executed their plan, they created a complete identity for their body, one so detailed that it included movie tickets, bank passbooks, and, finally, letters, both to and from the dead man.
“I was fascinated by the way these normal guys would unknowingly write these very poignant and emotional letters,” says King, “and by the way that the letters, without the writers meaning to, revealed things about themselves that the book only glosses over.”
Director Scott King with actors Lance Baker and Nick Offerman, on the set of Treasure Island
Mr King spent the next five years mostly on research (while admittedly doing other things), stealing liberally from everything he could find: a 1910 two-volume Psychologis Sexualis, a 1943 Slang Thesaurus, biographies of minor historical figures, ration magazines, 1970s self-help books. Mr King: “I wanted to invent an entire fake novel that the film would be based on, giving the characters and the story a depth that myself and the actors could refer to. For instance, I knew that Samuel (Nick Offerman) was a mathematician and, in an early draft, wrote a scene where he calculated exact change at a grocery store. The scene was pretty boring but the idea of his character rebelling against his bookish self-image in a kind of hyper masculine way did wind up in the movie, even though it wasn’t explicitly in the script.” After the years of noodling, the script itself only took a few months to write.
The five directors of Treasure Island, plus one
When it came time to actually shoot the film, producer Adrienne Gruben sought out people who had made their own films. Script supervisor Robert Byington had previously directed Shameless and Olympia, the latter which opened the 1998 South by Southwest Festival in Austin and closed the 1998 Slamdance Film Festival. Gaffer Philip Glau was the director of Circus Redickuless, a feature documentary about a punk rock circus which has also toured the festival route. Sound man Dante Harper directed The Delicate Art of the Rifle, which was honoured with Best Film at Chicago’s Underground Film Festival. First assistant director Abe Levy was the director of a film called Max 13, while camera operator Jonathan Sanford’s first film, The Big Charade, played a number of festivals, including South by Southwest.
Shortly after principal photography, producer Gruben told IndieWire, “I’ve noticed on films with first time directors that the crew sits around saying, ‘If I were making a movie, I’d do it this way.’ I didn’t want the crew against the director; I wanted some padding, so they’d all have some empathy for Scott in this situation. I hired people who I thought had matching personalities. I hired a bunch of diplomats, basically, who had training in certain departments.”
The crew of Treasure Island
Today, King would tell any first-time film-maker that the only way that they will ever make a halfway decent film is to surround themselves with talented people who really know what they are doing. “As a hopeless control freak, I was amazed at how people who believed in the project were able to stand up and do such an great job that I was unable to hate them for doing so. When it’s all over, there’s a tendency to forget what kind of cooperation it takes to make a film; I’m happy to be the spokesman of Treasure Island, but now that I’ve gone through the actual experience of making it, I have to admit I’m not the author.”
For the look of the film, the team wanted to create a glimpse into the ’40s that we had only suspected before. “A lot of people remember this day as a Life magazine photo,” says Mr King, “especially the one that depicts the sailor kissing a strange woman in the middle of a celebratory street. In reality, the last day of the war turned the country into Dallas when the Cowboys win: a near riot condition, where looting, rapes, random beatings and murder were not uncommon. I was hoping in the film to show what happens underneath the kiss in the photograph.”
Filming the VJ riot in Treasure Island
In order to shift today’s perspective of the 1940s, King wanted the film to look exactly like one that might have been made at the time. Shooting in black and white with a 1936 Mitchell camera and using old fashioned processing techniques, the cast and crew strived to create the feeling that, despite all beliefs to the contrary, people lived their lives pretty much the way they do now.
This attention to the look of the film continues off the set, where King and his production designer, Nathan Marsak, are obsessed with the period depicted in Treasure Island. in their day-to-day lives, they are surrounded by rotary phones and pneumatic tubes, interwar cars and chalk-stripe suits. As producer Gruben puts it. “Their preoccupation with detail and obsession with historical correctness bears no relation to anything ‘retro’, they don’t go swing dancing, they build dirigibles.” This attention to visual perfection creates a real environment where it’s possible, if only for one second, to see that people living 50 years ago swore, did the wrong thing, lived their lives with no hope of ever knowing themselves, and, yes, had sex.
Original Treasure Island trailer
Shooting wrapped in July of 1998, and as the crew finished up the editing, sound and music in November, the film was accepted into the 1999 Sundance Film Festival. This turned out to be an overwhelming experience for everyone involved. Film-maker King: “There are people who go to this festival expecting to see something they can market, commercial movies on a slightly lower budget. Treasure Island was not that kind of film and it made some people very, very angry. But I think a number of folks were happily surprised to be exposed to something, well, provocative. I didn’t enjoy being so vocally criticized, but when you know you’re getting to people, one way or another, it has to feel a little like a success.”
Despite the festival’s reputation for million-dollar napkin deals, Treasure Island was not the kind of film that distributors, even the smaller ones, were looking for. “We had a lot of a distributors who went out of their way to say how much they liked it”, said producer Adrienne Gruben. “I mean, they could have just run away and hid, so I don’t think they were lying. I think it’s the kind of film that works well for people who’ve seen a lot of movies, but there was an unspoken understanding that them liking it and the film making them a ton of money were two totally different things.”
Poster for Treasure Island‘s new 4K restoration, by Beth Morris
After winning a Special Jury prize at Sundance, an award for outstanding artistic achievement at Outfest in Los Angeles, and a IFP Independent Spirit nomination for best first feature (under $500,000)1, Treasure Island continued to screen at more festivals around the country, still unable to secure any kind of distribution deal. After finding theatres in New York and San Francisco who were willing to take a chance on a film without any money behind it, All Day Entertainment head David Kalat happened in on a screening in New York’s Cinema Village. Kalat, who has made a reputation for himself releasing lost classic films like Fritz Lang’s The Eyes of Dr Mabuse and ’70s cult masterpiece Ganja & Hess, has a great affinity for unseen films. “Even though the film takes place in 1945”, says Mr Kalat, “Treasure Island is the first contemporary film I’ve even wanted to put out [on DVD]. It’s not a film for everybody, but for the right audience, it really has the potential to disturb and enlighten.”
Scott King’s 25th anniversary, 4K restoration of Treasure Island premieres at Weird Weekend on Saturday 26/10, with post-screening Q&A. Tickets available here.
It was bested in this category by The Blair Witch Project↩︎
Katy Bolger as Holly, George Kuchar as Martin and Rufus Seder as Edgar, in Screamplay
Screamplay (1984) was the only feature length film I ever made, but it was not at all the first film. I had been making short films for almost 20 years (since I was 12 years old), many of them international award winners (Cannes, Krakow, Ann Arbor).
As a college student, I bounced back and forth between the East and West Coast. First, I was a film student at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, where I met and collaborated with other film students. Then, I was a Directing Fellow at the American Film Institute in Lost Angeles, where I met actor Ed Greenberg and with whom I co-wrote Screamplay (then titled Death City) in his West Hollywood apartment. “Slasher Pics” were big then, and we wrote it with an eye toward Ed starring as Edgar Allen and with me directing. While we had some nibbles on the script, we had no takers.
The Life and Death of 9413: a Hollywood Extra (Robert Florey, Slavko Vorkapić, 1928)
At the AFI, I also had the rare pleasure of catching elderly film theoretician Slavko Vorkapić’s last lectures on the Gestalt theory of filmmaking. Inspired, I returned to Boston and with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, formed the Boston Black and White Movie Company with fellow students from the Boston School of the Museum of Fine Arts. We shot, acted in and processed and printed our own black and white reversal 16mm short films ourselves and showed them around town with live musical accompaniment. Many of these films were shot in my 3,200 square foot South End loft, which I converted into a film studio.
After another frustrating visit to Los Angeles, I decided to return to my Boston studio and to raise the money to make Screamplay myself. To raise interest and assemble a cast and crew from my original Boston filmmaking cohorts, I made a 4′ square matte painting of the Welcome Apartments with removable sections, then took a hammer and saw and built the steps and walls to be used in the movie. With these, I was able to demonstrate to my friends how the sets could be swapped around and combined with the matte painting to convincingly convey the impression of a three-story courtyard in Hollywood. With $25,000 raised from friends and family, we prepared to make the movie. Ed Greenberg could not leave LA to participate, so I decided to take the role of Edgar as well as director.
Rufus B Seder as Edgar Allen, on the set of Screamplay (photo by George Kuchar)
Artist Cheryl Hirshman stepped in to complete more matte paintings (and the poster for the movie), and animator Flip Johnson, in addition to playing one of the cops, developed additional special effects such as the undulating water in the apartment complex swimming pool (filmed real time through the matte painting – no actual water used), and Nicky’s motorcycle accident (a filmed scale model motorcycle and truck transformed into dozens of 8″ x 10″ black and white photos onto which Flip ink-stippled splatting blood and then re-animated).
L-R: George Cordeiro, Basil Bova and Ted Braun, on the set of Screamplay (photo by George Kuchar)
To create the other visual effects, we built a front projection system (a la Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 ape sequence) using a large beam splitter and a lot of 3M retro-reflective material. My father, Gus Seder (who also played Al Weiner in the movie), designed an electro-mechanical “phase lock loop” which synchronized a 16mm movie projector to my 16mm Bolex camera, permitting us to project pre-filmed footage behind the actors. We designed and constructed a special tripod for the Bolex which would keep the nodal point of the lens in one exact spot at all times – essential to keeping the live action set from spatially displacing from the cutout portion of the matte painting when we tilted and panned.
Contemporaneous TV feature, behind the scenes of Screamplay
Underground filmmaker George Kuchar and I had become friends by then, and we flew him in for a month to play the part of Martin, the manager of the Welcome Apartments and the villain of the piece. I’ll never forget the first take we did of him: He was to step out of second floor apartment, glower down (presumably at Edgar) and frown. George did all that, and to top it off, he spat over the railing (right onto our brand-new set). That’s when I knew I had chosen right guy for the role!
Shooting went well until filming of the final fight scene in Edgar’s storage room, when disaster struck. George, approaching me from behind to strangle me, slipped on a garden hose (part of the set), fell and broke his ankle in three places. As he did not have insurance, we raised more funds to cover his $20,000 hospital cost, effectively doubling our budget from $25,000 to $45,000. During his hospitalization, we filmed the fight scene using one of our crew members, filmmaker Ted Braun, as a “stunt double” for George. As soon as he was well enough to leave the hospital, George returned to the set and we propped him upright to film reaction shots to intercut. The final edited fight scene flows smoothly and you can’t tell it’s not George if you don’t know.
Bob White as Lot, on the set of Screamplay (photo by George Kuchar)
We first showed Screamplay at the 1985 New York Independent Film Festival (sharing the screen with the Coen Brothers’ first feature film Blood Simple. We immediately got interest from New Line Cinema whose Nightmare on Elm Street had just hit big and who wanted to release our film as a midnight movie but only in its original 16mm. When we insisted they blow it up to 35mm for a proper theatrical release, they dropped it.
We also had interest from Troma (who promised to blow it up to 35mm), but chose instead to “world premiere” Screamplay at a local theater in our hometown of Boston, hoping to get good reviews which might entice “classier” distributors. Our strategy backfired when lead Boston Globe film critic at the time, Michael Blowen, panned it roundly. “It is customary for film reviewers to bend over backwards to support independent filmmakers,” he wrote, “But in this case, that contortion is impossible.”
We had no choice but to accept Troma’s offer. The deal – for US distribution only – was that we would start receiving royalties after Troma recouped its cost of blowing up the film to 35mm. Troma never made that money back.
Original Screamplay poster, by Cheryl Hirshman
Internationally, the film enjoyed more success, especially in Germany. It was a hit at the Berlin Film festival, playing to packed midnight crowds. We sold it Bayerischer Rundfunk (German TV) where it was aired as a Halloween special for many years. And I was invited to show the film and serve on a panel with independent filmmakers Frederick Wiseman and Shirley Clarke at the Melkweg Cinema in Amsterdam.
The brutal Boston reviews and the lackluster performance of the film in the US had taken its toll, however. I took it hard, feeling disgraced in my hometown and deserted by some of the friends who had helped me make the film. I ran away back to Los Angeles, where I convinced producer Bill Benenson to pay me to write a script about Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison. After fourteen drafts and ten years, I had fashioned it to be a 35mm, hand-cranked black and white silent movie to be shown with live orchestral accompaniment. Bill Benenson thought I was crazy and insisted it be in color with sound. We almost got the money to make it from American Playhouse (educational TV), but when they saw me and Bill arguing about this issue, they dropped it like a hot potato.
James M Connor as Nicky Blair, Katy Bolger as Holly in Screamplay
Back in Boston, I regrouped, teaching film at the Museum School and working as a movie projectionist for a number of years. At one point I picked up my old 16mm Bolex, loaded it with film and went out to film something – anything – but could not think of anything interesting to film. I was finished as a film-maker.
After some soul-searching and introspection, I decided to focus on stuff that gave me personal satisfaction, which led to my lifetime career as a world-class public artist/inventor specializing in optically animated murals, books and toys. Anyone interested in knowing more about my “life after Screamplay”, they can watch my half hour video on YouTube, entitled “Magic, Art and Scanimation”.
Rufus B Seder
Our brand-new, 4K preservation of Screamplay, made from Rufus’ own 16mm print, premieres at Weird Weekend on Sunday 27/10/24. Tickets available here.
For those who might not know about Národní filmový archiv, how would you describe its purposes and activities?
Národní filmový archiv is a memory institution dedicated to preserving, protecting, and promoting Czech film heritage. Our main activities include collecting and preserving moving image not just on 35mm film but also contemporary digital movie production, home movies on 8/16mm film, video art and we are just starting with preservation on digital games. We also have a large collection of film-related materials like screenplays, photographs, film documentation, correspondence, etc. We often digitise and digitally restore films from our collection to which we provide access to researchers, distributors and the general public, to promote Czech cinema both domestically and internationally. We also operate a public library with a fairly large catalogue of film-related works.
What was your pathway to working at NFA, did you always know you wanted to work in a film-related field or even in film preservation specifically?
I came to film preservation from an IT background through a film school. Since childhood, I’ve been immersed in computers with a particular interest in computer graphics, a feat that later in early adolescence transformed into me taking interest in VJing, a discipline of live video accompaniment of music. Later, I studied Film and TV School of Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU) with emphasis on preservation of both film and digital. Before that, I’ve worked in IT for almost 10 years as a Linux system administrator and saw large IT projects rise and fall, sometimes rushing myself into the middle of my night shift to a datacenter to revive a failed storage array. That gave me a pretty good understanding of how the storage of digital data works, and after I graduated, I took the opportunity that NFA was looking for a Head of Digital laboratory, a position which allowed me to combine my digital and film preservation expertise.
Posters for The Murder of Mr Devil‘s new restoration
What does your job as Director of Audiovisual Collections entail?
I oversee the management, preservation, and accessibility of our vast film and video collections. This involves coordinating preservation efforts, making decisions on restoration projects, managing our digital archive, and collaborating with other departments to ensure our collections are properly catalogued and accessible to researchers and the public. I also participate in various projects, such as our current project pixelarchiv.cz which sets itself a task to kickstart digital preservation of Czech digital games.
How does the archive decide what films and materials to prioritise for preservation and/or restoration?
Our prioritisation process for film restoration is guided by a multifaceted approach that weighs several key factors. We carefully consider the historical and cultural significance of each film, recognizing its importance in the context of Czech and global cinema. The physical condition of the material is a critical concern, with priority often given to films at risk of deterioration to prevent permanent loss. We also take into account the rarity or uniqueness of the content, focusing on preserving films that offer irreplaceable historical or artistic value. The potential for public interest or academic research plays a role in our decision-making, as does the availability of resources and technical feasibility for each project. Additionally, we keep an eye on upcoming anniversaries, retrospectives, or other events that might spark renewed interest in particular films, allowing us to align our restoration efforts with these opportunities for increased visibility and appreciation.
Jirina Bohdalová in The Murder of Mr Devil (Ester Krumbachová, 1970)
What are the current challenges you/the archive faces in caring for films within the archive?
Národní filmový archiv faces several significant challenges in our preservation efforts. A primary concern is maintaining optimal storage conditions for our diverse materials, especially as we confront the realities of climate change, which can affect temperature and humidity control in our facilities. We also grapple with the delicate balance between preserving our collections and making them accessible to researchers and the public, as increased handling can potentially compromise the integrity of fragile items. Additionally, we must continually adapt to rapidly evolving digital preservation technologies, which requires ongoing training, investment in new equipment, and the development of new workflows to ensure our digital archives remain accessible and secure in the long term.
What type of collaborations do you undertake with other European archives?
We actively engage in collaborative efforts with other European archives through various channels. Our involvement is particularly strong in key organisations, with our CEO Michal Bregant currently serving as President of the Association des Cinémathèques Européennes (ACE), and our active participation in various committees of the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF). We do undertake joint restoration projects, exemplified by our work on Extase, a film with Czech, Austrian, German, and French versions. This challenging restoration required careful selection of source materials, with our team focusing on the Czech version while Filmarchiv Austria handled the Austrian version. A similar collaborative approach is being applied to our ongoing restoration of the 1929 silent film Erotikon. Beyond these specific projects, we regularly exchange expertise and best practices with our European counterparts, participate in international conferences and workshops, and collaborate on exhibitions and screenings. These partnerships not only enhance our capabilities but also contribute to the broader preservation and promotion of European cinema heritage.
What were the reasons for restoring The Murder of Mr Devil / Vrazda ing. Certa, and what were the practical processes to ensure it was presented in its best version?
We chose to restore The Murder of Mr Devil due to its unique place in Czech cinema history and mainly its artistic merits. The restoration process was comprehensive and meticulous, beginning with a careful inspection and repair of the original film elements. We then proceeded with a 6.5K scan of the original camera negative to create a digital foundation for our work. The digital restoration phase addressed various forms of damage and degradation that had occurred over time. Colour grading was a crucial step, ensuring that the restored version matched the original cinematography as closely as possible. Parallel to the image restoration, we undertook sound restoration from an original sound negative to preserve the film’s sound quality. The process culminated in the creation of new 4K preservation masters and digital copies, safeguarding this important work for future generations and enabling its presentation to modern audiences.
The stars of The Murder of Mr Devil also feature in The Cassandra Cat / Až přijde kocour, which has risen to wider cult status since its restoration in 2021 – has the popularity of The Cassandra Cat impacted the types of films NFA looks to restore – can the presence of a cat influence you – or has it opened up audiences to the broader possibilities of Czech cinema?
The success of The Cassandra Cat has certainly highlighted the international appeal of Czech cinema from this era. While we don’t necessarily prioritise films based on the presence of popular actors or even cats, the renewed interest has encouraged us to look at other films from the same period and creative teams. It has also opened up opportunities to introduce international audiences to a broader range of Czech cinema, helping us showcase the depth and diversity of our film heritage.
All archives have passion projects that maybe won’t be top of the list for restoration or are necessarily going to be commercial hits even with the established international cinephiles or fan groups, so what are those titles for you?
While I can’t speak for everyone at the archive, personally, I’m passionate about preserving and restoring some of our lesser-known experimental avant-garde films from the 1920s and 1930s, e.g. by Alexander Hackenschmied and Jiří Lehovec. These works may not have broad commercial appeal, but I believe they represent important artistic movements and provide insight into the infancy of experimentation in Czech cinema. If everything goes as expected, the films will be digitally restored this year. Additionally, I’m keen on restoring some of our postwar documentary films in the future, as this type of cinema has also been overlooked with respect to returning films back to the big screen.
Is there one common misconception about film preservation or archiving that you would like to dispel?
One common misconception is that once a film is digitised and stored in the digital archive, the preservation work is done. In reality, digital preservation comes with its own set of challenges and ongoing responsibilities. Digital files require constant maintenance, migration to open formats, and careful management to ensure long-term accessibility. Additionally, we still need to preserve the original film materials as they often contain information that current digital technology can’t fully capture, and until it can, it appears we are sentenced to redo the restorations every decade or so. Nevertheless, we care for the film materials not just to maintain a source for the digitization process, but mainly to preserve these original cultural objects for posterity, as in preserving the Sumerian clay tablets which also have been already translated, digitised, rewritten, etc. Reformatting media is an infinite process, thus we always need access to the originals, while they last.
Weird Weekend present the UK premiere of Národní filmový archiv’s new restoration of The Murder of Mr Devilon Friday 26th July, 2024, part of our monthly screening series at OFFLINE, Glasgow.Tickets are available here.
Find out more about Národní filmový archiv’s work at their website here. Visit their shop for discs, books and merch here (we particularly recommend their Cassandra Cat tees).
Jiřina Bohdalová as Ona/She, in The Murder of Mr Devil (Ester Krumbachová, 1970)
Function, allure and even murder. From housewives to manic pixie dream girls, the humble tights (or nylons, pantyhose, hoses – your preference, really1) have enjoyed a cinematic representation any star would envy. One such time capsule of the interwoven nature of nylons on film is Ester Krumbachová’s The Murder of Mr Devil(1970). Despite the implied supernatural elements at play otherwise, The Murder of Mr Devil highlights a gorgeous intersection of practical fashion and seductive personal style. Arguably, Ona’s2 (Jirina Bohdalová) consistent commitment to opaque black tights is born from necessity, as the only window in her flat seems to be consistently open (or have no glass at all?). Choosing to sleep in a fetching mint-coloured negligee paired with thick, black tights suggests a determination to preserve her own subtly opulent style despite the cold.
From Sybil Seely’s thick, black undergarments in One Week (Edward F Cline, Buster Keaton, 1920) – an accurate depiction of the era’s necessary, sturdy housewifing attire – to generations of superhero films3, tights continue to tangle with cinema in the spin and drain of culture. Although tights, in various fabrics, forms and fashions, date back to as early as the 16th century, the rising hemlines of the 1920s saw a rise in their popularity – just in time for the new era of modern populist “sound” cinema. Tights, in classic black form, playful patterns and alluring sheer variants, have been captured on film across nations, classes and evolving trends.
The classique black tights, sheer or opaque, as the understated practical foundation or intimately suggestive fashion choice of (predominantly) women’s outfits, is the baseline of tights’ on-screen representation. But to limit their importance to simply practical items would be to omit some of their most interesting uses – and cinematic heritage – as indicators of personal style, identity-obscuring disguises and opportune murder weapons.
Poster for Black Tight Killers (Yasuharu Hasebe, 1966)
Mundanity as style or, perhaps more accurately, style despite mundanity, is exemplified in Ona’s commitment to tights as partners to her vastly varying hemlines, from micro to maxi, throughout The Murder of Mr Devil. Sybil Seely’s mid-calf plaid number paired with black tights in One Week is more plain than Ona’s also predominantly house-bound wardrobe. Tights as an item of allure can transform experiences and actions of mundanity. Ona’s legs in high-slit maxi dresses or full legs out in micro dresses are enhanced, not obfuscated, through the wearing of tights, bringing an intentional sensuality to daily mundane activities. Valérie Kaprisky as Ethel in La Femme Publique (Andrzej Żuławski, 1984) is another gorgeous example. Ethel transforms and traverses French domestic and the urban landscape in draped thigh-split dresses, revealing a suggestive lack of underwear.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, slits, or an explict erotic je ne sais quoi, isn’t necessary to ensure tights wow on screen. In fact, a skirt, or even bottoms, isn’t required at all. Judy Garland, as Jan Falbury, in Summer Stock (Charles Walters, 1950) delivers one of the most, if not the most, iconic moments for tights in cinema. Wearing a white shirt, black blazer, matching black fedora and only sheer black tights and heels on bottom, Garland belts out Get Happy. The sheer, perfect, tights contrast with the otherwise masculine, structured look without softening it, giving Garland as powerful and impactful a silhouette as the men in full suits alongside her.
Another powerful and impactful on-screen presence of black tights can be seen in the aptly named Black Tight Killers (Yasuharu Hasebe, 1966), with a gang of women utilising the practical nature of tights whilst still being able to cut an imposing shape in their matching leather jackets. A classic black tight, good enough to serve lunch in, good enough to kill in.
Ona’s only departure from classic black tights comes as she sits atop a large bag of raisins, gleeful in her fiendish activities, legs protruding from the thigh-high side splits of her floor-length brown dress. Her tights mirror this unbridled energy, a self-expression of freedom. Cinematic departures from plain tights often embody this type of woman, or girlish, freedom. Although not the first style trend/s to do so, a filmography encapsulating “twee” or, to be era-specific in the terminology, “indie” styles of (often young) women (somewhat leaning into the “manic pixie dream girl” trope) presents impressive and eclectic on-screen tights in varying patterns and colours; the blue tights of Jordana (Yasmin Paige) in Submarine (Richard Ayoade, 2011), Eve’s (Emily Browning) black polka dot tights in God Help The Girl (Stuart Murdoch, 2014), Enid’s red tiger-striped tights to match her monochrome red outfit in Ghost World (Terry Zwigoff, 2001) and, of course, Clementine’s (Kate Winslet) remembered/imagined childhood green tights in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004).
Indie/twee film tights in their natural home, Tumblr.
Tights as fashion items can convey personal identity but they can also be a useful tool in the obfuscation of identity. Tights4 as disguises for illegal activities, predominantly robberies in various forms, take on the purpose of distorting rather than enhancing personal features. Early examples of this visual shorthand for mischief, malice or both, seen in Plunder Road (Hubert Cornfield, 1957) and Strongroom (Vernon Sewell, 1962), have a rather unsettling quality about them. The tights in these instances create an opaque, smooth plane, devoid of recognisable characteristics, the contours of the faces beneath creating shadows which, in the black and white images, present as sinister, almost non-human.
Perhaps more likely to be recalled when thinking of this visual motif is the use of sheer tights, which do lesss to truly hide one’s identity and more to pull at and rearrange, in funhouse-mirror-style, existing features. Walter Grauman’s Lady in a Cage (1964) leans into this unsettling quality. As a gang terrorises a trapped, well-to-do woman, the uncanny nature of their faces distorted through tights lends further unease to their acts and intentions.
James Caan as Randall, in Lady in a Cage (Walter Grauman, 1964)
This can create comical non-concealment of identity, such as Nicolas Cage in Raising Arizona (Ethan Coen, 1987), with his character Hi McDunnough’s unmistakable features shining through. Another Cage pic, Wild At Heart (David Lynch, 1987), again leans towards the sinister in its use of nylons, with Cage’s short-lived partner Bobby Peru’s (Willem Dafoe) grotesque features emphasised by the not-nearly-thick enough barrier between him, his victims and us as the audience5. A special mention must also go to Tom Noonan as Francis Dollarhyde in Manhunter (Michael Mann, 1989), whose use of a sheer tight mask from his nose upwards seems to be used solely in aid of enhancing his creepy persona.
From the head of a murderer to their hands, tights can again be transformed, this time into weapons. Fetish content aside (e.g. Silk Stocking Strangler, William Hellfire, 2002), the use of tights as a weapon seems to come from the same place as their most basic use as clothing – practicality, since they are most often in reach as the victim is almost always a woman.Although not always, as highlighted in The Nylon Noose (Rudolf Zehetgruber, 1963), a tail of tights-based murders with far more bizarre, fantastical things happening alongside.
The Nylon Noose (Die Nylonschlinge, Rudolf Zehetgruber, 1963)
The Strangler (Burt Topper, 1964) draws inspiration not from the fantastic but from sadly horrific reality – the series of 13 murders, 1962-64, by a killer nicknamed The Boston Strangler6. Topper manages to reenact, with creative liberties, the real-life details of stockings as murder weapons in a sensualist and somewhat dehumanising manner to the (recently) deceased women, something for which cinema proves adept at unfortunately often. Fatal Pulse (Anthony J Christopher, 1988), a represenative example, draws on this theme of women as disposable items, beginning, in an almost parody of the slasher genre, with a topless blonde-haired woman scrambling from an assailant in her bedroom, only to be undone by her own white lace stockings.
Fatal Pulse (Anthony J Christopher, 1988)
The Stepford Wives (Bryan Forbes, 1975) sees the (implied) death of yet another woman, as the robotic duplicate of protagonist Joanna (Katharine Ross) twists tights taut in her hands, having been discovered. In this context, tights act as a tool of distancing from the violence the men of the town are undertaking upon their wives. Tights as tools of violence seem particularly gruesome, the weaponising of an inconspicuous object so closely tied to women’s daily lives, self-expression and sexual allure.
Katharine Ross as “Joanna”, in The Stepford Wives (Bryan Forbes, 1975)
Tights hold the ability to express the expected duality of womanhood – the dutiful housewife, whose aesthetics and dress are led by practicality and function, and the whore, dressed only to attract. Ona’s wardrobe and style in The Murder of Mr Devil doesn’t necessarily rest on tights, but they are the often overlooked foundation, a necessary element of life, like food or wooden furniture legs, without which everything becomes unstable.
Megan Mitchell
Weird Weekend present The Murder of Mr Devil on Friday 26th July, 2024, part of our monthly screening series at OFFLINE, Glasgow. Tickets are available here.
Specific styles and variants which fall into the broad ‘tights’ family have been limited or omitted in this article, including stockings and fishnets (as they relate to showgirls, sex workers, fashion subcultures and women’s sexuality) and footless tights/leggings, as they truly deserve their own attention, and even lengthy articles. ↩︎
Ona is simply “She” in Czech; we’ve retained the original language throughout for the purposes of readability. ↩︎
Iconic Adam West’s Batman (Leslie H Martinson, 1966) may be the go-to mental image for this, and arguably – although pretty thick and more legging-like – Christopher Reeve’s Superman (1978-1983). ↩︎
NB this could arguably fall exclusively under “stockings”. However, inclusion is permitted with the understanding that identification of tights vs stockings, post-robbery modification – i.e. if tights have been cut to allow for ease of use – would be difficult. ↩︎
Coincidentally, Frederick Elmes noted his somewhat experimental use of tights stretched across the camera’s lens to create a subtle, dream-like effect for Wild At Heart during a post-screening Q&A at NYC’s Metrograph, April 13th 2024. ↩︎
Other filmic adaptations of this crime include The Boston Strangler (Richard Fleischer, 1968) and Boston Strangler (Matt Ruskin, 2023). ↩︎
When you read Divinity director Eddie Alcazar saying, “There is no script for this film,”1 for most armchair experts, that’s a big, flapping red flag. According to DC Studios CEO James Gunn, shooting with unfinished scripts is “the number one reason for the deteriorating quality of feature films.” Since taking on his new role, Gunn’s vowed not to green light a film until it has a finished script. Hollywood’s endemic lack of respect for screenplays (and their creators) is so notorious, though, that the mission statement is news, rather than the insight. Akira Kurosawa is oft-quoted in the same vein:
“With a good script, a good director can produce a masterpiece. With the same script, a mediocre director can produce a passable film. But with a bad script even a good director can’t possibly make a good film.”
Of course, even the best scripts are far from sacrosanct. Film-makers often need to rip them up due to budget or scheduling constraints, unforeseen challenges with locations, or any other random adversities that impinge on production. Planned reshoots are standard stages in a big-budget film’s schedule and “we’ll fix it in post” a well-worn cliché. Even if all of those words make it to the edit suite as intended, whole pages, sequences, storylines can ultimately be stripped out, needs must.
Of his own accord, Barry Keoghan in Saltburn (Emerald F’nell, 2023)
Some of the most famous moments in popular cinema were unscripted or unplanned too, from now-notorious episodes in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (Steven Spielberg, 1984) and Saltburn (Emerald Fennell, 2023) to iconic lines like, “I’m walkin’ here!”, “Here’s Johnny!” and “Here’s looking at you, kid.”2 Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez’s screenplay for The Blair Witch Project (1999) was only 35 pages along and the dialogue intended to be entirely improvised, an approach which later influenced the production of Gareth Edwards’ Monsters (2010). Christopher Guest’s mockumentary ouevre showcases largely improvised dialogue, from Rob Reiner’s This Is Spinal Tap (1984), through his own Waiting For Guffman (1996) to Mascots (2016). And then there’s the improv-heavy, “line-o-rama” approach, proven and popularised by writer/producer/director Judd Apatow, where performers are given free rein in front of the camera to riff on and develop what’s on the page.
Closest to Divinity, in some ways, is Coherence, James Ward Byrkit’s well-received 2o13 sci-fi thriller, carefully planned but filmed without a script and with an improvising cast. Byrkit has explained:
Instead of a script I had my own 12-page treatment that I spent about a year working on. It outlined all of the twists and reveals, and character arcs and pieces of the puzzle that needed to happen scene-by-scene. But each day, instead of getting a script, the actors would get a page of notes for their individual character, whether it was a backstory or information about their motivations… The goal was to get them listening to each other, and engaged in the mystery of it all.3
Poster for Themroc (Claude Faraldo, 1973), by G. Dedieu
Other film-makers make a virtue of sparse or non-existent scripts, from page to screen. Screenplays are evidently much more than dialogue but, in those terms alone, there are films which are purposefully laconic. JC Chandor’s All Is Lost (2013) contains only 195 words in all its 106 minutes, and only 154 of those words for solo star Robert Redford.4 Luc Besson’s Le Dernier Combat (1983) contains only two. Not to entirely gloss over generations of silent movies (and their later tributes and homages), but there are many modern films that prioritise visual storytelling without aping young cinema. There are a number of films that indulge in sublingual dialogue, like Themroc (Claude Faraldo, 1973), Steve Oram’s Aaaaaaaah! (2015), Sasquatch Sunset (David Zellner, Nathan Zellner, 2024) or the gibberish stylings of Nude Tuesday (Armağan Ballantyne, 2022). There are more generally meditative works, works of slow cinema and, of course, the haiku-like screenplay for Walter Hill’s The Driver, “the purest I ever wrote”.
Excerpts from Walter Hill’s script for The Driver (1978)
However, the received wisdom is that to start production without a full script (consensus seems to be somewhere around 20-25,000 words, though they tend to be measured in pages, roughly one per-screen-minute) is to court certain disaster. Many notable box office successes with a reportedly slipshod approach to pre-preparedness – e.g. Iron Man (Jon Favreau, 2008)5, Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975)6, Gladiator (Ridley Scott, 2000)7 – contradict that, though. And recently, Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie method for developing the Mission: Impossible films has flipped the concept on its head, purposefully devising, developing and even shooting the action set-pieces before a narrative framework has been decided in order to make sense of them.8
For Alcazar, though, shooting without a full script is simply a different mode of film-making, hewing more closely to his voluminous storyboards and informed by the stop-start nature of his production, principle photography stretching to a year, “over the course of seven different shoots.” As he describes:
I shot a bit, edited for two or three months, then shot again, because I wasn’t really confined by a script. I had my storyboards, but I wanted to leave it open for new and fresh ideas.My biggest goal is try to figure out a way to make films that don’t deny any creative ideas. It just sucks when you’re like, “Damn, I should have done this.”9
Actors, inevitably, had to sign on without even the promise of a standard blueprint. Lead actor Stephen Dorff was given just 30-40 pages of a script for Divinity, from which he then observed Alcazar “embellishing the idea”1. For Bella Thorne, in the admittedly much smaller role of Ziva, there was no script at all. Noting Divinity was also shot on film11, Dorff concluded, “[Alcazar] basically took some of the most challenging things and decided to make a movie with all of them. But that is what makes Eddie Eddie, and what makes this film dynamic and exciting.”
We’re used to hearing about how central storyboards and pre-vis are to modern film-making, especially fantastic or genre cinema, so perhaps it’s easy to imagine a tightly-visualised production where the action is locked down and the dialogue either spontaneous or superfluous, depending where we find ourselves on the spectrum of Alcazar’s “fresh ideas”. According to Divinity cinematographer and frequent Alcazar collaborator Danny Hiele, though, that’s not quite the case:
We did have storyboards, but they serve more as a general reference rather than a shot-for-shot blueprint. When the actors are on set and run through a scene, that’s when things really take shape. The storyboard informs us of basic needs like close-ups or wide shots. In essence, it’s like free jazz: we have a team and a general theme, and we improvise within that framework without going off on a tangent.
A key way that Divinity differs from Coherence, say, is that it was funded entirely, albeit modestly, by Steven Soderbergh, with no conditions. The results, inevitably, speak for themselves, but one through line in the praise and criticism of Divinity is the conclusion (or perhaps concession?) that it’s “best understood as a vibe”12, in the broader grand tradition of midnight movies – it needs to be experienced, among people, not read like a book – though perhaps that’s an easy shrug to “style-over-substance” criticism.
One thing we can assume, for better or worse, is that Divinity is exactly the film Alcazar (whose background is in VFX and 3D animation) wanted to make, whether he knew it or not. Curiously, though, for such an evidently auteurish approach, one of Alcazar’s drivers is the desire to cede control. Eschewing a more traditional script was a deliberate step towards that:
In visual effects, you do have full control over everything. You’re literally working in a 3D space where every character is a puppet. You move them frame by frame and you look at every detail. The reason I got into filmmaking was just so I don’t have to do all that stuff. With characters especially, I want to be surprised. I want people to surprise me with their performances, or whatever area they’re in while we create the film.13
So, no-script film-making is not new, nor is it necessarily out-of-fashion, but it’s still rare to intentionally barrel into principal photography with no script and no intention to write one. In this regard, the teachings of Scott Shaw, author, actor, filmmaker, composer, artist, journalist, photographer, blogger, erstwhile martial artist and proponent of Zen Filmmaking14, are instructive. In his own words:
The impetus for the birth of Zen Filmmaking occurred after the first weekend of production on The Roller Blade Seven. [Director Donald G Jackson] and I were very disappointed with the performances of the massive cast we had hired to take part in the film. We looked at each other and realized that the majority of them did not have the talent to truly pull-off the roll of the character they had been assigned. With this, we came to a realization to just go out and film the movie, not expect anything from our cast and crew, and make up the story as we went along. After a few days of this style of production, I had a realization, based in my lifelong involvement with eastern mysticism. I looked at Don and said, “This is Zen. This is Zen Filmmaking.” And, that was it.
Poster for Legend of the Roller Blade Seven (Donald G Jackson, 1992)
The foundation of Zen Filmmaking, and the guiding principle of each of the 161 films Shaw has directed since his first solo Zen Film, Samurai Vampire Bikers From Hell (1992), is…no foundation. More practically, no screenplay, as Shaw explains:
First of all, and perhaps most importantly, from a philosophic perspective, screenplays keep you locked into a stagnate mindset. If your film is created around a screenplay, then your cast and crew are very reluctant to allow things to change. But, if you go into a project with simply an overview of a story idea, then your project becomes free and new inspiration is allowed to occur at any moment. And, believe me, from someone who has made a lot of films, you never know what new inspiration will strike or what great unexpected situation will present itself when you get to your location, have your cast in place, and are open minded about what you will actually film.
The other reason to not use a screenplay is based upon the fact that in your mind’s eye you can write a great story, have it set in elaborate locations, and acted out by great actors. For anyone who has ever been on a low-budget movie set, you quickly see that this is not the case. So, what occurs by writing an elaborate screenplay is that you are only setting yourself up for disappointment. But, with no screenplay, you are free. Any production is allowed to happen as it happens and become what it becomes.
Shaw has developed six tenets of Zen Filmmaking which guide and shape his practice and that you can explore at his website, here. “If you acutely plan your productions, with screenplays, storyboards, and locations,” he argues, “there is no room for the instantaneousness of Cinematic Enlightenment to occur.” He concludes, “In Zen Filmmaking, nothing is desired and, thus, all outcomes are perfect.”
Sean Welsh
Weird Weekend present Divinity on Friday 28th June, 2024, part of our monthly screening series at OFFLINE, Glasgow. Tickets are available here.
Eddie Alcazar, as told to Constanza Falco Raez, flaunt.com↩︎
Casablanca famously commenced shooting with only half a script; the equally famous “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship” was dubbed by Bogart a month after filming concluded. ↩︎
James Ward Byrkit, “How Gotham Nominee James Ward Byrkit Made ‘Coherence’ in 5 Days with No Script or Budget”, Indiewire↩︎
Ref star Jeff Bridges, “They had no script, man. They had an outline. We would show up for big scenes every day and we wouldn’t know what we were going to say. We would have to go into our trailer and work on this scene and call up writers on the phone, ‘You got any ideas?'” (as reported by Gizmodo) ↩︎
Ref screenwriter Carl Gottlieb, “It was not at all locked in. We had enough to start shooting the first ten days. I was writing frantically ahead of schedule… If I wasn’t on call as an actor that day I was holed up in the cabin writing the rest of the movie.” (Money Into Light) ↩︎
Ref star Russell Crowe, “It had 21 pages when we started shooting…it’s the dumbest possible way to make a film.” (BBC Radio 1) ↩︎
Ref Writer/Director Christopher McQuarrie, “There’s that little GIF of Wallace And Gromit, and Gromit is putting the track in front of the train. That’s very much what making Mission: Impossible is.” (Empire Magazine) ↩︎
It’s about life, death, and rebirth – those are the main themes that surround it. It’s about a character named Jaxxon (Stephen Dorff), who ends up creating a chemical called Divinity. It enables people to become pretty much immortal, at least physically immortal. But it’s a work-in- progress, the mind aspect hasn’t been fully figured out, so minds are deteriorating the same as normal, but everyone is physically in their prime. Another side-effect is that you can’t reproduce when you’re taking the chemical, so people taking it must choose… either to live forever or give life.
Can you talk about the themes within the film?
I guess everybody has their own interpretation of the afterlife, what life and rebirth is. Mainly, I use these themes for people to think and ask questions about them, and kind of just dive into them deeper; not necessarily answering how it should be. It was mainly to pose these questions.
Can you talk about the sibling brother relationships in the film?
Between Moises and Jason – They’re star children, these brothers that were made from stardust, and they have one sole purpose. I don’t know if this is revealing too much, but pretty much they were created to maintain balance in the universe. They are sent to this planet where they sense something that is causing a disturbance, which is Divinity. They’re there to save the planet so it doesn’t self-destruct.
How did this amazing cast come together? Have you worked with any of the talent previously?
I like working with new talent to see where their instincts lie. We had a basic treatment and then we used storyboards. So, I put all these on a wall and then I brought these actors in that I admired, and that I thought fit well with the project, and then I kind of went through the whole entire film with them on the wall. So, they pretty much got a firsthand look at the film, not necessarily what you interpret from words but literal drawings of how the shot is angled and everything, from these storyboards. That created a conversation, and they were either down for it or not, but pretty much everyone that I wanted I was able to get for it, and they were excited to try something different.
Karrueche Tran as Nikita in Divinity (Eddie Alcazar, 2023)
What was the biggest challenge making the film?
Resources are always tricky. And I think, when you’re creating something like this film, which I feel hasn’t been done, we’re all kind of coming together to explore a new way of creating films, but also how we tell them. I think we were ready for it and we knew it was going to be challenging. It’s tough obviously when you don’t have a lot of money or resources to make things easier with time or added manpower. All we had was kind of persistence with people that were able to still see the end to the finish line and do whatever possible to get it there.
Was there a particular scene that stands out in your mind when you were shooting the film?
Not anything in particular. I mean, everything was just kind of equally nuts, but I think overall the creature transformation that Dorff goes through was pretty unique and different, and challenging at the same time.
Stephen Dorff as Jaxxon in Divinity (Eddie Alcazar, 2023)
Can you talk about the decision to shoot the film in black and white?
The last couple films I did, at least in short form, were also in the same aesthetic and I wanted to explore it in the longer form – wanted to see if it would hold up. I wanted to utilise all the stuff I learned with my shorts into something bigger. I’ve only heard of a couple of films that have ever been shot on our specific format – the black and white reversal, it’s kind of a unique stock that Kodak had to make specifically for us.
How did Steven Soderbergh become involved with the film? Was there any great advice he gave you during the production?
He was executive producer on my last film Perfect and from there our relationship grew and one day we were talking, and he just offered to fund my next idea. It was really just as simple as that. He didn’t really ask what it was about or anything specific, it’s just this amount of money and I can do just whatever with it, which was pretty amazing but also that’s a lot of pressure on your shoulders, to make sure it gets the money back and it makes him happy creatively. I always text him here and there about specific little things but as far as creativity I think he wants me to find it on my own, he doesn’t really influence any of that.
How did DJ Muggs get involved with the project?
So, there are two composers, DJ Muggs and Dean Hurley. Dean had worked with him on one of his albums before and he put me in touch with him, and we met. This is the first time DJ Muggs is really scoring a film, so he was really excited. I showed him some of the footage and it just seemed like it was just a perfect fit for him to explore some of these ideas and work with Dean again. I’ve been a big fan of his since I was a kid.
Thanks to Utopia
Weird Weekend present Divinity on Friday 28th June, 2024, part of our monthly screening series at OFFLINE, Glasgow. Tickets are available here.
This is the advertising maxim that arms Divinity throughout and is the plate on which it’s served: Modern Life Has Become Fatalistically Obsessed With Itself.
Set deep in the glistening, eerie hills of an unnamed American desert, Divinity is a film that feels so new and oblique, it feels weird to contemplate. Focusing on the story of two celestial brothers that arrive on Earth to kidnap and punish Jaxxon (a jittering, pissed off Stephen Dorff), the creator and researcher of Divinity: A product that enhances life to the point of immortality. To add to the rotating ethical quandries floating around his great research mansion – a neo-brutalist cave shaped like an isopod – is call girl Nikita with a perhaps seraphic fertility and Jaxxon’s turbo-shredded brother Rip, the face of the product.
Already, as I’m describing this to you, it feels like I’m straightening it too much. Rigidity doesn’t exist here.
Divinity’s world is one, twice removed and three steps in front of our future, but it feels there to goad us into copying its shape. An experimental mood-piece world where every advert is entirely sexualizing things like cereal, or selling you sex wholesale. A pulsing, horny, body-obsessed grotesquerie that wants you to have sex in front of the TV before you purchase. Chemical betterment to to a completely othered mass audience. A world where heavenly stars become inquisitors of Man, and reproduction is caged in a near-new-age etherea cult whose harem exist as apparitions in the opaque. Perfect beings that live in a chrysalis of purity. Of course, the story is told in the desert, the great Mecca for drug adventurism and cult retreat. Cities are so jejune when the glittering stars above aren’t able to locate the darknesses in Man’s heart as it commodifies aging (or lack thereof). Divinity the product is treated as a ubiquitous brand name, both accessible but luxurious. Free samples if you buy Laundry Detergent, and concentrated small-batch fineries for the wealthy. A decadence for every home, but a decadence nonetheless. To see characters defy the tides of time with the elixir, after we see a biblically-accurate angel in static in the opening minute, feels like we truly misunderstand aging. We are the crumbling visage of the universe and our beauty is returning to it.
Divinity (Eddie Alcazar, 2023)
The film exercises a dark looseness. It shakes its legs, stretches, curls an iron but it never feels that it has to deliver itself as a solid piece. There are small segments of lust philosophy, in which Nikita explains sex and desire to the brothers, set to a shimmering soundtrack. A great, utterly indulgent aural segment that lets us breathe in the dust rather than ingest it. There are biblical allusions to the brothers, especially in terms of their father’s work, how he passed and its effect on them. We’re given heady notes on medical research that considers human life and its origins as fertile grounds for moral manipulation, if you can bend your light around the FDA and highground naysayers. The sludging masses, reflective of Opioid crisis, Social Media influencers, the ’80s-body-obsessed-carryover and chemical abduction of the soul take hold on your attention throughout. A close cousin to Panos Cosmatos’ Beyond The Black Rainbow, but less evasive in its abstractions. Even in amongst this, there are stopmotion fights, depictions of heaven, souls escaping the body, muscle-bound butlers in shock collars and small sections featuring Scott Bakula. It’s all messy and curious but it never feels like we’re being lectured. It’s a fluid, experimental sci-fi body-horror that focuses on sharpening its body as a blade, not particularly its mind.
Divinity (Eddie Alcazar, 2023)
Speaking of which, Divinity is truly one of the great looking and sounding modern sci-fis. I can’t remember anything more stark and evocative in an age. High-grain monochrome Eraserhead-like 16mm film stock that’s been pushed with cheap developer. Something closer to a perfume advert for nightmares over anything else. Whirring, chittering primitive technology, robust in its texturing with a CRT TV tube softness and heavy keyboard shunking. Lots of oscilloscope scanlines raking across the screen. A true, monolithic colour grading that makes the stars look like glittering acne in the night sky and creates grey-blushed dusks. Such brutal textures making everything formulate forthwith from shadows like it’s unsticking itself from glue. The desert transforms at times into a dreamy coal beach, the score itself resting on the extremities of waveforms. Sometimes it sounds like shimmering alien-fires that lift you from within, and at times it turns into frightening industrial technique, overpowering your engine and threatening to turn you into metal. Dean Hurley, frequent David Lynch collaborator, and DJ Muggs, Cypress Hill producer (yes, that Cypress Hill), have such a sense of textural idealism, their work feels like it deepens shadows and licks whatever gritty highlights are available to it. An eerie, mystical soundscape that crushes philosophy and power into diamonds. To truly sand off the edges, there is also a closing credits song by a legendary sci-fi rapper that I won’t reveal, but please stay for.
FUCKKKYOUUU is age-restricted, so we can’t embed it here – watch on YouTube!
It would make sense that director Eddie Alcazar would collaborate with someone like Flying Lotus for a short film entitled FuckkkYouuu, which showcases his proclivities for shadowy strangeness, body contusion and frightening soundscapes, but what really puts my ears back is seeing Steven Soderbergh, Hollywood’s busiest man (I’m personally convinced there are three of him), nestled in the credits as Executive Producer. He has worked previously with Alcazar on his first film, Perfect (2018), but in Divinity I see things that Soderbergh would feel need championed, reflecting his own themes that dominate the politics of his films. Industrial capitalism, commodification of the soul, the deformity of gain and how people become products if we let ourselves be glamoured by vapid idealism. He’s always championed independent film, and with Alcazar it feels like he’s found his weird little guy to use as a reflector of himself: a proud visualist and always finding form to put light on a theme before it scuttles away like a cockroach.
In all the film’s notably and, according to Alcazar, fluid and improvised dialogue, there is one line that lacquers the film more than any. Nikita saying to the Stars:
“Live forever or give life. Pleasure over love”.
Please consider your future before it considers yours for you.
The Reptile House
Weird Weekend present Divinity on Friday 28th June, 2024, part of our monthly screening series at OFFLINE, Glasgow. Tickets are available here.
The Reptile House is the alias of Findlay, which is the nickname of the author himself. A banner under which all collective writing, art, submissions and soon-to-be-screenings is nestled. Reflected in the dark terraces of The Reptile House is cinematic pain and oscillations coming from old Adidas brochures. Always open to collaboration. @antibloom (Follow Findlay on Letterboxd)
Frank Jaffe is the founder of Altered Innocence, the US film distributor specialising in “edgy and artistic foreign, queer, and coming-of-age cinema,” including WW-programmed films Sextool and She Is Conann. Originally from Pennsylvania, Frank moved down to Florida for high school and college, where he studied fashion merchandising (“very Legally Blonde”) and made his first steps into cinema and festival programming. In honour of our screening of She Is Conann, from Altered Innocence favourite Bertrand Mandico, we spoke to Frank, fresh from Cannes, about his path into film distribution, his label’s ethos and a wee bit on our favourite film of 2024, Vera Drew’s The People’s Joker.
[WW] How do you describe Altered Innocence?
[Frank ] My simple explanation these days is it’s kind of a boutique film distribution company specialising in LGBTQ and coming of age cinema. That’s the logline. When I was younger, working at Strand Releasing and I formed this company, it was kind of like a way to put out movies I knew were never going to come out. And also I’m a Blu-Ray nerd, so there were certain movies Strand would pass on and I would watch them and be, like, “Oh, my God, this is so gorgeous. I get why this can’t maybe get a theatrical release, you know, it’s kind of a smaller title, but, oh, my God, this looks so good on my TV, with Blu-Ray.”
So, that’s kind of how it started off. And then kind of filmmakers naturally got in touch with me, like Yony Leyser for Desire Will Set You Free. And then I distributed his documentary Queercore. So, it kind of started off more coming of age, beautiful cinematography like Violet by Bas Devos and Concrete Night by Pirjo Honkasalo, and then it evolved more LGBT because I am queer, so, that was kind of what happened. And essentially the label’s just been movies I like, and usually movies I like are movies other cinephiles like as well. So, I’m usually able to just connect on that level. And I don’t put out movies I don’t like. So, usually there’s a trust that is getting built with people that like the brand. And I think it’s also about just forming a community, finding other like-minded cinephiles and building that cool queer community.
And then, later on, I got into theatrical releasing and the company’s just expanded a lot. But originally it really was just very boutiquey, very, like, me hanging out in the aisles of Blockbuster, looking at all the weird coming of age films from labels like Picture This and TLA and Strand Releasing and things like that. So that’s kind of the aesthetic, you could say – it’s just modernised a little bit.
[WW] Did you find your way to it via your film festival work?
[Frank] It’s actually even simpler than that. We had a cinema on campus. It was about 300 seats, stadium seating, 35mm projection. And we would meet every week to programme it. I started this gay and lesbian film festival while I was there at college. And then one summer I interned at both Strand Releasing and Regent Releasing, which is now closed. That was part of Here TV. So I was very, very interested during college. And then, when I moved out to LA, I somehow got a job at Outfest for a season, for their film festival. And then right after it was over, somehow there was an opening at Strand Releasing, and that’s how I got in. You know, you always joke, with these small little distro companies, you kind of have to kill someone to get in. But it just so happened that one of the employees was leaving and it was just right place, right time.
[WW] Was your role at Strand similar to what you do now?
[Frank] I mean, a little bit. I was more in the home video department, so I was at the base processing orders. We literally had a warehouse attached to the office, and I would send DVDs to Amazon and to all our wholesalers and everything like that. I was also in charge of setting up each home video release, making sure the art… you know, eventually doing the art. I learned on the job how to do DVD and Blu-Ray authoring and helped out a little bit with acquisitions. Ultimately, Marcus and John, who run the company, were the main acquisitions people, but there were certain films I begged them to acquire, one of which was Yann Gonzalez’s first film, You and the Night. I begged them. I was like, “No, we have to do it.” And then, of course, they didn’t even give it a theatrical release. They just put it out on DVD and VOD, which was a little sad. I see where they were coming from a little bit, but I also disagree with it because I would have put that out in cinemas.
[WW] And now you’re in a position to put a film out in cinemas only because it deserves to be?
[Frank] Oh, yeah. Absolutely, I do, and the most difficult thing I am finding these days is that, when I started the company, it was very easy for me to tell sales agents and filmmakers, “I don’t do much theatrical, so this is only home video, but it’ll be a great home video release.” But now, because everyone knows I do theatrical releasing, the hardest thing I found is sometimes I think a title is probably just more suited for home video and I’d probably lose quite a bit of money on the theatrical, but it’s hard for me to tell the filmmaker. I think it has impacted some of my decisions, unfortunately. But I’m trying to get back to that and maybe just be more honest with the filmmakers. And if they hate me, they hate me. But I think I do want more films to get a release. Maybe I do have to be more honest. I don’t know!
[WW] How self-conscious is your curation now? Like, is there a distinction between “an Altered Innocence film” and a “Frank” film?
[Frank] It’s all Frank, Altered Innocence, it’s both, intermingled. It is me, so… I mean, there’s a couple films I’ve picked up where I’m just like, “Oh, I might not love it, but it does fit the brand. I think enough people will like it.” I have done that a few times. There’s certain films where, if I watched it at home, I’d probably be like, “Eh, three stars. I won’t watch it again.” You know, “Three out of five, it was fine. Whatever.” But because it does fit the mold a little bit more and could help the bottom line, help me release other cooler films, yeah, I’ve picked them up and I’ve put them out and, uh… They’re not bad films, but, yes, I have done that a little bit.
[WW] Have you got to the point of anyone pulling your sleeve with films you have to put out, as you did at Strand?
[Frank] Yeah, I get recommendations all the time, and some of them are really good recommendations. I mean, 100%, absolutely. I’ve even gotten pitches from filmmakers, randomly. That’s how I got A Dim Valley. That was a film I loved and I hadn’t heard of it. And the filmmaker emailed me, Brandon Colvin, who’s the biggest sweetheart ever. He just pitched it to me, I watched it, and I was just like, “Damn, this movie is so good.” And that’s happened. So I’ve gotten a filmmaker pitch and that was great.Yony Leyser was the same way. I’ve gotten tons of recommendations from other people, and that’s kind of motivated me to look for, like… Or it’s a film I’d seen a long time ago and then somebody who reminds me about it, and that motivates me to be like, “Okay, let me look for the rights. Let me see if it is available.” And of course, sales agents, when I go to these big film festivals, they’ll pitch me a title that I wouldn’t normally, like be like, “Oh, 100%, I’m going to watch that.” And then they convince me and then I watch, and I’m like, “Oh, no, they’re right,” you know, “that was that was pretty good.”
[WW] What is your process for sourcing / selecting titles for distribution? How much it is based on festival research, say, versus screeners you’ve been sent, existing relationships, independent research and/or films you’ve always loved and had in your pocket, so to speak?
[Frank] I think literally it’s kind of 25% across everything you’ve mentioned. Like 25%, it’s filmmakers I’m tracking, 25%, it’s sales agent pitches, 25%, it’s old films that I’m just like, literally, I’ve seen this film. I love it. So now I’m researching who the heck has it, where can I find it? And then the other 25% was sales agent pitches. When I go to these big film festivals, they send me the emails, like, “Here’s our slate.” And I’ll look for the gay titles or the, you know, cool, like… I always love seeing a still image that actually has like good cinematography. I’m like, “Okay, that’s that’s interesting to me.” And unique sounding scripts. I’m definitely more of a script guy – script and cinematography – than anything else.
And then, with Bertrand, because I’ve been following him for a while, I’m just constantly salivating for whatever he’s putting out next. I mean, he’s just one of the coolest guys working in cinema today. And so whenever he has another film, I’m extremely excited. Like, even for this one, the premiere was somewhere I couldn’t go. I knew the sales agent pretty well, I’d worked with him a few times and he’s the kind of sales agent that really wants you to see the film on the biggest screen possible. He doesn’t really want you to watch it on a screener. So for this one, She Is Conann, it was crazy, we actually organized like a private screening in LA, just for me. It was, like, insane. I probably can’t mention the cinema that did it for us, because they basically let me do it for free, which was so cool as well. We’ve got a great cinema culture in LA and there’s a lot of great theaters here that know that I’m doing small films and definitely sympathize with that. And so they just let me watch it at like noon on a Tuesday in their theatre. It was so cool.
[WW] What’s the most fun part for you? Is it hunting for rights?
[Frank] Hunting for the rights is pretty fun. I like meeting all these new people and finding avenues for collaboration. I think I just enjoy getting everything put together – you know, finding the perfect artist to work on the front cover art, and I always love the process of of massaging the trailer because I love trailers. I love coming up with a really sexy trailer. There are certain trailers where I’ll commission them and I’ll just know, at the end of the process, I’ll be like, “Wow, this is a trailer I’m probably going to watch like 200 times in my life, and I really enjoy it.” The best recent example’s probably The Wounded Man trailer. That’s a trailer I watch a lot. It’s a great one. But I have a lot of other good trailers. Concrete Night, Violet. I have this one trailer editor, I went to school with him, and he always creates great trailers for us. I don’t know, I kind of love the act of finally getting the Blu-Ray authored and then popping it into my player and watching it. That’s always really cool. It just looks so good. The final package. I like just seeing it all finally be, like, “Okay, it’s on my TV, it’s real.” And imagining other people doing the same thing, which is always really cool. That was such a big part of my childhood, DVDs and Blu-Rays, so it’s always cool to have that feeling of contributing to that culture.
[WW] Do you enjoy the sense of curating someone’s evening?
[Frank] No, I actually have a disconnect with how people run their lives, to be honest. So that that is not the exciting part for me. Literally, I’m so disconnected. I’m in my own little cocoon world, so picturing that, that doesn’t excite me, but I guess I just get excited by the idea of people enjoying cinema and, especially on Blu-Ray, enjoying really high quality. Basically, like, being in a cinema, is the quality. Not to brag, but I’m a really good video encoder and I actually pay a lot of attention to… I’ve kind of got one of those eyes that if there is compression artifacts, it bothers me. Low video quality really bothers me. That’s why I’m always shocked that people still can watch DVDs. You know, maybe I should wish for that eye, the eye that ignores all the issues. Some people live their lives blissfully ignorant of compression artifacts and things like that. Like, whenever a scene goes to dark and there’s all these blocky… I’m, like, dying. Like, I feel like it’s bullets riddling my body. And there’s a lot of Blu-Rays out there that are really badly encoded. I don’t want to name names, but a lot of people who put out movies, they kind of just hire a random Blu-Ray authoring place and they just do a really bad job. And it just, urgh, it bugs me.
[WW] Some people don’t even register wrong aspect ratios, when characters’ faces are not human shapes…
[Frank] I had that with Wild Reeds. That was a victory for me. André Téchiné’s Wild Reeds, I put that out from StudioCanal. I always notice that – because the HD master had leaked a long time ago, somebody had put it out in France. I looked at it, and I was, like, “That doesn’t look right. That aspect ratio…” The faces were, like, squashed. They were like a little pencil-y. And so when I picked up the rights to it, convincing them so hard. I was like, “Can you please look at it?” And they were like, “The aspect ratio is correct.” I’m like, “Yeah, the bars are correct, but that doesn’t mean the aspect ratio’s correct.” They’re like, “Fine, we’ll go and we’ll look at a release print,” but they hated me. Then they got back to me a week later and were like, “You are correct, it is wrong. We are redoing it now.” And I was like, “Yes! I knew it!”
[WW] How do you judge success otherwise? Is it peer approval, sales…?
[Frank] Sales are great [for judging success]. A good example of sales making me excited and feeling like what I’m doing is good is my release of Equation to an Unknown, which me and Yann Gonzalez worked on very closely together. And, you know, we can’t quite figure out what it is – besides the fact the movie is very good – but sales of that one, it’s one of my top-selling titles, and it’s just so weird, because it’s this sadboi gay porn arthouse film, and it just keeps selling and we’re very, very, very thrilled about it. We think it might just be a good word of mouth title. We even got Slant to review it and they gave it a positive review. So maybe it’s just like a kind of wild card, kind of “it’s a porno film, but it’s arthouse. It’s arthouse porn!” And there’s very few of those, to be quite honest. But compare that to the Halsted set, which has only sold okay, I would say, and the Bressan Jr films, which has also just sold okay. And I’m like, “Well, Equation to an Unknown sold so well, why can’t the others?” So, trying to recreate that magic is sometimes difficult. But, yes, very satisfying to know that certain titles that you’re, like, “Well, that’s just something fun we’re doing and we know we’re probably not going to make that much on it, but whatever,” and then all of a sudden it does great, and you’re just like “Amazing, fabulous,” you know? And then we screened it at the New Beverly, you know, which was crazy, and we had a sold out crowd for that. It’s been a blast.
[WW] Distributors don’t always make it easy to book their films, particuarly in Europe, but you seem to make a point of it.
[Frank] Yes. Well, it comes from booking films, because when I did the film festival in college, I was doing the direct booking for that, and sometimes it was a little silly. Like, there was a short film fee and it was, like, $200 from a European distributor. I remember one time, luckily the college paid for it, but I remember for Norway, we were trying to get a film from there, and they were charging us, like, $1,000. It was also a wake up call just talking to these small town, small LGBT organizations and they just want to screen a film for 30 people, you know? And I’m going to try to let them. Obviously, I still need to make a little bit of money on it, but try to do that in the easiest way possible, because I want the films to get out there. And if you’re trying to start a small, little micro cinema, charging $5 tickets or $7 tickets, then I want you to grow that. I don’t want to stop you from growing. The more they succeed, the more I succeed. So that’s where it goes. And they’re small films. I don’t have this weird personality that it’s, like, “Oh, these are huge films! If you want them, you got to pay for them!” You know, they’re small.
[WW] Sometimes their rationale is because the film’s so small, that’s why they need to charge so much, because it’s their only chance to make money.
[Frank] Yeah. That’s not really my business model. I somewhat see where they’re going with that, but I think you can only charge that if it’s something so specialized that you just know people will pay for it, because “it never happens” or blah, blah, blah. I remember one of the hardest films I had to distribute, a few years ago, was Stop-Zemlia, which was a Ukrainian film. And of course, I distributed it right before the Ukrainian war started. So when the war started, I was getting so many requests to donate the film. And I had to balance that. I did, like, half donations, half, “Come on, just give me a little something,” like, “I don’t want to be a war profiteer here, but at the same time, I can’t give all the screenings away for free.” So that was a tough one to distribute and I still have not made money. That’s a film I’m very much in the hole on, unfortunately. Great film! I knew it when I picked it up that it probably was never going to make money, and it didn’t.
[WW] Is there something you wish people understood better about what you do?
[Frank] No. I’m fine. As long as people keep watching the films, I’m very happy. One of the fun things about this company is I don’t want to be an A24 or Neon. I want to stay small. I don’t like dealing with… How to say it? I guess I was just imagining A24 having, like, 500 employees. I’m like, “I don’t want 500 employees. I don’t want to deal with those lawyers and things like that.” You know, The People’s Joker was… I’ve had enough time with lawyers in the past year where I really, don’t want to do that anymore.
[WW] On The People’s Joker, when did you first realise it was something you wanted to release?Did you see it at Toronto?
[Frank] No, I remember I heard about it a little bit at Toronto, because one of the stars of the film is actually someone I worked with for years at Strand Releasing, Nathan Faustyn. So it was crazy, because I heard he was in this film, and then I heard it got pulled. When I was hearing about it, I didn’t dismiss it, I just remember thinking, “Oh, that sounds really cool. I’m sure some big distributor will do it. I’m not going to even think about it.” And then it literally disappeared from my mind. And then Outfest said they were going to play it. And that was kind of the comeback tour, Outfest, technically the US premiere. I got a ticket to it and I just watched it. And as I was watching it, I was just, like, “Oh, damn, this movie’s really good.” It felt dangerous and underground, and it felt like a movie that not every person would get, but the right people would get 100% – 110%. I’d heard that maybe there was a distributor, but then Vera, at the screening, was like, “We don’t have a distributor.” And then I was like, “Okay, I need to try.” And then me and Vera met up and we have very, very similar taste in movies and culture and, you know, anarchist ideas. And so it was pretty much, you know, a match made in purgatory. I don’t wanna say heaven. Movie heaven. And then we decided to work together.
And, you know, I was a little afraid, but not that afraid. When I was watching in the cinema, I was just, like, “Oh, my God, this is such a parody.” Like, “I don’t know [yet] if technically, 100%, legally, it is a parody, but for all intents and purposes, the filmmaker just, you know, made a parody film. So, I don’t see why this is an issue.” And, yeah, we just started working on it and it’s had its ups, it’s had its downs. But right now, we’re just so thrilled with the response. I’m usually not trawling Letterboxd every day. But during the theatrical release, I was trawling Letterboxd every day. Just every day, just quickly checking, like, “Was I right? Okay, I was right.” Then the next day, “Was I right? Okay. Yes, I’m still right.” Because I was just always worried that, somehow… Because we did a tiered release where we started one week only in New York, then we went to eight other major cities, and then we went to, like, 30 and then we went to, like, 80. So every time a new week came, I was just, “Oh, the smaller cities, they’re not going to get it.” Or, “Somehow, the DC heads are going to hear about it. They’re all going to go to the theater this week and hate it,” or something like that. But it never happened. Every week, we just constantly get positive reviews. And if people hate it, they’re shutting their mouths about it, which is what Vera always says at all the movie screenings. Like, “If you love it, tell all your friends. If you hate it, just don’t say anything.” We’re still trying to figure out international distribution. Obviously, we want everyone to see it, so it’s still a bit of a journey to go. It’s definitely not over, but it’s been really fun.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Weird Weekend presented She Is Conann on Friday 31st April, 2024, part of our monthly screening series at OFFLINE, Glasgow.
Find out more about Altered Innocence’s latest theatrical and disc releases here. Follow them on Instagram here.
She is Conann (2023) is a fantasy romp through barbarism, gore and spitty lesbian snogs. It reminds me of a sort of queer love child of Holy Motors (2012)and Highlander (1986). Surreal! Time Jumps! Episodic! Grotesque characters on a journey towards the inevitable! It is shot primarily in black and white, with flashes of technicolour in moments of emotional intimacy, at the flash of a gunshot, or bloodied frenzy. Director Bertrand Mandico immerses the audience in a stunningly designed series of worlds, shunning CGI for old-school, low-fi prop making, eerie prosthetics and lusciously dressed sound stages – hefty budget lines for latex, fake blood and foil. The moment horns emerge out of Conann’s nipples, piercing the skin and erupting like seedlings made me shudder and somehow my mouth wet. We meet Conann at different ages of her life, each played by a different actor and each world has a different aesthetic feel, with different (sexy) costume languages to match. The script is haunting (and very quotable), poetic and disgusting in equal measure. Moments in the film have stuck in me, heavy, violent, confronting.
All things considered, you seem ripe
We meet Conann at 15 – a slim, doe-eyed, beautiful, white girl who seems to have no agency in anything that happens to her. She’s captured by barbarians, and held in an (unlocked) cage… When Rainer (Elina Löwensohn) tells her to, she opens her cage door and simply walks out and poisons everyone. I find the early iterations of Conann hard to feel empathy for or with, she’s a blushing young girl and her actions unfold before her, guided by the hands of Rainer or others around her. She is a victim of external forces! Blindly enacting brutal violence as she goes! We don’t see her scheming, desiring, thinking or transgressing. There’s an interesting passivity to the context of her shoving a sword down another woman’s throat, it dripping with guts and bile as she pulls it out. What agency can and does she have to fall or not fall into violence when that is all she has known? Another example of a pretty, femme, white woman refusing responsibility for her own story?
She Is Conann (Bertrand Mandico, 2023)
Over iterations she evolves from beautiful vessel to agent of her own death. Each time she evolves, she violently kills the younger version of herself – and there’s something irresistible about this – it feels easy to recognise the impulse to slay the version of you that was not strong enough, brave enough, good enough. Younger Conann doesn’t fight hard – why would you, when standing in front of an older, sexier, harder, well-dressed version of yourself? Yes, let me become her. But underneath the new costume and despite the new actor, there is still a strong sense of fatalism and self-obsession that follows the character, her worlds feel small and the camera rarely lets us zoom out. She’s stuck in these sound stages where others enter as fodder for her to kill – like putting mice in a snake tank.
You’re disgusting!
The film’s POV is often Rainer’s – in a pivotal shift, we’re told Conann has many years of bliss in the Bronx with her lover, but we don’t see that. We rejoin Conann’s story only when Rainer reappears. Rainer acts as guide, and narrator, a Faustian hellhound at the heels of Conann and audience. To see the film as Rainer’s story paints an emotive journey – he’s with us, portrayed by the same actor – from start to finish, and we’re offered flashes of genuine vulnerability, for example his disappointment that Conann can’t see his photographs as art, longing for her recognition and approval. We meet Rainer’s half sister – a ghoulish figure with a mic – an unexpected hint towards a past, a childhood. Conann is marketed as a queer film and Rainer is in many ways trans coded – uses he/him pronouns and is played by a female actor with a noticeably femme voice; in one moment he is thrilled to grow breasts, marking his transition to barbarian. He is also ostracised, derided and insulted consistently, his desire for closeness is rejected and he makes sneaky moves to steal Conann from the beautiful cis girlfriend – he is the evil demon that brings hell wherever he goes, his vulgar, inhuman face of a dog frequently fills the frame. His moments of vulnerability and pain – seen often only by the audience – bring him no empathy or kinship in his world. Only in death he discovers he has a heart, something the audience could feel long before he discovered its presence. It’s hard to watch. At times it feels like that often troped and relentless media portrayal of gender queer people as othered, unloved and unrecognised by those closest to them. But the film does give him a lot of time and space, we sit with him a lot, and there’s depth to his brilliant characterisation by Löwensohn – there’s a case to be made this is his film.
Blessed are the necrophiliacs never betrayed by their love
Another queer element of the film is the plentiful lesbian snogging – and the love between Conann & Sanja. They sign away their all their memories so they can be together outside of hell’s grasp (relationship goals?). The snogs – sometimes between Conann and her older/younger self – are often in the same grotesque language as puking blood, disembodied limbs – in one there’s a close-up of two tongues sloppy and sliding over each other. In the film, love is swiftly followed by betrayal, intimacy with cruelty (usually some variant of brutal murder of the lover). In the world of Conann, things are bad and get worse. In the queer canon, this is a well-trodden path – lesbians having a terrible time, someone watches the woman she loves die horribly. Here we get to see traumas march Conann towards ever more gruesome acts of violence, seemingly immune to the emotional impact of it all, she redirects that grief into making sure that everyone else feels a hell of a lot worse than she should. There’s something (not just the hair) that reminds me of the San Junipero episode of Black Mirror. If inside you there are two wolves, one is Conann and one is San Junipero, choose (at your peril) which to feed.
She Is Conann (Bertrand Mandico, 2023)
Perhaps the time has come to disobey your mother, Conann
The film is rich in fluids – projectile vomiting huge quantities of blood, saliva dripping from cannibal mouths, teeth crunching down on ribs and flesh, milky gloop lacquering bodies, clots and guts sticking to freshly used swords. Even in black and white, Mandico lets us into the visceral pleasure/pain of cruelty. In many moments of violence, Conann has no regrets, few thoughts, a total disconnect from victim and context that allows us into the world of someone acting – on impulse? On desire? Or maybe just acting, just doing because she can, unrestricted by self control. Maybe that’s what got my heart rate up – what a fucking thrill it must be to just do. This ‘freedom’ is contrasted with the bookends of the film – Conann in hell, forced to eternally re-remember, re-find herself, re-play her story before forgetting and starting all over again. We see the horror and pain of re-meeting the worst parts of yourself, the grief of possibility as your actions are laid bare in front of you, unchanged, unflinching.
“A 14 berry coulis”
She is Conann is a rich, unpleasant, thrilling watch – it asks us to look at the parts of us we hope aren’t there and wouldn’t put on show. But a few days later, the images that still linger with me come from the very end of the film where the work speaks to something quite unexpected. The eldest Conann gathers a group of artists and tells them that she’s going to leave them her huge fortune – they’ll be set for life! They’ll be free to make the most radical art ever! They’ll finally have power and resource! But they have to eat her first. We watch them eat every last toe and pubic hair. The camerawork is sickening, the jewels stuffed into her eyeballs glisten, but it starkly brought me back to the real world conversations happening across the arts – who should artists or festivals accept or seek funding from (Baillie Gifford?) If you were offered power and resource to enact the change you make work about – would you take it, no matter where it came from? What makes a “consumable barbarian?”
LRG
Weird Weekend present She Is Conann on Friday 31st May, 2024, part of our monthly screening series at OFFLINE, Glasgow. Tickets are available here.
