all movies by date | Offscreen
8 March 2017
Grave
Justine is a dedicated vegetarian who starts veterinary school at the age of sixteen. When she is force-fed raw meat during a hazing ritual, a lingering taste for flesh takes hold of her, leading to her disturbing descent into cannibalism. A visceral coming-of-age story with a pungent aftertaste.
Grave - second screening
Justine is a dedicated vegetarian who starts veterinary school at the age of sixteen. When she is force-fed raw meat during a hazing ritual, a lingering taste for flesh takes hold of her, leading to her disturbing descent into cannibalism. A visceral coming-of-age story with a pungent aftertaste.
9 March 2017
Beauty and the Beast
Beauty, as popular wisdom will have it, is in the eye of the beholder. But here, that beholder is a mythical monster that forbids its prized possession to return its gaze. Dreamlike and ethereal adaptation that draws out the uncanny qualities of the original story and pities the antihero his inner turmoil.
The Story of Sin
Following his burst onto the scene of the French arthouse cinema, the director returned to his native Poland to shoot a film in the tradition of the naturalistic novel. Mood and outline are decidedly dismal, its point of departure the struggle of a woman left to fend for herself in the early 20th century.
The Mole Song: Hong Kong Capriccio
This sidesplitting movie by cult director Takashi Miike sees undercover agent Reiji infiltrating a yakuza gang. Posing as the personal bodyguard to the gang's leader, Reiji is having a harder time resisting the advances of the yakuza's 19-year-old daughter, whose innocent appearance hides a sadistic streak.
10 March 2017
The Cremator
The horrifying professional cremator in Herz's masterpiece would make a great Halloween character, and he'd be a knock-out. This baffling and darkly humoristic tale of a deranged institutional figure is made up in dizzy strokes of expressionist folly and is as disturbing as it is aesthetically gratifying.
The Greasy Strangler
While a greasy strangler creeps around town, the timid Brayden and his frisky old devil of a father Ronnie compete for the affection of ‘disco cutie’ Janet. Outrageous, juvenile and hilarious, this film is packed with absurd humour, fart jokes, and a giant penis to boot. An instant cult classic you can’t miss!
Dr. Caligari
Her uncontrollable nymphomania gets Ms. Van Houten locked up in a psychiatric clinic run by the sadistic Dr. Caligari. Theatrical and nonsensical dialogues, unreal sets bathing in eighties dayglo – this campy semi-sequel to the German Expressionistic classic is the closest thing to a legal hallucinogen.
Nightdreams
A film like a delirious wet dream drenched in the new wave aesthetics of the 1980s: surreal and iconoclastic hardcore featuring a lesbian threesome set to the tunes of Wall of Voodoo, a blowjob for a man hidden in a giant cream of wheat box, while a dancing slice of toast plays a saxophone in the background.
11 March 2017
The Little Mermaid
The pain and beauty of unrequited love marvellously combine in one of the most breathtaking and obscure examples of the Czech fairytale cinema, where staggering art and costume design vie with an equally brilliant electronic score. A pearl from the deep indeed.
Q&A with Stephen Sayadian
JJ Marsh (Erotic Film Society) delivers a talk on the end of the golden era of porn cinema. Inviting Stephen Sayadian on stage, they overlook his career: first as the artistic director of Hustler, then as a film director, with special attention for “Café Flesh”. Followed by a Q&A session with the audience. Free entrance.
Café Flesh
After a nuclear war, 99% of humanity is incapable of having intercourse at the risk of becoming violently ill. In the Café Flesh they force the healthy minority to perform bizarre sex acts on stage while they look on with both shock and desire. Post-apocalyptic avant-garde pornography and uncut cult mastery.
The Ninth Heart
'A fanciful rediscovery' is one way of putting it. A key fairytale in the oeuvre of The Dark Baron. Herz riffs on the concept of 'seeing anew with childlike wonder' in a concoction that features a pouty-lipped princess, a brave vagrant, a maleficent evildoer and nine children's hearts!
Tenemos la Carne
In a post-apocalyptic stage built of wood and gaff tape, two siblings meet a deranged hermit who drags them into his insanity. Debut feature of the young Mexican Emiliano Rocha Minter, this inventive graphic artwork will draw you into a fanciful and disturbing poem leaving no possible return.
12 March 2017
Three Nuts for Cinderella
A princess is no damsel in distress, not necessarily. Is there a fairytale character better suited to a narrative of female empowerment than Cinderella, working her way up from the dust she was raised in? This loveable rewriting thrills with a tomboy-heroine who is very much in charge of her happy ending.
Aloys
Private investigator Aloys keeps the world at arm’s length. At home, he obsessively watches his vast collection of surveillance tapes. His isolation comes to an abrupt end when a mysterious woman enters his life via telephone, pulling him into a mind game that allows him to discover an imaginary universe.
The Cat Who Wore Sunglasses
The circus comes to town in this vibrant and deliciously jazzy treat with Technicolor inserts! National comedy icon Jan Werich leads the dance as the magician stirring up trouble in a small, stuck-up village. Following in tow are a beautiful trapeze artist and her mischievous cat with a very special gift...
Morgiana
The blackest of black, the ultimate shade of noir, the high priestess of Gothic supreme: veils, coffins and the petrifying eyelashes of its leading ladies included. No label quite sums up the baroque magnificence of "Morgiana". Ensnares fully with a story of madness, betrayal and hallucination-inducing poison.
Passage
A businessman can't seem to find his way home when he wanders into a serpentine shopping mall where time has stopped. The bizarre characters he meets have no intention of helping him either. Herz deals a hand of massive psychosexual terror and claims this film as his second-favourite after "The Cremator".
13 March 2017
Goto: L'Île d'Amour
Borowczyk's first live-action feature is a playful allegory and political satire about the survivors of a natural disaster. Cut off from the outside world on a remote island, they indoctrinate a future generation. A bizarre film that doesn't shy away from alienating its audience to get its unique vision across.
Easy Rider
Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper as two bikers on a druggy trip through the big American expanse, passing hippie communes and backward hick towns on their way to Mardi Gras in New Orleans. The ultimate road movie whose fatalistic end note predicted the end of a generation.
Blanche
The beautiful Ligia Branice plays a most desirable lady-in-waiting. As pure as the driven snow, ‘Blanche’ arouses all that lay eyes upon her, but she doesn’t really benefit from her sexual magnetism. Painterly analysis of the dynamics between male and female that ultimately leave woman a victim.
14 March 2017
The Golden Fern
Based on an 'indigenous' fairytale, this is an exquisitely dark and brooding piece of folklore by one of the great directors of the Czech New Wave. The titular fern plays a pivotal role in a young man's life whose ambition leads him to a crossroads between two very different women, and two competing destinies.
15 March 2017
Creepy
Top director Kiyoshi Kurosawa's (“Tokyo Sonata”, “Pulse”) triumphant return to the thriller genre sees ex-police detective Takakura moving to a quiet suburb. The man next door is an odd character and difficult to talk to. Tension mounts when the neighbour's daughter whispers to Takakura: “That man is not my father. He's a total stranger...”
16 March 2017
The Party and the Guests
Buñuel's surrealist legacy lives on in the utterly 'magical' urban environment of Prague, but while the scathing jokery of our party does bear resemblance to that of the master, it is a sharp-toothed beast of its own. Top entry in the 'subversion-through-comedy' category of the Eastern Bloc.
Gimme Shelter
Aiming for a concert film like the one made at Woodstock, the filmmakers became witness to a turning point for the hippie generation. In Altamond the vibes turn bad, and even worse when Hell's Angels kill a spectator in the crowd during a Stones concert. A highly-regarded documentary.
Multiple Maniacs
John Waters slaps together a hippie repellent with this perverse feast of ferocious bad taste. Divine is the savage leader of a band of freaks not unlike the Manson family, leading the troupe to a legendary and grotesque finale. For decades, this cult classic was very hard to find – now in a restored version!
17 March 2017
The Love Witch
In a visual tribute to 1960s Technicolor movies, the beautiful, young sorceress Elaine is desperately on the prowl for a man. She uses potions to seduce potential suitors, but they may prove to be fatally effective… Witty and thought-provoking, this film by the director of "Viva" is imbued with a strong feminist message.
Case for a Rookie Hangman
How can a man explain he is not a rabbit when he’s got no proof to the contrary? Taking the question to absurd heights in a freewheeling spin on ‘Gulliver’s Travels’, Jurácek presses the sore spots of bureaucracy in the guise of a mesmerizingly surreal tale that blends nostalgia with political commentary.
Contes Immoraux
With this work, Borowczyk’s standing as ‘artful pornographer’ was set in stone. Scanty as the morals of these stories may be, their enormous historical scope is anything but. An exploration of taboo and deviant sexuality in an erotic quadriptych that sheds a daring light on what would normally be left unseen.
Apocalypse 69 Night - Invocation of my Demon Brother
Assisted by Anton LaVey (high priest of the Church of Satan), Bobby Beausoleil (of the Manson family) and Mick Jagger (who wrote the music), Kenneth Anger makes a psychedelic manifesto on the coming of the anti-christ, as a precursor to his “Lucifer Rising”.
Apocalypse 69 Night - Werewolves on Wheels
Motor gang “The Devil's Advocates” burns rubber as its members hit the tarmac looking for kicks. When they cross paths with a satanic sect, the night is filled with alcohol, drugs and fistfights. But the next day their hangover turns to horror when they morph into... werewolves on wheels!
Apocalypse 69 Night - Lucifer Rising
A hymn to paganism and the new satanism of Aleister Crowley. The music by Bobby Beausoleil carries this psychedelic work by Kenneth Anger to a near-mystical conscience, reaching far beyond the sensory horizon of the sixties generation.
Apocalypse 69 Night - Satan's Sadists
Murder, drugs, rape! Set to groovy sixties’ tunes, bikers are on a manhunt lead by a psychotic Russ Tamblyn (Dr. Jakobi of Twin Peaks), his manic eyes hidden behind red sunglasses. A filthy and immoral B-film in which Al Adamson buries the love generation under several feet of desert sand!
18 March 2017
Toys in the Attic
An old suitcase in a dusty attic is the home of an eclectic collection of toys. When the beautiful doll Buttercup is abducted, her friends organise a search party and go on an adventure that’s filled with danger and intrigue. A stop motion gem that is bound to captivate the minds of both young and old.
Manson
“Look down on me, you will see a fool. Look up at me, you will see your Lord. Look straight at me, you will see yourself.” Words of Charles Manson, leader of the murderous commune that killed Sharon Tate (Roman Polanski’s wife) and her unborn child in 1969. In this documentary, we pay a visit to “the family”.
Alipato: The Very Brief Life of an Ember
An outrageous and uncommonly bold gangsters' tale about a band of youngsters (and infants!) who raise hell in the slums of Manila. Raw, full of pitch-black humour yet rich in colour, it's another highlight in the work of the enfant terrible of Filipino cinema Khavn (“Ruined Heart”).
Live Soundtrack: Shazzula plays Black Mass Rising Part II
The priestess of the post-psychedelic revival will perform with guitarist Marc De Backer (Mongolito) and bring a live version of the second part of “Black Mass Rising”, her non-narrative homage to dark psychedelia and the films of Kenneth Anger.
19 March 2017
Matinee Screening: Hair
Country boy Claude (John Savage) wants to enlist and join the war in Vietnam. But when he arrives in New York, he encounters a group of hippies and discovers freedom, drugs and his first love. Its anti-war statement and denounciation of conservatism and conformity turned the film into a much-loved cult classic.
Krysar - The Pied Piper
Barta gives a dark twist to the classic folktale of ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’: a corrupt and materialistic city distorted into an expressionistic tableau populated by cubist characters. This one-of-a-kind stop motion fairy tale adaptation is hailed as one of the masterpieces of puppet animation.
Marketa Lazarova
The chaos and anarchy of the dark Middle Ages were seldom as strikingly rendered to the screen as in this cinematographic masterpiece on the struggle between two rival clans. Often cited as the best Czech film ever made, grab the chance to see this mystic, hallucinatory classic on the big screen.
La Bête
A rich heiress, after having been arranged to be married to a young man from an aristocratic family, spends a weary night in her new home where she dreams of being violated by a strange beast. The inflammatory subject matter created quite a stir when “The Beast” was first released upon an audience.
20 March 2017
Masterclass Jiri Barta
Jirí Barta will give a masterclass (in English) for film students and professionals.
Zabriskie Point
Antonioni observes the hippie youths with aloof detachment and places them in locations that are as empty as the vapid slogans they chant. Critically underrated on release, this anti-American statement is ripe for re-evaluation – if only for the breathtaking images and Pink Floyd's spellbinding music.
Witches' Hammer
Based on a series of actual witch trials in the 17th century, this shocking film is gorgeously shot in stark black and white, thus mirroring the moral schism of its characters. Both a genre film and a political fable, its anticlerical message hides a barely veiled critique on the totalitarian regime.
22 March 2017
Les Héroïnes du Mal
An erotic compendium that details the unconventional exploits of three young female protagonists and is set throughout the ages. Most notorious and subversive is the middle episode where a young girl finds sexual awakening through the kindness of her innocent, fluffy little bunny rabbit.
Shortscreen
For the annual Shortscreen program, Offscreen and website Kortfilm.be present a selection of recent Belgian short films that fit the Offscreen criteria: original, unusual, bizarre and surprising. The films will be introduced by the filmmakers!
Rabid Grannies
Two dear old aunties invite the family to a very special birthday party at a castle. When the two grannies receive a present from their devil worshipping nephew, they turn into cannibalistic monsters and go after their dinner guests.
23 March 2017
Garuda Power: The Spirit Within
An informative and highly amusing documentary on the Indonesian action film, spanning a period from the first martial arts films in the 30s, over the peak of the 80s to the recent success of “The Raid”, including mind-bending clips of ultra cheap super heroes, Bruce Lee clones and sexy secret spies.
Ferat Vampire
Vampire mythology is taken for a spin by adding themes of technological anxiety and a critique of consumer culture. Like a horsepowered Nosferatu, race car "Ferat" drains the blood of any victim unlucky enough to get behind its steering wheel. A film that's not only profoundly weird but also scary and fun.
The Warrior
Rebel fighter Jaka Sembung takes on the Dutch oppressors who in turn call in reinforcements with the help of a black magician. Body parts are suddenly airborne, Indonesian actors wear blond wigs, palm trees explode and surprised looking bulls get wrestled to the ground: top entertainment.
24 March 2017
Théâtre de M. et Mme Kabal
Married to the quarrelsome (and bionic!) Mrs. Kabal, Mr. Kabal has his hands full with trying to silence his beloved but domineering dragon of a wife. This truly unique and grotesque curio is a mash-up of different animation techniques and shows a reverse "Punch & Judy" to hilarious effect.
Prevenge
Widow Ruth is seven months pregnant and convinced that her unborn baby is instructing her to kill. She embarks on a violent killing spree in this pitch-black slasher comedy on the fear of motherhood. Ruth is played by director Alice Lowe (“Sightseers”) – who herself was pregnant during the film’s shoot.
Valerie and Her Week of Wonders
The quintessential gem in the canon of Czech surrealism. Valerie dreams a young girl's dream where menacing and lecherous men lurk behind every corner and crave her unspoiled flesh. The spirit of the Poetic avant-garde soars in this predominantly visual world that is all colour and texture and splendour.
Lady Terminator
Brace yourself for an outrageous “The Terminator” rip-off where Arnold Schwarzenegger is replaced by a woman with balls of steel: possessed by the spirit of an Asian sex goddess and armed with a rattling machine gun she turns the streets of Jakarta into a veritable battleground.
The Devil's Sword
In a hidden palace on the ocean floor lives the sexually insatiable crocodile queen and her army of sex slaves. She seeks world domination but for this she needs a mythical sword, made from a fallen meteorite. Non-stop fun in this bizarre fantasy film featuring laser duels and cyclopic monsters.
25 March 2017
Cineketje
The city… a whirling playground filled with action and characters of all sorts. A place where everyone lives in their own way. Eight short films share their views on the city in a selection for children from 5 years and up.
Safari
Ulrich Seidl tackles a topical issue, given the public disgrace confronting safari hunters on social media. Shocking and with a bitter sense of humour, he portrays a group of German big game hunters on a safari trip. In his typically sober yet absurdistic style, Seidl reveals a dark aspect of human nature.
Samurai Rauni
For years, a quaint village in Finland has been bullied by the town drunk Samurai Rauni. Finally fed up with Rauni’s reign of terror, a mysterious person places a bounty on his head. A refreshing and wild blend of Japanese samurai cinema, sailor romance, Jodorowsky-style surrealism and Finnish dipsomania.
Behind Convent Walls
In this exploitative portrayal of life in an Italian cloister, Mother Superior runs into problems trying to keep the hormonally-challenged nuns and their vows of chastity in check. A delicious attack on catholic hypocrisy with equal doses of lunacy and poetry, gorgeously lensed by Luciano Tovoli (“Suspiria”).
The Wailing
In a display of skillful suspense by director Na Hong Jin (“The Chaser”), a policeman investigates a series of suspicious deaths linked to a strange sickness in a quiet rural village. The investigation takes a turn for the worse when his daughter also starts displaying symptoms of the mysterious illness.
26 March 2017
Baron Prasil
Karel Zeman's playful virtuosity lends itself perfectly to the classic tale of Baron Munchausen. Making the impossible a reality, the ‘Czech Meliès’ places the actors in wonderfully inventive animated decors and brings the Baron's improbable tales to life like never before. A highlight in Zeman's oeuvre.
La Region Salvaje
The life of a suburban family is turned upside down when they meet a mysterious woman. She then opens the doors of ultimate pleasure and destruction. Filmmaker Amat Escalante ("Heli") depicts an intense social drama while touching the fantastic realm with great subtlety.
La Region Salvaje - second screening
The life of a suburban family is turned upside down when they meet a mysterious woman. She then opens the doors of ultimate pleasure and destruction. Filmmaker Amat Escalante ("Heli") depicts an intense social drama while touching the fantastic realm with great subtlety.
Offscreen photostream
