TRIBUTE PICHA & SZULZINGER | Offscreen

CINEMATEK presents the restorations of seven films testifying to two of Belgian cinema's most subversive talents: five animations by Picha and two films by Boris Szulzinger, whose careers are inextricably linked.
 
Born Jean-Paul Walravens in Brussels, 1942, Picha grew up on a diet of Tintin, beguiled by the exoticism in the works of Hergé and Charlie Chaplin, whose Modern Times he considers a satirical masterpiece. Yet, to begin with, there was nothing to suggest he would go on to make animated films. For 14 years, he worked as a cartoonist and caricaturist, and this milieu was the subject of his first and only documentary, Cartoon Circus, filmed in 1972 in collaboration with Benoît Lamy. Among the artists presented here are Roland Topor, Siné, Willem, Cabu and Georges Wolinski, and part of the film was shot in the offices of Charlie Hebdo.
 
But in 1975, Picha turned to animation, and, in collaboration with Boris Szulzinger, made a full-length cartoon that would become a cult item; in Tarzoon: Shame of the Jungle, he lampoons the virile Tarzan myth by way of a weedy stand-in and his masturbating chimpanzee, who spring into often outrageous action when June, Tarzoon's beloved mate, is kidnapped by a 14-breasted queen and her army of phalluses. The release coincided with the early 1970s emergence of adult animation following the success of Fritz the Cat, and was a huge hit. Picha went on to parody pre-history in Le Chaînon manquant (The Missing Link), but this time audiences and critics were less than bowled over by the cheerfully vulgar tone of this scabrous re-reading of Darwin's Theory of Evolution. For his next film, The Big Bang, billed as "the final part of a trilogy", Picha reunited with Boris Szulzinger, who produced this gleeful distillation of the 1980s into a galaxy-threatening nuclear war between the freakishly mutated sexes. It was to be another 20 years before Picha's fourth (and, to date, last) animated feature: Snow White: The Sequel, a parody in which Disney's beloved fairytale gets the classic provocative Picha treatment. 
 
This programme would not be complete without two films by Boris Szulzinger (1945 - 2023), the co-director of Tarzoon and producer of Le Big-bang. In Les tueurs fous, Szulzinger depicts the shocking exploits of two delinquents who try to stave off boredom by murdering random passers-by. Eight years and the Tarzoon experience later, he directed the parody Mama Dracula, in which the latest avatar of the notorious Countess Elizabeth Báthory (played by Louise Fletcher, the Oscar-winning actress from One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest) can only maintain her eternal youth by bathing in the blood of virgins. But alas! Virgins are increasingly difficult to find in the modern world... To be (re)discovered in the restored version!
 
The restoration of these films was supported and funded by Belspo, the Centre du Cinéma et de l'Audiovisuel de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, the European Union - NextGenerationEU and the National Lottery and its players.
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CARTOON CIRCUS

22 March 2025 - 17h00 | Cinematek

A documentary about the subversive world of counterculture comics and cartoons in the early 1970s. The filmmakers shot some of their footage in the offices of the French satirical monthly Hara-Kiri, a precursor to Charlie Hebdo, which labelled itself a "journal bête et méchant" - a "stupid, nasty newspaper".
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PICHA, ENVERS ET CONTRE TOUT

23 March 2025 - 19h00 | Cinematek

Picha's irreverent style has left a mark on 70s and 80s animation cinema. But where is he now? And how should we best approach his work as an iconoclastic cartoonist, animated film and tv series director and painter who once embodied a certain idea of outrageousness and subversion?

In the presence of the director, Luc Jabon.
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THE MISSING LINK

26 March 2025 - 19h00 | Cinematek

So much for Charles Darwin! Picha reimagines the dawn of mankind as a rollicking collection of ribald gags, odd creatures and nods to 2001 and Jaws. A caveman, kicked out of the Homo Stupidus tribe, befriends a baby bronto, invents the wheel and meets a race of sexy catwomen. With songs by English chart topper Leo Sayer.
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THE BIG BANG

27 March 2025 - 21h30 | Cinematek

Brace yourself for an outrageously non-woke barrage of animated Hitler bots, Feminazis, killer ballerinas and gory sight gags as mutant survivors of World War Three are split into two continents: the all-male USSSR (sic) and the all-female Vaginia. Can Fred, a feeble intergalactic superhero, prevent World War Four?
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THE LONELY KILLERS

28 March 2025 - 19h00 | Cinematek

Inspired by real events, Szulzinger's film records the exploits of two gay spree-killers who gun down random members of the public for no reason. Filmed on the streets of Brussels, with a dispassionate tone prefiguring that of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, and a super space-jazz score by Salix Alba.
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MAMA DRACULA

28 March 2025 - 21h00 | Cinematek

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest's Louise Fletcher rocks a series of fabulous outfits in a spoofy update of the Elizabeth Báthory legend. She must bathe in virgins' blood to survive, but alas, virgins are hard to find in the modern world... Offers a rare peek inside a series of stunning Brussels Art Nouveau interiors.

+ short film Le bombardon (1967, 15')
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TARZOON: SHAME OF THE JUNGLE

29 March 2025 - 19h00 | Cinematek

The dude in the droopy leopardskin loincloth swings to the rescue when bald Queen Bazonga sends an army of dancing penises to kidnap June, his mate, and steal her hair. Picha's X-rated cult cartoon, freshly restored, is a priapic cocktail of surrealism and non-PC humour, with an English voice cast featuring John Belushi! 

In the presence of Picha.
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SNOW WHITE: THE SEQUEL

30 March 2025 - 17h00 | Cinematek

With his first animated film in 20 years, Picha explores all the raunchy possibilities of a Prince Charming duty-bound to copulate with Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella as well as Snow White. Potty-mouthed princesses, masturbating dwarfs and everyone getting their tits out at the palace ball: we're a long way from Disney!