take14: 19.9.2012

Small Town- Small Projection

Because of technical problems we will use a small beamer.

That's why we will have

 SPECIAL SMALL MOVIES NIGHT!!!

Doors open at 20h. After "Death Powder" we show a bunch of extreme Triphead Films. BEWARE!!!

20h30: Japan 1986, 1h, japanese with english fansubs:

 The ultimate cinematic acid trip to the limits!!!

Shigeru Izumiya's underground classic Desu Pawuda aka Death Powder (Japan, 1986) is definitely among the weirdest, most bizarre films I've ever seen. It reminds me of David Lynch's Eraserhead, Shinya Tsukamoto's Tetsuo and some other extremely memorable and unique exercises in cinematic magic and limits beyond imagination. Death Powder has very little to do with plot or story, and what's there is extremely hard to follow and seems not to make any sense. One character says at one point to another: "Try to pretend that you're understanding what it's all about. Like life itself, this makes no sense." That line really tells something what to expect from this low budget gem from Japan, the land of many great film makers.
There are three mercenaries/soldiers who go to some mysterious storehouse in which even more mysterious figure is lying on a bed without any mattress. Suddenly, the figure blows some dust/powder on one of the soldiers and then the nightmare begins. It soon turns out, that one of the soldiers (played by the director Izumiya himself) has already been "infected" by this powder and now the question is what will happen to these two hapless victims, the other being a female by the way. The newly "infected" mercenary starts to have severe hallucinations into some netherworld, a universe unknown to us and a place never depicted on film before, and soon it is revealed that the powder has still many more victims to "dust".

  At this point I want to say that the plot is extremely hard to follow and I had to watch the film twice in order to be able to write about it. The story and plot are not the things this film has to offer and thus the audience for this kind of film becomes even smaller. The film is also extremely slow moving and has many "dead" moments (the film runs mere 62 minutes, though) so don't watch this when you're tired since this film requires your full attention. These are not necessarily bad things if one can enjoy and appreciate this kind of different and very personal and independent cinema. If you thought Tetsuo was way too irritating and hard to understand in its madness, then forget Death Powder right now because this is perhaps even more bizarre experience.

The message is the same as in Tetsuo: The fear of technology and to what extents it will grow. The camera angles at the beginning where we are in the city among other people are very weird and twisted and they depict the same fears and menaces as Tetsuo does. "Only you can save the world from itself" says one voice during the nightmarish hallucination segments to one character. Besides these themes, Death Powder is one incredible exercise in low budget film making and ultra menacing and mind altering imagery to haunt the viewer days to come, and nights, in my case!

 

Death Powder is highly recommended for all those interested in underground and hyper bizarre cinema experiences and it would be great if this had some official VHS/DVD release with English subs at some point. 

take13: 12.9.2012

Police officers and their children!!!

Doors open 19h00

Shorts movies till

20h15, Poland 1978, 1h56, polish with english fansubs

 

The action of "Wsród nocnej ciszy" takes place before Second World War.A series of cold and brutal killings of small boys shocks the citizens of Polish town.The children are murdered with a gun and a black clad killer always leaves one trace on crime scene:a small toy with the picture of a cat on it.Police officer Teofil Herman begins to track an elusive killer..."Quiet Is the Night" is based on Ladislav Fuks novel "Sledztwo prowadzi radca Heumann" from 1971.The acting is excellent and the characters are well-developed.The relationship between father and son is truly believable and tragic.The climax is strikingly powerful and intense.If you are a fan of Italian gialli or Fritz Lang's "M" you can't miss this forgotten Polish classic.

 " Very powerful Polish giallo"

" This film is one of the greatest I have ever seen. Unfortunately, it has never been released in this country. I saw it at the Montreal film festival in 1979 and again in Montreal on a visit in the mid-eighties. (Please let's get the many great Eastern European films of the sixties and seventies made available to film lovers.)...The two lead actors are both excellent, and this is a story that is intense, interesting, thought provoking and accessible - Who can't relate to a family's communication problems."

 "strongly recommended"

22h30, France 1985, 90min, french with english fansubs

 A serial killer signs his crimes Billy-Ze-Kick (« Ze » being « the » as pronounced by someone with a French accent). The only trouble is that Billy-Ze-Kick is a character invented by a police inspector when he tells stories to his 12 years old daughter. Does she somehow direct the killer ?

Billy-Ze-Kick, from a novel by Jean Vautrin, is a one-of-a-kind movie, set in a slightly warped world and including seriously deranged characters. Even the sanest among them have enough idiosyncrasies not to belong is any standard crime movie. Thanks to a well-written script and great performances by the likes of Zabou, Francis Perrin or Michael Lonsdale, this is original, intriguing, provocative, clever, funny and, most of all, downright crazy. I put it under « hidden gem » because althought it has comedy elements, it’s not really a comedy, nor is it really a thriller, nor does it belong to any real genre that I can think of.

 A surrealist comedy musical with gore, nudity, a serial killer, a transsexual, a schizophrenic, a comic book hero, terrorism, a wedding, a lisping heroine and an old lady caught nicking a tin of sardines in a supermarket. In short: this is very very unusual. Do not miss the questioning of witnesses after the assassination! Very entertaining, but not to everyone's tastes.

take 12: 5.9.12

What genre? All of them!

Doors open 19h30.

19h30-20h15 Short movies

20h15, South Korea 2003, 116min., english subtitles

 A traumatized young man abducts Korean leaders, believing they're toxic reptilian aliens - a fifth column launching a takeover of beloved Earth. Stumped law enforcement geniuses half-seriously hire a disgraced, disheveled private detective with a long-ago history of super-crime solving. The alienated South Korean youngster Lee Byeong-gu builds an isolated basement command post/torture chamber/film studio to force the awful truth out of the slimy, uncooperative politicians and businesspeople, then alert the public. Byeong-gu is helped by his devoted girlfriend, who buys his theories, but wonders if his horrible childhood has colored his thinking.

Parts of Save the Green Planet are darkly comedic, but even these moments are laced with a grim, gritty, malevolent cruelty. The majority of the film is a thriller, as pitiful, insane Byeong-gu Lee (Ha-kyun Shin, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance) kidnaps a rich executive named Man-shik Kang, believing him to be an alien from Andromeda. Kang faces cruel torture at the hands of his captor, who genuinely believes he is saving the planet. Meanwhile, several police detectives are searching desperately for the missing man.

Sometimes, you get a lot more than you bargained for in a film. Although I found Save the Green Planet disturbing and unsettling, I have to admit that it's a far more impressive film than I expected. It has one of the most powerful commentaries on human nature I have ever seen, mostly because it shows how quickly we dispense with humanity as soon as there is some greater cause. The violence at the end of this film would be cathartic in most other thrillers, but here it just feels heartbreaking: yet another unnecessary tragic death.       

 Save the Green Planet is also a film that shouldn't have worked. Thanks to a truly incredible cast and some razor-sharp and intense cinematography, director Jun-hwan Jeong jerks us viciously through a wide range of emotions. The film is a vicious roller coaster, eliciting wry laughs, cringes of pain and moments of thoughtful reflection. Although it's not always an enjoyable film, it had me in its clutches from the first minute.

Realistically, Save the Green Planet isn't for everyone. In fact, I can only really recommend it to adventurous viewers with strong stomachs who also like to think. It makes an interesting companion piece to Oldboy, though, if only for a similar outlook on human nature. This is a film that deserves to be watched and talked about, though, despite the lack of attention it has received.

22h15: France 1987, 87min., english subtitles

 

 
Quite an unusual film in French cinema. It deals with an unsuccessful theatre troop trying to revive the Grand Guignol. It's kind of a comedy with very desperate characters, adultery, voyeurism, sleazy situations, weird fantasy sequences and plenty of fun special effects. No masterpiece but definitely a strange object.