Theater 3 MALDOROR

Maldoror
Kerri Sharp, Filmgruppe Abgedreht, Caroline Kennedy, Duncan Reekie, Filmgruppe Chaos, Colette Rouhier, Steven Eastwood, Jenigerfilm, Andrew Coram, Hant Film, Paul Tarraga, Jennet Thomas.

Feature. 16mm. 100:00. 2000. Midwest Premiere. Germany/Great Britain.

“A wild and bewildering affront to common civilized cinema” – Time Out
(London)

“This is true underground cinema” – Fortean Times

“Turned into stone one sits as the credits roll, tortured on the rack of images.” – Keil Nachrichten

Maldoror, whose lips are sulfur, whose eyes are jasper, is stranded on Earth amongst the humanity he hates. His dark shadow haunts the day. At night he is pursued by phantoms and the memory of his unspeakable crimes. He Searches the darkest secret corners of the world for revenge, for rest, for a companion. But all he finds is horror, death and an endless battle against his archenemy, God, and his loathsome Son. After an encounter with a festering angel, an amorous shark, a divine pubic hair and a dog on wheels, Maldoror embarks upon a course that leads inevitably to the final apocalyptic clash with the Creator himself.

This radical project, with its audacious disregard for all things commercial and easily digestible, was the brainchild of Exploding Cinema’s Duncan Reekie. His goal was to make a film like no other: a film of the blasphemous and surrealist-inspiring 19th Century anti-novel Les Chants de Maldoror by Lautréamont. Twelve filmmakers were selected, eight from the UK (five of whom are members of the Exploding Cinema) and four from Germany. Each was sent one chapter from the book and an invitation to make a film out of their chapter. Each maker could use different techniques, styles, actors and locations but there would be a single voice narrating the film. The only proviso was that is was to be shot on super 8. What resulted is an extraordinary realization of filmmakers’ imagination and ingenuity, an impossible mesh of sex, violence, emulsion, bacteria, oil, bleach, petals, glue, dirt, abrasion, acid, superstition, glare, fur, insomnia, amphetamines and deep blue cold water, over the dark undertow of the deeply disturbing yet hilarious text. You must see it again and again, until your eyes bleed with confused exhaustion.