by Elisa Giudici
The Damned © Okta Film Pulpa Film
In 2018, Italian documentarian Roberto Minervini adeptly captured the underlying tensions of American society amidst the backdrop of Trumpism and racism in What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire?, which premiered at Venice. Having called the United States home since 2000, Minervini demonstrates a keen understanding of the nation's profound anxieties, skillfully depicting them in his documentaries, often anticipating topics later dissected by journalists and political commentators.
The Damned by Roberto Minervini
It comes as no surprise then that Minervini, in transitioning to fiction with a historical film, chose to confront the Civil War, a pivotal moment in American identity formation...
The Damned © Okta Film Pulpa Film
In 2018, Italian documentarian Roberto Minervini adeptly captured the underlying tensions of American society amidst the backdrop of Trumpism and racism in What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire?, which premiered at Venice. Having called the United States home since 2000, Minervini demonstrates a keen understanding of the nation's profound anxieties, skillfully depicting them in his documentaries, often anticipating topics later dissected by journalists and political commentators.
The Damned by Roberto Minervini
It comes as no surprise then that Minervini, in transitioning to fiction with a historical film, chose to confront the Civil War, a pivotal moment in American identity formation...
- 5/19/2024
- by Elisa Giudici
- FilmExperience
In The Damned, Roberto Minervini embeds us with Union Army soldiers ranging across the Western front in 1862, far from the battlegrounds in the East but no less at risk. But when you direct a Civil War movie in 2020s America, it can be hard for audiences to view it as solely a fictional matter, especially when you’ve previously directed two of the most revealing documentary cross-sections of the United States in the last decade, The Other Side (2015) and What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire (2018). It’s possible to watch The Damned as a rugged journey […]
The post “We Question Together Hyper-Masculinity in Life as Well As In the War Movie Genre”: Roberto Minervini on The Damned first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
The post “We Question Together Hyper-Masculinity in Life as Well As In the War Movie Genre”: Roberto Minervini on The Damned first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
- 5/16/2024
- by Nicolas Rapold
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
In The Damned, Roberto Minervini embeds us with Union Army soldiers ranging across the Western front in 1862, far from the battlegrounds in the East but no less at risk. But when you direct a Civil War movie in 2020s America, it can be hard for audiences to view it as solely a fictional matter, especially when you’ve previously directed two of the most revealing documentary cross-sections of the United States in the last decade, The Other Side (2015) and What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire (2018). It’s possible to watch The Damned as a rugged journey […]
The post “We Question Together Hyper-Masculinity in Life as Well As In the War Movie Genre”: Roberto Minervini on The Damned first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
The post “We Question Together Hyper-Masculinity in Life as Well As In the War Movie Genre”: Roberto Minervini on The Damned first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
- 5/16/2024
- by Nicolas Rapold
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
The Damned Do Cry: Minervini Details a Doomed Mission
For his first narrative feature, Roberto Minervini tackles another aspect of the evolving American identity with The Damned. A period piece depicting a company of volunteer soldiers charged with patrolling and protecting uncharted regions of the western territories in 1862 whilst the Civil War rages, Minervini crafts an intimate existential journey with a handful of non-professional actors. After spending a decade examining racial and economic disparities in the American South, it seems a logical narrative move for Minervini to return to one of the galvanizing historical events which assisted in forging these cultural dichotomies.…...
For his first narrative feature, Roberto Minervini tackles another aspect of the evolving American identity with The Damned. A period piece depicting a company of volunteer soldiers charged with patrolling and protecting uncharted regions of the western territories in 1862 whilst the Civil War rages, Minervini crafts an intimate existential journey with a handful of non-professional actors. After spending a decade examining racial and economic disparities in the American South, it seems a logical narrative move for Minervini to return to one of the galvanizing historical events which assisted in forging these cultural dichotomies.…...
- 5/16/2024
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
A war can only go on for so long before its causes start to fray at the seams and the people who enlisted to fight on their behalf are forced to reckon with the basic fact of what they’re actually doing out there. Few movies this side of “The Thin Red Line” have been more attuned to that awful but clarifying process of self-recognition than Roberto Minervini’s “The Damned,” a thinly sketched piece of Civil War reenactment about a volunteer unit dispatched to patrol the uncharted borderlands along the western territories during the winter of 1862.
They set off as a noble — even heroic — group of peacekeepers in the proud service of a more perfect union, but after the veil of purpose started to slip loose they were reduced to a bunch of scraggly Union cosplayers fumbling their way through the wilds of Montana in search of anything that might resemble a purpose.
They set off as a noble — even heroic — group of peacekeepers in the proud service of a more perfect union, but after the veil of purpose started to slip loose they were reduced to a bunch of scraggly Union cosplayers fumbling their way through the wilds of Montana in search of anything that might resemble a purpose.
- 5/16/2024
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
Italian filmmaker Roberto Minervini’s artfully crafted movies, which include such works as Stop the Pounding Heart, The Other Side and What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire?, have always sat in a murky gray zone separating fiction from documentary.
Nonprofessional actors play themselves, or versions of themselves, in narratives that seem to have been crafted out of their own lives. And while the locations are always real places, with an emphasis on swaths of the American South — as his name suggests, Minervini is Italian, but he’s lived in the U.S. since 2000 — the director transforms them into sublime backdrops for his gritty tales of poverty and abandon.
His latest film, The Damned, is not technically a documentary: It’s set in 1862 at the height of the Civil War and follows a pack of Union soldiers treacherously exploring unmapped territories in the West. And yet, if...
Nonprofessional actors play themselves, or versions of themselves, in narratives that seem to have been crafted out of their own lives. And while the locations are always real places, with an emphasis on swaths of the American South — as his name suggests, Minervini is Italian, but he’s lived in the U.S. since 2000 — the director transforms them into sublime backdrops for his gritty tales of poverty and abandon.
His latest film, The Damned, is not technically a documentary: It’s set in 1862 at the height of the Civil War and follows a pack of Union soldiers treacherously exploring unmapped territories in the West. And yet, if...
- 5/16/2024
- by Jordan Mintzer
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
"This land has it all." Time for a look at even more footage. Les Films du Losange has debuted the first full-length official trailer for The Damned, a French production made by an Italian filmmaker about America's Civil War in the 1860s. The film just premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, playing in the "Un Certain Regard" section. It's the latest narrative feature made by Italian filmmaker Roberto Minervini, whose last film was a doc also set in America called What You Gonna Do When the World's on Fire?. The Damned is set in the winter of 1862, during the Civil War. The U.S. Army (meaning the Union army) sends a volunteer company to patrol the uncharted Western territories. As their mission changes course, the meaning behind their engagement begins to elude them. The film stars Jeremiah Knupp, René W. Solomon, Cuyler Ballenger, Noah Carlson, Judah Carlson, and Tim Carlson. We...
- 5/15/2024
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
"You shot one before?" French distributor Les Films du Losange has revealed a first look teaser trailer for a film titled The Damned, a French production made by an Italian filmmaker about America's Civil War in the 1860s. The film is premiering at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival this month, playing in the "Un Certain Regard" section. It's the latest narrative feature made by Italian filmmaker Roberto Minervini, whose last film was a doc also set in America called Roberto Minervini. The Damned is set in the winter of 1862, during the Civil War. The U.S. Army (I guess they're referring to the Union?) sends a volunteer company to patrol the uncharted Western territories. As their mission changes course, the meaning behind their engagement begins to elude them. The film stars Jeremiah Knupp, René W. Solomon, Cuyler Ballenger, Noah Carlson, Judah Carlson, and Tim Carlson. There's barely 30 secs of footage, but it...
- 5/13/2024
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
It’s the most exciting time of the year for a cinephile: the Cannes Film Festival is set to kick off next week, running May 14-25. Ahead of festivities we’ve rounded up what we’re most looking forward to, and while we’re sure many surprises await, per every year, one will find 20 films that should be on your radar. Check out our picks below and be sure to subscribe to our daily newsletter for the latest updates from the festival.
All We Imagine as Light (Payal Kapadia)
After one film, Payal Kapadia is a name you should know––a fresh, intrepid voice in cinema. And in the wake of student protests turning the world upside-down, she’s an essential up-and-comer. Her lone feature to date, 2021’s A Night of Knowing Nothing, is an experimental immersion into India’s own student revolutions––a brutal awakening into the shockingly violent...
All We Imagine as Light (Payal Kapadia)
After one film, Payal Kapadia is a name you should know––a fresh, intrepid voice in cinema. And in the wake of student protests turning the world upside-down, she’s an essential up-and-comer. Her lone feature to date, 2021’s A Night of Knowing Nothing, is an experimental immersion into India’s own student revolutions––a brutal awakening into the shockingly violent...
- 5/9/2024
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
Italian-born Texas-based director Roberto Minervini is known for a distinguished career making documentaries including his so-called Texas trilogy comprising “The Passage,” “Low Tide” and “Stop the Pounding Heart.”
His most recent doc “What You Gonna Do When the World’s On Fire?” about a community of Black people in New Orleans during the summer of 2017, when a string of brutal killings of Black men sent shockwaves throughout the country, launched from the Venice competition in 2018.
“The Damned,” which is Minervini’s first feature film, is set during the American Civil War in the winter of 1862. The naturalistic war drama follows a troop of volunteer soldiers tasked with patrolling unchartered borderlands in western territories. “As their mission ultimately changes course, the meaning behind their engagement begins to elude them,” reads the film’s provided synopsis.
This film, which will premiere at Cannes in Un Certain Regard, is heavily informed by Minervini...
His most recent doc “What You Gonna Do When the World’s On Fire?” about a community of Black people in New Orleans during the summer of 2017, when a string of brutal killings of Black men sent shockwaves throughout the country, launched from the Venice competition in 2018.
“The Damned,” which is Minervini’s first feature film, is set during the American Civil War in the winter of 1862. The naturalistic war drama follows a troop of volunteer soldiers tasked with patrolling unchartered borderlands in western territories. “As their mission ultimately changes course, the meaning behind their engagement begins to elude them,” reads the film’s provided synopsis.
This film, which will premiere at Cannes in Un Certain Regard, is heavily informed by Minervini...
- 5/9/2024
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
The Tribeca Film Festival 2024, presented by Okx, today announced its full lineup of feature narrative, documentary, and animated films. This year’s Festival, which takes place June 5-16 in New York City showcases the best emerging talent from across the globe alongside established names.
Of particular note to horror fans, Tribeca Midnight is the “surprising, shocking, frightening, and thrilling” destination for the best in horror and more for late night audiences. Look for buzzy titles like The Devil’s Bath, from filmmakers Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala. But the horror extends beyond the Midnight section, including the premiere of Amfad: All My Friends Are Dead.
Read on for the genre titles scheduled to premiere at Tribeca:
Spotlight Narrative
A launching pad for the most buzzworthy new films, Tribeca’s Spotlight section brings audiences anticipated premieres from acclaimed filmmakers and star performers.
The Damned, – World Premiere. When a ship sinks near her isolated fishing post,...
Of particular note to horror fans, Tribeca Midnight is the “surprising, shocking, frightening, and thrilling” destination for the best in horror and more for late night audiences. Look for buzzy titles like The Devil’s Bath, from filmmakers Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala. But the horror extends beyond the Midnight section, including the premiere of Amfad: All My Friends Are Dead.
Read on for the genre titles scheduled to premiere at Tribeca:
Spotlight Narrative
A launching pad for the most buzzworthy new films, Tribeca’s Spotlight section brings audiences anticipated premieres from acclaimed filmmakers and star performers.
The Damned, – World Premiere. When a ship sinks near her isolated fishing post,...
- 4/17/2024
- by Meagan Navarro
- bloody-disgusting.com
Zagreb-based doc specialist Splitscreen has boarded Argentinian gaucho tale “Where the Trees Bear Meat” by Alexis Franco ahead of its world premiere at Swiss documentary film festival Visions du Réel. It is one of 15 films vying for the top prize in the main international competition.
Set in the Argentine Pampas, the film follows Omar, a farmer, whose cows are dying as a result of a prolonged drought. Other prominent characters include Omar’s ageing mother, who has started planning her own departure, and his four-year-old granddaughter, whom he takes care of in her father’s absence.
Omar is Franco’s uncle, and the world he portrays in every lovingly crafted shot is the one he grew up in. This intimacy gives the film an authenticity that transcends the stereotypes and clichés often associated with gaucho culture. The story it tells is one of a family’s resilience in the face of adversity.
Set in the Argentine Pampas, the film follows Omar, a farmer, whose cows are dying as a result of a prolonged drought. Other prominent characters include Omar’s ageing mother, who has started planning her own departure, and his four-year-old granddaughter, whom he takes care of in her father’s absence.
Omar is Franco’s uncle, and the world he portrays in every lovingly crafted shot is the one he grew up in. This intimacy gives the film an authenticity that transcends the stereotypes and clichés often associated with gaucho culture. The story it tells is one of a family’s resilience in the face of adversity.
- 4/12/2024
- by Lise Pedersen
- Variety Film + TV
As expected, the Cannes Film Festival line-up is pretty spectacular with new films from Yorgos Lanthimos, Andrea Arnold and David Cronenberg heading to the fest.
As the days are getting longer and there’s a tiny bit more sunshine in between the showers of rain, that can only mean one thing. The Cannes Film Festival is almost upon us.
Of course, us peasants rarely get to go, but it is fun to read the reactions from the glitzy world premieres as the stars gather in the picturesque town of Cannes.
And this year’s festival line-up is a doozy. We already knew George Miller was heading to the Croisette with Furiosa, Francis Ford Coppola is bringing Megalopolis and Kevin Costner will be premiering his new film, too, but there’s a whole heap of great filmmakers heading out to the beach with their films.
The highlights include Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds Of Kindness,...
As the days are getting longer and there’s a tiny bit more sunshine in between the showers of rain, that can only mean one thing. The Cannes Film Festival is almost upon us.
Of course, us peasants rarely get to go, but it is fun to read the reactions from the glitzy world premieres as the stars gather in the picturesque town of Cannes.
And this year’s festival line-up is a doozy. We already knew George Miller was heading to the Croisette with Furiosa, Francis Ford Coppola is bringing Megalopolis and Kevin Costner will be premiering his new film, too, but there’s a whole heap of great filmmakers heading out to the beach with their films.
The highlights include Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds Of Kindness,...
- 4/11/2024
- by Maria Lattila
- Film Stories
Descubre las películas que estarán en Cannes 2024: una lista completa de todas las secciones.
Esta mañana, Thierry Frémaux ha anunciado la programación oficial de la 77ª edición del Festival de Cannes. La pasada edición del festival fue testigo de los estrenos mundiales de las aclamadas películas “Anatomía de una Caída”, “Killers of the Flower Moon” y “The Zone of Interest”. Unas películas que posteriormente fueron nominadas al Oscar a la mejor película, de modo que este año el listón está muy alto.
Desde su primera edición en 1946, el Festival de Cannes se ha consolidado como uno de los acontecimientos cinematográficos más importantes de la industria del cine y la edición de este año ofrece una gran variedad de películas de todo el mundo; desde directores consagrados hasta nuevas voces de la industria. Aunque, por desgracia, España no tendrá representación en el festival este año.
La presidenta del jurado de...
Esta mañana, Thierry Frémaux ha anunciado la programación oficial de la 77ª edición del Festival de Cannes. La pasada edición del festival fue testigo de los estrenos mundiales de las aclamadas películas “Anatomía de una Caída”, “Killers of the Flower Moon” y “The Zone of Interest”. Unas películas que posteriormente fueron nominadas al Oscar a la mejor película, de modo que este año el listón está muy alto.
Desde su primera edición en 1946, el Festival de Cannes se ha consolidado como uno de los acontecimientos cinematográficos más importantes de la industria del cine y la edición de este año ofrece una gran variedad de películas de todo el mundo; desde directores consagrados hasta nuevas voces de la industria. Aunque, por desgracia, España no tendrá representación en el festival este año.
La presidenta del jurado de...
- 4/11/2024
- by Marta Medina
- mundoCine
The Official Selection for the 77th Cannes Film Festival was revealed Thursday, with 19 movies in Competition (see full lists below).
Familiar names who will launch new works in the Competition include Ali Abbasi, who brings The Apprentice, a feature pic about the early life of Donald Trump. Andrea Arnold returns with Bird, starring Barry Keoghan, and Jacques Audiard’s latest, Emilia Perez, a musical with Selena Gomez will also debut in competition.
Elsewhere, American filmmaker Sean Baker brings Anora to the Croisette. Poor Things filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos will launch Kinds of Kindness, his latest collab with Emma Stone. David Cronenberg returns with The Shrouds, and Paul Schrader will debut Oh Canada starring Jacob Elordi, Uma Thurman and Richard Gere.
Related: ‘The Apprentice’: First Look At Sebastian Stan As Donald Trump & Jeremy Strong As Roy Cohn In Cannes Competition Film
There’s a strong English-language and American presence in the...
Familiar names who will launch new works in the Competition include Ali Abbasi, who brings The Apprentice, a feature pic about the early life of Donald Trump. Andrea Arnold returns with Bird, starring Barry Keoghan, and Jacques Audiard’s latest, Emilia Perez, a musical with Selena Gomez will also debut in competition.
Elsewhere, American filmmaker Sean Baker brings Anora to the Croisette. Poor Things filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos will launch Kinds of Kindness, his latest collab with Emma Stone. David Cronenberg returns with The Shrouds, and Paul Schrader will debut Oh Canada starring Jacob Elordi, Uma Thurman and Richard Gere.
Related: ‘The Apprentice’: First Look At Sebastian Stan As Donald Trump & Jeremy Strong As Roy Cohn In Cannes Competition Film
There’s a strong English-language and American presence in the...
- 4/11/2024
- by Zac Ntim
- Deadline Film + TV
Ahead of a festival kicking off in just about a month, Iris Knobloch, President of the Festival de Cannes, and Thierry Frémaux, General Delegate, have unveiled the selection of the 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival.
Led by the previously announced major highlight, Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, the competition lineup features the latest films from Jia Zhangke, David Cronenberg, Paul Schrader, Andrea Arnold, Sean Baker, Miguel Gomes, Yorgos Lanthimos, Jacques Audiard, Ali Abbasi, Payal Kapadia, and more.
Other sections include the previously new films from George Miller and Kevin Costner, alongside Leos Carax’s personal short C’est Pas Moi, Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson’s Rumors, Alain Guiraudie’s Miséricorde, and more.
Check out the lineup below.
Competition
All We Imagine As Light – Payal Kapadia
L’amour Ouf – Gilles Lellouche
Anora – Sean Baker
The Apprentice – Ali Abbasi
Bird – Andrea Arnold
Caught by the Tides – Jia Zhang-ke...
Led by the previously announced major highlight, Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, the competition lineup features the latest films from Jia Zhangke, David Cronenberg, Paul Schrader, Andrea Arnold, Sean Baker, Miguel Gomes, Yorgos Lanthimos, Jacques Audiard, Ali Abbasi, Payal Kapadia, and more.
Other sections include the previously new films from George Miller and Kevin Costner, alongside Leos Carax’s personal short C’est Pas Moi, Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson’s Rumors, Alain Guiraudie’s Miséricorde, and more.
Check out the lineup below.
Competition
All We Imagine As Light – Payal Kapadia
L’amour Ouf – Gilles Lellouche
Anora – Sean Baker
The Apprentice – Ali Abbasi
Bird – Andrea Arnold
Caught by the Tides – Jia Zhang-ke...
- 4/11/2024
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
The Cannes Film Festival has unveiled the line-up for its 77th edition (May 14-25)
The competition includes films by Andrea Arnold, David Cronenberg, Yórgos Lánthimos, Paul Schrader and Paolo Sorrentino.
Festival director Thierry Frémaux revealed the Official Selection at a press conference at the Ugc Normandie theatre in Paris alongside festival president Iris Knobloch.
Previously announced titles include Quentin Dupieux’s The Second Act, which will open the festival on May 14 out of competition, George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Kevin Costner’s Horizon, An American Saga and Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis.
Barbie director Greta Gerwig will preside over the jury.
The competition includes films by Andrea Arnold, David Cronenberg, Yórgos Lánthimos, Paul Schrader and Paolo Sorrentino.
Festival director Thierry Frémaux revealed the Official Selection at a press conference at the Ugc Normandie theatre in Paris alongside festival president Iris Knobloch.
Previously announced titles include Quentin Dupieux’s The Second Act, which will open the festival on May 14 out of competition, George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Kevin Costner’s Horizon, An American Saga and Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis.
Barbie director Greta Gerwig will preside over the jury.
- 4/11/2024
- ScreenDaily
Children of the Sun is a pulpy fever dream developed by one man and published by Devolver Digital. If you took Suda 51’s Killer7, and combined it with Sniper Elite, SuperHot and Mandy, then you’d end up with something resembling René Rother’s Children of the Sun. It works beyond just being a dynamic piece of visual art too, containing some extremely satisfying gameplay that feels crunchy and tactile.
Children of the Sun is out now for PC.
Let’s just get the discussion of the game’s visuals out of the way first, because Children of the Sun is truly striking to look at. In terms of its presentation, it resembles a particularly nasty 70s grindhouse movie that has been thoroughly soaked in bleach. It is extremely stylish, at times reminding me a lot of the visual flair seen in El Paso, Elsewhere.
In fact, it shares more with El Paso,...
Children of the Sun is out now for PC.
Let’s just get the discussion of the game’s visuals out of the way first, because Children of the Sun is truly striking to look at. In terms of its presentation, it resembles a particularly nasty 70s grindhouse movie that has been thoroughly soaked in bleach. It is extremely stylish, at times reminding me a lot of the visual flair seen in El Paso, Elsewhere.
In fact, it shares more with El Paso,...
- 4/9/2024
- by Daniel Boyd
- FandomWire
The anxiety of something as adrenaline-inducing as Russian Roulette lies in its unpredictable circumstances. It’s almost ironic how a game of pure luck can grow increasingly thrilling even though nothing is truly in your control. Except, in the case of Buckshot Roulette, luck is merely an illusion. The game’s immaculate design and choice of themes fool you into believing you’re in control, yet gives you ample choice over how things go.
In my time playing through the indie table-top horror game that originally came from itch.io, I found myself at the edge of my seat, breaking my head over every possible ‘right’ decision I could take for my character. This may seem like a paradox because, at the start Buckshot Roulette, a shotgun and a couple of rounds in it decide my fate before I can make sense of why I’m even doing this to myself.
In my time playing through the indie table-top horror game that originally came from itch.io, I found myself at the edge of my seat, breaking my head over every possible ‘right’ decision I could take for my character. This may seem like a paradox because, at the start Buckshot Roulette, a shotgun and a couple of rounds in it decide my fate before I can make sense of why I’m even doing this to myself.
- 4/4/2024
- by Tanay Sharma
- FandomWire
Len Rowles, head of development at UK sales, finance and production outfit Protagonist Pictures, is joining environmentally-focused development fund Climate Spring as head of scripted, film and international.
Climate Spring was founded in 2020 by Lucy Stone, Josh Cockroft and James Durrant to offer development funding, editorial consultation, research and community building to climate-focused film and TV projects.
“The screen industries are uniquely placed to shine a light on the root causes of the climate crisis and illuminate existing and future solutions to inspire wide audiences,” said Rowles, a Screen Star of Tomorrow in 2016.
At Protagonist, Rowles spearheaded the company’s...
Climate Spring was founded in 2020 by Lucy Stone, Josh Cockroft and James Durrant to offer development funding, editorial consultation, research and community building to climate-focused film and TV projects.
“The screen industries are uniquely placed to shine a light on the root causes of the climate crisis and illuminate existing and future solutions to inspire wide audiences,” said Rowles, a Screen Star of Tomorrow in 2016.
At Protagonist, Rowles spearheaded the company’s...
- 4/3/2024
- ScreenDaily
Legendary UK punk act The Damned have announced a North American headlining tour that will surround their June 8th appearance at the recently announced No Values festival in Pomona, California. The outing will mark The Damned’s first US tour in 35 years featuring original drummer Rat Scabies, who recently rejoined the band.
The classic early ’80s lineup of Scabies, singer David Vanian, guitarist Captain Sensible, and bassist Paul Gray will kick off the 10-date tour on May 27th in Toronto, and wrap up the run June 15th in Portland, Oregon.
Tickets to select dates go on sale this Friday (March 1st) at 10 a.m. local time via Ticketmaster, with other shows available via the band’s website. Fans can also check for deals or pick up tickets to sold-out shows via StubHub, where your purchase is 100% guaranteed through StubHub’s Fan Protect program.
According to a press release, The Damned...
The classic early ’80s lineup of Scabies, singer David Vanian, guitarist Captain Sensible, and bassist Paul Gray will kick off the 10-date tour on May 27th in Toronto, and wrap up the run June 15th in Portland, Oregon.
Tickets to select dates go on sale this Friday (March 1st) at 10 a.m. local time via Ticketmaster, with other shows available via the band’s website. Fans can also check for deals or pick up tickets to sold-out shows via StubHub, where your purchase is 100% guaranteed through StubHub’s Fan Protect program.
According to a press release, The Damned...
- 2/28/2024
- by Spencer Kaufman
- Consequence - Music
“It’s all true. Well, true myth, anyway,” says Thordur Palsson about The Damned, his Nordic horror film set in a 19th century Icelandic village besieged by zombies.
Odessa Young (HBO’s The Staircase) stars as Eva, a widow running an isolated fishing post in Iceland’s West Fjords in the 19th century. When a ship sinks just off the coast, Eva and her crew, snowed in and starving, have to choose to either rescue the shipwrecked or leave them to die.
Protagonist Pictures, which is handling worldwide sales for the film, co-repping the U.S. with CAA, will give buyers a sneak peek of The Damned at the European Film Market in Berlin this week.
“These are the kinds of stories I’d always hear growing up in Iceland,” says Palsson, “about ships stuck on the rocks, maybe because the Icelanders on shore moved the lighthouse to trick people...
Odessa Young (HBO’s The Staircase) stars as Eva, a widow running an isolated fishing post in Iceland’s West Fjords in the 19th century. When a ship sinks just off the coast, Eva and her crew, snowed in and starving, have to choose to either rescue the shipwrecked or leave them to die.
Protagonist Pictures, which is handling worldwide sales for the film, co-repping the U.S. with CAA, will give buyers a sneak peek of The Damned at the European Film Market in Berlin this week.
“These are the kinds of stories I’d always hear growing up in Iceland,” says Palsson, “about ships stuck on the rocks, maybe because the Icelanders on shore moved the lighthouse to trick people...
- 2/15/2024
- by Scott Roxborough
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
One year on from its Berlinale Special screening Australian horror Talk To Me has grossed nearly $100m at the global box office and sellers have heeded the call: EFM 2024 is packed with “elevated genre” titles.
Neon snapped up Steven Soderbergh’s Lucy Liu ghost story Presence in Sundance and the international division has kicked off talks in Berlin. Neon International also has Cuckoo, Tilman Singer’s horror that premieres in the Berlinale Special section and stars Hunter Schafer and Dan Stevens.
A24 is selling I Saw The TV Glow, Jane Schoenbrun’s take on gender dysphoria and teenage isolation...
Neon snapped up Steven Soderbergh’s Lucy Liu ghost story Presence in Sundance and the international division has kicked off talks in Berlin. Neon International also has Cuckoo, Tilman Singer’s horror that premieres in the Berlinale Special section and stars Hunter Schafer and Dan Stevens.
A24 is selling I Saw The TV Glow, Jane Schoenbrun’s take on gender dysphoria and teenage isolation...
- 2/15/2024
- ScreenDaily
UK sales, production and financing outfit Protagonist Pictures has unveiled a slew of changes to its leadership structure.
Janina Vilsmaier and Mounia Wissinger have been promoted to senior leadership roles, with Vilsmaier being upped to senior vice president of sales and distribution and Wissinger becoming senior vice president of global marketing and publicity. Vilsmaier will lead the sales division and work in partnership with Wissinger to strategise the global roll out of Protagonist titles. In addition to leading the marketing and publicity team, Wissinger will oversee the festival strategy for Protagonist’s film slate. Both will report directly into chief commercial officer George Hamilton.
Janina Vilsmaier and Mounia Wissinger have been promoted to senior leadership roles, with Vilsmaier being upped to senior vice president of sales and distribution and Wissinger becoming senior vice president of global marketing and publicity. Vilsmaier will lead the sales division and work in partnership with Wissinger to strategise the global roll out of Protagonist titles. In addition to leading the marketing and publicity team, Wissinger will oversee the festival strategy for Protagonist’s film slate. Both will report directly into chief commercial officer George Hamilton.
- 2/8/2024
- ScreenDaily
Protagonist Pictures has promoted senior execs Janina Vilsmaier and Mounia Wissinger to senior leadership roles as part of a wider move to strengthen its sales and marketing teams.
Vilsmaier has been upped to SVP Sales and Distribution and Wissinger becomes SVP Global Marketing and Publicity.
Protagonist made the announcement as it gears up for the Berlinale and the EFM, where its slate will include Nora Fingscheidt’s Panorama title The Outrun, starring Saoirse Ronan and Paapa Essiedu, and David and Nathan Zellner’s Berlinale Special selection Sasquatch Sunset with Riley Keough and Jesse Eisenberg, which makes its European premiere after a Sundance debut.
Under the promotions, Vilsmaier will lead the sales division, overseeing both the first run and library sales activities, and work in partnership with Wissinger to strategize the global roll out of Protagonist titles.
Wissinger will head up the marketing and publicity team, including overseeing the festival strategy for Protagonist’s film slate.
Vilsmaier has been upped to SVP Sales and Distribution and Wissinger becomes SVP Global Marketing and Publicity.
Protagonist made the announcement as it gears up for the Berlinale and the EFM, where its slate will include Nora Fingscheidt’s Panorama title The Outrun, starring Saoirse Ronan and Paapa Essiedu, and David and Nathan Zellner’s Berlinale Special selection Sasquatch Sunset with Riley Keough and Jesse Eisenberg, which makes its European premiere after a Sundance debut.
Under the promotions, Vilsmaier will lead the sales division, overseeing both the first run and library sales activities, and work in partnership with Wissinger to strategize the global roll out of Protagonist titles.
Wissinger will head up the marketing and publicity team, including overseeing the festival strategy for Protagonist’s film slate.
- 2/8/2024
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- Deadline Film + TV
Variety has a first look at “The Damned,” the upcoming psychological horror starring Odessa Young and Joe Cole.
From director Thordur Palsson (“The Valhalla Murders”) and writer Jamie Hannigan, the film, which shot in Iceland last year, follows Eva (Young), a 19th-century widow who is tasked with making an impossible choice when a ship sinks off the coast of her isolated fishing outpost in the middle of an especially cruel winter. According to the synopsis, “Eva and her crew must choose between rescuing the shipwrecked and prioritising their own survival. Facing the consequences of their choice and tormented by their guilt, the inhabitants wrestle with a mounting sense of dread and begin to believe they are all being punished for their choices.”
Alongside Young and Cole, the cast also includes Siobhan Finneran (“Happy Valley,” “The Stranger”), Rory McCann (“Game of Thrones,” “Slow West”), Turlough Convery (“Killing Eve,” “Belfast”), Lewis Gribben (“Somewhere Boy,...
From director Thordur Palsson (“The Valhalla Murders”) and writer Jamie Hannigan, the film, which shot in Iceland last year, follows Eva (Young), a 19th-century widow who is tasked with making an impossible choice when a ship sinks off the coast of her isolated fishing outpost in the middle of an especially cruel winter. According to the synopsis, “Eva and her crew must choose between rescuing the shipwrecked and prioritising their own survival. Facing the consequences of their choice and tormented by their guilt, the inhabitants wrestle with a mounting sense of dread and begin to believe they are all being punished for their choices.”
Alongside Young and Cole, the cast also includes Siobhan Finneran (“Happy Valley,” “The Stranger”), Rory McCann (“Game of Thrones,” “Slow West”), Turlough Convery (“Killing Eve,” “Belfast”), Lewis Gribben (“Somewhere Boy,...
- 2/1/2024
- by Alex Ritman
- Variety Film + TV
A new restoration of the 1959 horror film on Blu-ray and DVD, and making its UK digital debut, Horrors Of The Black Museum, starring Michael Gough and directed by Arthur Crabtree (Fiend Without a Face), marked the first film in the “Sadian Trilogy”, followed by the Hammer favourite Circus of Horrors and Michael Powell’s infamous Peeping Tom – introducing cinema audiences to a more shocking and salacious brand of onscreen horror.
A series of grisly, macabre murders sweep London and leave Scotland Yard completely baffled. Bancroft, an evil crime journalist, is hypnotising his assistant to commit murders using items curated in his own personal “Black Museum” – inspired by the infamous real-life collection of weapons and torture instruments used by criminals. Using these murders to fuel his own crime stories, Bancroft delights in the Yard’s embarrassment.
Experience fear beyond belief in this gruesome British horror treat that features a splendid lead...
A series of grisly, macabre murders sweep London and leave Scotland Yard completely baffled. Bancroft, an evil crime journalist, is hypnotising his assistant to commit murders using items curated in his own personal “Black Museum” – inspired by the infamous real-life collection of weapons and torture instruments used by criminals. Using these murders to fuel his own crime stories, Bancroft delights in the Yard’s embarrassment.
Experience fear beyond belief in this gruesome British horror treat that features a splendid lead...
- 1/8/2024
- by Peter 'Witchfinder' Hopkins
- Horror Asylum
Forty-nine years after playing a major role in the Steven Spielberg classic Jaws (and fourteen years after making an appearance in Alexandre Aja’s Piranha 3D), Richard Dreyfuss has been cast in another film that promises to be packed with aquatic thrills, Vigilante Diaries director Christian Sesma’s Into the Deep. This one managed to get all the way into post-production before catching the attention of the folks at The Daily Jaws.
Scripted by Chad Law and Josh Ridgway – who have previously collaborated on the alligator movie The Flood, the Dolph Lundgren action thriller Section 8, the biker werewolf movie Howlers, and the mystery Miss Willoughby and the Haunted Bookshop – Into the Deep has the following synopsis: A group of divers searching for sunken treasure witness the murder of drug dealers by modern-day pirates, but a killer great white is determined not to let any of them escape its waters.
Dreyfuss...
Scripted by Chad Law and Josh Ridgway – who have previously collaborated on the alligator movie The Flood, the Dolph Lundgren action thriller Section 8, the biker werewolf movie Howlers, and the mystery Miss Willoughby and the Haunted Bookshop – Into the Deep has the following synopsis: A group of divers searching for sunken treasure witness the murder of drug dealers by modern-day pirates, but a killer great white is determined not to let any of them escape its waters.
Dreyfuss...
- 1/4/2024
- by Cody Hamman
- JoBlo.com
British actor Shirley Anne Field, whose long career included memorable performances in such 1960s classic Angry Young Men genre dramas as Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and Alfie — as well as a pivotal, several-month stint on the NBC soap Santa Barbara — died Sunday, Dec. 10, of natural causes. She was 87.
Her family announced her passing In a statement to the BBC. “It is with great sadness that we are sharing the news that Shirley Anne Field passed away peacefully on Sunday… surrounded by her family and friends. Shirley Anne will be greatly missed and remembered for her unbreakable spirit and her amazing legacy spanning more than five decades on stage and screen.”
Shirley Anne Field, Albert Finney, ‘Saturday Night And Sunday Morning’ (1960)
Born June 27, 1936, in the Forest Gate district of East London, Field began working as a model in the early 1950, moving into acting by the middle of the decade with...
Her family announced her passing In a statement to the BBC. “It is with great sadness that we are sharing the news that Shirley Anne Field passed away peacefully on Sunday… surrounded by her family and friends. Shirley Anne will be greatly missed and remembered for her unbreakable spirit and her amazing legacy spanning more than five decades on stage and screen.”
Shirley Anne Field, Albert Finney, ‘Saturday Night And Sunday Morning’ (1960)
Born June 27, 1936, in the Forest Gate district of East London, Field began working as a model in the early 1950, moving into acting by the middle of the decade with...
- 12/12/2023
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
Shirley Anne Field, the British leading lady who starred alongside Laurence Olivier in The Entertainer, Albert Finney in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, and Kenneth More in Man in the Moon — all in 1960 — has died. She was 87.
“It is with great sadness that we are sharing the news that Shirley Anne Field passed away peacefully on Sunday, Dec. 10, surrounded by her family and friends,” a spokesperson announced.
“Shirley Anne will be greatly missed and remembered for her unbreakable spirit and her amazing legacy spanning more than five decades on stage and screen.”
For her first Hollywood film, Field passed up John Schlesinger’s A Kind of Loving to star opposite Steve McQueen and Robert Wagner in the World War II drama The War Lover (1962). It was a decision she would regret, she explained in a 2009 interview.
“I finally had a chance to go to Hollywood and become a worldwide name.
“It is with great sadness that we are sharing the news that Shirley Anne Field passed away peacefully on Sunday, Dec. 10, surrounded by her family and friends,” a spokesperson announced.
“Shirley Anne will be greatly missed and remembered for her unbreakable spirit and her amazing legacy spanning more than five decades on stage and screen.”
For her first Hollywood film, Field passed up John Schlesinger’s A Kind of Loving to star opposite Steve McQueen and Robert Wagner in the World War II drama The War Lover (1962). It was a decision she would regret, she explained in a 2009 interview.
“I finally had a chance to go to Hollywood and become a worldwide name.
- 12/12/2023
- by Mike Barnes
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Hot Nordic works-in-progress at the Norwegian event include ’Handing The Undead’ starring Renate Reinsve.
Haugesund’s New Nordic Films industry event will have a two-year special focus on Nordic co-productions with the UK in 2023 and 2024.
Activities in 2023 include a session with Denitsa Yordanova, head of the UK Global Screen Fund, and a case study of Iceland-shot The Damned, Thordur Palsson’s upcoming psychological horror, with producer Kamilla Kristiane Hodøl of the UK’s Elation Pictures.
At Haugesund’s Nordic Co-Production and Finance Market, four UK projects will be presented: Gunnar’s Daughter, produced by Angeli Marie Macfarlane at Script Cube...
Haugesund’s New Nordic Films industry event will have a two-year special focus on Nordic co-productions with the UK in 2023 and 2024.
Activities in 2023 include a session with Denitsa Yordanova, head of the UK Global Screen Fund, and a case study of Iceland-shot The Damned, Thordur Palsson’s upcoming psychological horror, with producer Kamilla Kristiane Hodøl of the UK’s Elation Pictures.
At Haugesund’s Nordic Co-Production and Finance Market, four UK projects will be presented: Gunnar’s Daughter, produced by Angeli Marie Macfarlane at Script Cube...
- 8/11/2023
- by Wendy Mitchell
- ScreenDaily
Dublin-based company is a prolific Irish partner on international co-productions.
Irish production outfit and prolific international partner Wild Atlantic Pictures has appointed two ex-Screen Ireland executives to its fast-growing team.
Teresa McGrane, formerly deputy CEO at Screen Ireland, joins as chief operating office, and Dearbhla Regan, who was project manager at Screen Ireland until 2022 is the new head of film and talent development.
McGrane spent two decades at Screen Ireland where she played a key role in the development of policies and initiatives since 2001.
Regan most recently executive-produced Irish language Oscar nominee and box office success The Quiet Girl.
Irish production outfit and prolific international partner Wild Atlantic Pictures has appointed two ex-Screen Ireland executives to its fast-growing team.
Teresa McGrane, formerly deputy CEO at Screen Ireland, joins as chief operating office, and Dearbhla Regan, who was project manager at Screen Ireland until 2022 is the new head of film and talent development.
McGrane spent two decades at Screen Ireland where she played a key role in the development of policies and initiatives since 2001.
Regan most recently executive-produced Irish language Oscar nominee and box office success The Quiet Girl.
- 7/14/2023
- by Esther McCarthy
- ScreenDaily
NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.
Anthology Film Archives
Eight films by Nagisa Ōshima, one of the greatest Japanese directors, are subject of a retrospective.
Film at Lincoln Center
As The Mother and the Whore continues in a 4K restoration, the full Jean Eustache retrospective gets underway; Out of Sight plays for free this Friday night on Governors Island.
Roxy Cinema
35mm prints of Casino and Visconti’s The Damned screen, while Party Girl and Brick and Mirror show in 4K restorations.
Metrograph
Documentary filmmaker Tom Palazzolo is subject of a rare retrospective.
Film Forum
Godard’s Contempt and Midnight Cowboy play in 4K restorations.
Museum of the Moving Image
The original Star Wars trilogy, Roger Rabbit, and An American Werewolf in London play in a summer movie series, while a print of The Royal Tenenbaums screens on Saturday and Sunday; The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms also shows.
Anthology Film Archives
Eight films by Nagisa Ōshima, one of the greatest Japanese directors, are subject of a retrospective.
Film at Lincoln Center
As The Mother and the Whore continues in a 4K restoration, the full Jean Eustache retrospective gets underway; Out of Sight plays for free this Friday night on Governors Island.
Roxy Cinema
35mm prints of Casino and Visconti’s The Damned screen, while Party Girl and Brick and Mirror show in 4K restorations.
Metrograph
Documentary filmmaker Tom Palazzolo is subject of a rare retrospective.
Film Forum
Godard’s Contempt and Midnight Cowboy play in 4K restorations.
Museum of the Moving Image
The original Star Wars trilogy, Roger Rabbit, and An American Werewolf in London play in a summer movie series, while a print of The Royal Tenenbaums screens on Saturday and Sunday; The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms also shows.
- 7/6/2023
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
The Venice Gap-Financing Market (September 1-3), part of the Venice Production Bridge, will present 34 fiction and documentary projects.
The Venice Gap-Financing Market (September 1-3), part of the Venice Production Bridge, will present 34 fiction and documentary projects at the 80th Venice International Film Festival (August 30-Septmber 9), including a new project from Palestinian director Annemarie Jacir, All Before You.
All Before You offers a retelling of the 1963 farner-led revolt against British colonial rule in Palestine. Jacir’s previous director credits include The Oblivion Theory, which won the top prize at the Berlinale co-production market in 2021, Salt Of This Sea, Wajib and When I Saw You,...
The Venice Gap-Financing Market (September 1-3), part of the Venice Production Bridge, will present 34 fiction and documentary projects at the 80th Venice International Film Festival (August 30-Septmber 9), including a new project from Palestinian director Annemarie Jacir, All Before You.
All Before You offers a retelling of the 1963 farner-led revolt against British colonial rule in Palestine. Jacir’s previous director credits include The Oblivion Theory, which won the top prize at the Berlinale co-production market in 2021, Salt Of This Sea, Wajib and When I Saw You,...
- 7/3/2023
- by Mona Tabbara
- ScreenDaily
The 10th edition of the Venice Gap-Financing Market, organized as part of the Venice Film Festival’s industry program Venice Production Bridge, has selected 62 projects in the final stages of development and funding.
Filmmakers taking projects to Venice include Jim Sheridan, an Oscar nominee with “In America,” “In the Name of the Father” and “My Left Foot”; Annemarie Jacir, whose credits include Cannes’ “Salt of This Sea,” Berlin’s “When I Saw You” and Locarno’s “Wajib”; Aisling Walsh, who directed “Maudie” with Sally Hawkins and Ethan Hawke, and “Elizabeth Is Missing” with Glenda Jackson; and Kim Mordaunt, who won best debut at Berlin with “The Rocket.”
Also selected are Roberto Minervini, who directed Cannes’ “The Other Side” and Venice’s “What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire?”; Laurynas Bareisa, who won the Venice Horizons Award for “Pilgrims”; Måns Månsson, who was in Berlin competition with “The Real Estate”; György Pálfi,...
Filmmakers taking projects to Venice include Jim Sheridan, an Oscar nominee with “In America,” “In the Name of the Father” and “My Left Foot”; Annemarie Jacir, whose credits include Cannes’ “Salt of This Sea,” Berlin’s “When I Saw You” and Locarno’s “Wajib”; Aisling Walsh, who directed “Maudie” with Sally Hawkins and Ethan Hawke, and “Elizabeth Is Missing” with Glenda Jackson; and Kim Mordaunt, who won best debut at Berlin with “The Rocket.”
Also selected are Roberto Minervini, who directed Cannes’ “The Other Side” and Venice’s “What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire?”; Laurynas Bareisa, who won the Venice Horizons Award for “Pilgrims”; Måns Månsson, who was in Berlin competition with “The Real Estate”; György Pálfi,...
- 7/3/2023
- by Leo Barraclough
- Variety Film + TV
New Feature projects by Palestinian director Annemarie Jacir, Ireland’s Aisling Walsh and Jim Sheridan as well as Romanian filmmaker Anca Damian have been selected for the upcoming edition of the Venice Gap-Financing Market.
The 10th edition of the co-financing meeting will run from Sept. 1 to 3 as part as of the Venice Production Bridge, which is the industry component of the Venice Film Festival (Aug 30 to Sept. 9)
The market will present 62 projects in the final stages of development and funding, selected from 280 submissions.
The selection spans 34 feature-length fiction Film and documentary projects, 14 Immersive projects, 11 Biennale College Cinema – Virtual Reality projects and three Biennale College Cinema projects.
To be eligible for inclusion, the fiction films must have at least 70% of funding in place and be looking for minority partners only.
Full List of Feature Film Projects:
After The Evil (doc) by Tamara Erde, Gloria Films Production All Before You (fiction), by Annemarie Jacir,...
The 10th edition of the co-financing meeting will run from Sept. 1 to 3 as part as of the Venice Production Bridge, which is the industry component of the Venice Film Festival (Aug 30 to Sept. 9)
The market will present 62 projects in the final stages of development and funding, selected from 280 submissions.
The selection spans 34 feature-length fiction Film and documentary projects, 14 Immersive projects, 11 Biennale College Cinema – Virtual Reality projects and three Biennale College Cinema projects.
To be eligible for inclusion, the fiction films must have at least 70% of funding in place and be looking for minority partners only.
Full List of Feature Film Projects:
After The Evil (doc) by Tamara Erde, Gloria Films Production All Before You (fiction), by Annemarie Jacir,...
- 7/3/2023
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- Deadline Film + TV
by Cláudio Alves
At the 42nd Academy Awards, the Best Original Screenplay category was a rarity of historical importance. You wouldn't know it in 1969, but all nominees would be studied for years to come. Whether seen as seminal works in their author's careers or cultural milestones with much to reveal about the society that produced them, the films form an illustrious bunch, going from Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice's pop psychology to the revisionist brutality of The Wild Bunch. The winner was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, a western which has inspired queer readings for over half a century though it was far from the queerest picture in the race.
That would be Luchino Visconti's The Damned, marking the start of his German trilogy, the international metamorphosis of his cinema, and the most open expression of gay sensibilities in his oeuvre to that point…...
At the 42nd Academy Awards, the Best Original Screenplay category was a rarity of historical importance. You wouldn't know it in 1969, but all nominees would be studied for years to come. Whether seen as seminal works in their author's careers or cultural milestones with much to reveal about the society that produced them, the films form an illustrious bunch, going from Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice's pop psychology to the revisionist brutality of The Wild Bunch. The winner was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, a western which has inspired queer readings for over half a century though it was far from the queerest picture in the race.
That would be Luchino Visconti's The Damned, marking the start of his German trilogy, the international metamorphosis of his cinema, and the most open expression of gay sensibilities in his oeuvre to that point…...
- 6/19/2023
- by Cláudio Alves
- FilmExperience
Film actor whose hypnotic presence was central to a trio of films directed by Luchino Visconti in the late 1960s and early 70s
With his glacial blue eyes, blade-like face and feline elegance, Helmut Berger, who has died aged 78, was one of the most ravishing and hypnotic actors in postwar European cinema, and a lingering presence even after his best days were behind him. He was also Vogue’s first male cover star; the magazine photographed him in 1970 alongside his then-girlfriend, the model Marisa Berenson, while he was simultaneously in a relationship with the director Luchino Visconti. Madonna, who featured him in her controversial 1992 coffee-table book Sex, cited among her influences “every movie that Visconti ever made starring Helmut Berger”.
The first of these films – and only Berger’s fourth screen appearance – was The Damned (1969), an unrestrainedly lurid melodrama charting the decline of a fictional family of industrialists, loosely based on the Krupps family,...
With his glacial blue eyes, blade-like face and feline elegance, Helmut Berger, who has died aged 78, was one of the most ravishing and hypnotic actors in postwar European cinema, and a lingering presence even after his best days were behind him. He was also Vogue’s first male cover star; the magazine photographed him in 1970 alongside his then-girlfriend, the model Marisa Berenson, while he was simultaneously in a relationship with the director Luchino Visconti. Madonna, who featured him in her controversial 1992 coffee-table book Sex, cited among her influences “every movie that Visconti ever made starring Helmut Berger”.
The first of these films – and only Berger’s fourth screen appearance – was The Damned (1969), an unrestrainedly lurid melodrama charting the decline of a fictional family of industrialists, loosely based on the Krupps family,...
- 6/2/2023
- by Ryan Gilbey
- The Guardian - Film News
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI, and sign up for our weekly email newsletter by clicking here.REMEMBERINGInauguration of the Pleasure Dome.Kenneth Anger has died at the age of 96, as reported this morning by his gallery. "Anger forged a body of work as dazzlingly poetic in its unique visual intensity as it is narratively innovative," wrote Maximilian Le Cain of the pioneering avant-gardist (and devoted occultist) for Senses of Cinema. "Anger’s films are cinematic manifestations of his occult practices. As such, they are highly symbolical, either featuring characters directly portraying gods, forces and demons or else finding an appropriate embodiment for them in the iconography of contemporary pop culture."The Austrian actor Helmut Berger died last week aged 78. He was best known as Luchino Visconti’s muse, unforgettable in The Damned (1969), Ludwig (1973), and Conversation Piece (1974). Among his additional...
- 5/24/2023
- MUBI
Austrian actor Helmut Berger, who became a star of 60s and 70s art cinema with roles in films such as Luchino Visconti’s The Damned, and Ludwig and Joseph Losey’s The Romantic Englishwoman, has died aged 78. His death was announced by his management agency, which posted a statement on its website saying Berger had “passed away peacefully but unexpectedly” in Salzburg, the city where he grew up.
Born Helmut Steinberger in the Austrian spa town of Bad Ischl in 1944, Berger studied acting in London before moving to Italy, where he met and began a relationship with acclaimed director Luchino Visconti, nearly 40 years his senior. Visconti gave him his first acting role, a small part in the comic anthology The Witches, and subsequently cast him in a spectacular role in his landmark 1969 epic The Damned.
Born Helmut Steinberger in the Austrian spa town of Bad Ischl in 1944, Berger studied acting in London before moving to Italy, where he met and began a relationship with acclaimed director Luchino Visconti, nearly 40 years his senior. Visconti gave him his first acting role, a small part in the comic anthology The Witches, and subsequently cast him in a spectacular role in his landmark 1969 epic The Damned.
- 5/19/2023
- by Andrew Pulver
- The Guardian - Film News
Austrian actor Helmut Berger, the groundbreaking star of European cinematic masterpieces such as Luchino Visconti’s “The Damned” and Vittorio De Sica’s “Garden of the Finzi-Continis,” has died at the age of 78. Berger died at home in Austria from natural causes.
In one of European cinema’s most storied and creative periods, the 60s and 70s, Berger boldly established his place in the pantheon of Continental stars via a handful of films directed by Visconti, his one-time romantic partner. “The Damned,” “Ludwig” and “Conversation Piece” were all crafted with standout roles for Berger and the films were hugely successful both at the arthouse box office and with critics and awards groups.
“The Damned”
Berger was nominated for a Golden Globe for “The Damned,” which was also nominated for a Best Screenplay Oscar in 1970. No less an authority than the late German filmmaking maestro Rainer Werner Fassbinder called it “perhaps the greatest film,...
In one of European cinema’s most storied and creative periods, the 60s and 70s, Berger boldly established his place in the pantheon of Continental stars via a handful of films directed by Visconti, his one-time romantic partner. “The Damned,” “Ludwig” and “Conversation Piece” were all crafted with standout roles for Berger and the films were hugely successful both at the arthouse box office and with critics and awards groups.
“The Damned”
Berger was nominated for a Golden Globe for “The Damned,” which was also nominated for a Best Screenplay Oscar in 1970. No less an authority than the late German filmmaking maestro Rainer Werner Fassbinder called it “perhaps the greatest film,...
- 5/19/2023
- by Steven Gaydos
- Variety Film + TV
Helmut Berger, the Austrian actor and regular Luchino Visconti collaborator who become one of the most recognizable faces of European arthouse cinema in the 1960s, has died at the age of 78. The news was announced by the actor’s agent, who wrote that he died “peacefully but nevertheless unexpectedly” on his management company’s website.
Born in Austria in 1944, Berger moved to Rome and began pursuing an acting career after expressing disinterest in following his parents into the hospitality industry. He initially found work as an extra before meeting Visconti in 1964. The “Rocco and His Brothers” director gave Berger a small part in his 1967 film “The Witches,” an omnibus film also directed by the likes of Vittorio De Sica and Pier Paolo Pasolini. Berger and Visconti began a professional and romantic relationship that would go on to shape the European cinema landscape of the subsequent decade.
Berger’s most significant...
Born in Austria in 1944, Berger moved to Rome and began pursuing an acting career after expressing disinterest in following his parents into the hospitality industry. He initially found work as an extra before meeting Visconti in 1964. The “Rocco and His Brothers” director gave Berger a small part in his 1967 film “The Witches,” an omnibus film also directed by the likes of Vittorio De Sica and Pier Paolo Pasolini. Berger and Visconti began a professional and romantic relationship that would go on to shape the European cinema landscape of the subsequent decade.
Berger’s most significant...
- 5/18/2023
- by Christian Zilko
- Indiewire
Sylvester Stallone has put into motion a reboot of the 1993 classic ‘Cliffhanger’, in which he will reprise his role of mountain climber and rescue ranger, Gabe Walker.
‘Angel Has Fallen’ and ‘Greenland’ filmmaker Ric Roman Waugh is set to direct the reboot from a script by Mark Bianculli, a writer-consulting producer on Amazon series ‘Hunters.’
“Growing up with the biggest action films of the ’80s and ’90s, working on many of them myself, Cliffhanger was by far one of my favourite spectacles,” said Waugh in a statement. “To be at the helm of the next chapter, scaling the Italian Alps with the legend himself, Sylvester Stallone, is a dream come true. It’s going to be a great challenge and blast taking this franchise to new heights, a responsibility I don’t take lightly.”
Neal H. Moritz’s Original Film, best known for the multi-billion-dollar ‘Fast and the Furious’ franchise,...
‘Angel Has Fallen’ and ‘Greenland’ filmmaker Ric Roman Waugh is set to direct the reboot from a script by Mark Bianculli, a writer-consulting producer on Amazon series ‘Hunters.’
“Growing up with the biggest action films of the ’80s and ’90s, working on many of them myself, Cliffhanger was by far one of my favourite spectacles,” said Waugh in a statement. “To be at the helm of the next chapter, scaling the Italian Alps with the legend himself, Sylvester Stallone, is a dream come true. It’s going to be a great challenge and blast taking this franchise to new heights, a responsibility I don’t take lightly.”
Neal H. Moritz’s Original Film, best known for the multi-billion-dollar ‘Fast and the Furious’ franchise,...
- 5/2/2023
- by Zehra Phelan
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
Netflix has debuted a set of first-look images from their upcoming Harlan Coben series featuring Michelle Keegan, ‘Fool Me Once.’
The eight-episode series follows Maya Stern (Michelle Keegan) who is trying to come to terms with the brutal murder of her husband, Joe (Richard Armitage). But when Maya installs a nanny cam to watch her young daughter, she is shocked to see a man she recognises in her house. Her husband, who she thought was dead…
Detective Sergeant Sami Kierce (Adeel Akhtar) leads the homicide investigation into Joe’s death while grappling with secrets of his own. Meanwhile, Maya’s niece and nephew, Abby and Daniel, are trying to find the truth about their mother’s murder, several months earlier. Are the two cases connected? Fool Me Once follows these characters on a thrilling hunt for the truth that will reveal shocking secrets and change their lives forever. Joanna Lumley is Judith Burkett,...
The eight-episode series follows Maya Stern (Michelle Keegan) who is trying to come to terms with the brutal murder of her husband, Joe (Richard Armitage). But when Maya installs a nanny cam to watch her young daughter, she is shocked to see a man she recognises in her house. Her husband, who she thought was dead…
Detective Sergeant Sami Kierce (Adeel Akhtar) leads the homicide investigation into Joe’s death while grappling with secrets of his own. Meanwhile, Maya’s niece and nephew, Abby and Daniel, are trying to find the truth about their mother’s murder, several months earlier. Are the two cases connected? Fool Me Once follows these characters on a thrilling hunt for the truth that will reveal shocking secrets and change their lives forever. Joanna Lumley is Judith Burkett,...
- 4/28/2023
- by Zehra Phelan
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
Joe Cole has been announced as joining the cast of a new psychological horror from award-winning director Thordur Palsson, ‘The Damned.’
Joining Cole and previously announced Odessa Young on the cast are Siobhan Finneran, Rory McCann (Game of Thrones, Slow West), Turlough Convery (Killing Eve, Belfast), Lewis Gribben (Somewhere Boy, Deadwater Fell), Francis Magee (Kin, The Tourist), Mícheál Óg Lane (The Guard, Calvary) and Andrean Sigurgeirsson (A Song Called Hate).
The horror follows Eva, a 19th-century widow who is tasked with making an impossible choice when, in the middle of an especially cruel winter, a ship sinks off the coast of her isolated fishing post. Eva and her crew must choose to either rescue the shipwrecked or survive the winter with their last remaining food. Facing the consequences of their choice and tormented by their guilt, the inhabitants wrestle with a mounting sense of dread and begin to believe they...
Joining Cole and previously announced Odessa Young on the cast are Siobhan Finneran, Rory McCann (Game of Thrones, Slow West), Turlough Convery (Killing Eve, Belfast), Lewis Gribben (Somewhere Boy, Deadwater Fell), Francis Magee (Kin, The Tourist), Mícheál Óg Lane (The Guard, Calvary) and Andrean Sigurgeirsson (A Song Called Hate).
The horror follows Eva, a 19th-century widow who is tasked with making an impossible choice when, in the middle of an especially cruel winter, a ship sinks off the coast of her isolated fishing post. Eva and her crew must choose to either rescue the shipwrecked or survive the winter with their last remaining food. Facing the consequences of their choice and tormented by their guilt, the inhabitants wrestle with a mounting sense of dread and begin to believe they...
- 4/28/2023
- by Zehra Phelan
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
Director Thordur Palsson has wrapped principal photography in Iceland on “The Damned,” starring Odessa Young.
Newly revealed cast for the psychological horror film includes Joe Cole (“Gangs of London”), Siobhan Finneran (“Happy Valley”), Rory McCann (“Game of Thrones”), Turlough Convery (“Killing Eve”), Lewis Gribben (“Somewhere Boy”), Francis Magee (“The Tourist”), Mícheál Óg Lane (“The Guard”) and Andrean Sigurgeirsson (“A Song Called Hate”).
The script was written by Jamie Hannigan and is based on a story by Palsson (“The Valhalla Murders”). “The Damned” tells the story of Eva, a 19th-century widow who faces a difficult decision when a ship sinks off the coast of her isolated fishing post in the middle of an especially cruel winter. Eva and her crew must decide whether to rescue the shipwrecked or survive the winter with their last remaining food. As they face the consequences of their decision and are tormented by guilt, the inhabitants...
Newly revealed cast for the psychological horror film includes Joe Cole (“Gangs of London”), Siobhan Finneran (“Happy Valley”), Rory McCann (“Game of Thrones”), Turlough Convery (“Killing Eve”), Lewis Gribben (“Somewhere Boy”), Francis Magee (“The Tourist”), Mícheál Óg Lane (“The Guard”) and Andrean Sigurgeirsson (“A Song Called Hate”).
The script was written by Jamie Hannigan and is based on a story by Palsson (“The Valhalla Murders”). “The Damned” tells the story of Eva, a 19th-century widow who faces a difficult decision when a ship sinks off the coast of her isolated fishing post in the middle of an especially cruel winter. Eva and her crew must decide whether to rescue the shipwrecked or survive the winter with their last remaining food. As they face the consequences of their decision and are tormented by guilt, the inhabitants...
- 4/27/2023
- by Naman Ramachandran
- Variety Film + TV
Charlotte Rampling self-identifies as a “prickly” person. “Like a hedgehog or porcupine, you don’t necessarily get too close,” she told IndieWire.
You’d know that from any number of her roles. The 77-year-old, English-born, Paris-living actress has worked in the European arthouse for more than half a century, turning out kinky roles in divisive, sensuous period pieces like Liliana Cavani’s S&m concentration camp psychodrama “The Night Porter” and Luchino Visconti’s depraved Weimar tableau “The Damned.” But she’s also brought hard-shelled wit to character studies like François Ozon’s “Under the Sand” and “Swimming Pool,” Andrew Haigh’s “45 Years,” and Lars von Trier’s “Melancholia.”
In that film, Rampling played one of her prickliest characters, a callous and ambivalent mother who prefers to blithely take a bath during her daughter’s (Kirsten Dunst) wedding reception rather than make small talk or give toasts with the guests downstairs.
You’d know that from any number of her roles. The 77-year-old, English-born, Paris-living actress has worked in the European arthouse for more than half a century, turning out kinky roles in divisive, sensuous period pieces like Liliana Cavani’s S&m concentration camp psychodrama “The Night Porter” and Luchino Visconti’s depraved Weimar tableau “The Damned.” But she’s also brought hard-shelled wit to character studies like François Ozon’s “Under the Sand” and “Swimming Pool,” Andrew Haigh’s “45 Years,” and Lars von Trier’s “Melancholia.”
In that film, Rampling played one of her prickliest characters, a callous and ambivalent mother who prefers to blithely take a bath during her daughter’s (Kirsten Dunst) wedding reception rather than make small talk or give toasts with the guests downstairs.
- 2/23/2023
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
“20,000 Species Of Bees”
(Estíbaliz Urresola)
A Berlin competition contender and, like “Alcarràs,” redolently grounded – unspooling in a Basque Country village – and yet a big-issue drama. Catalonia’s Inicia Films (“La Maternal”) and Basque Country’s Gariza Films (“Nora) produce.
Sales: Luxbox
“Anqa”
(Helin Celik)
Selected for Forum, a doc feature produced by Barcelona’s Kepler Mission Film and Vienna-based Kurd Celik. The harrowing story of three Jordanian women survivors of male violence.
“The Beasts”
(Rodrigo Sorogoyen)
A stylish feminist Western, set in modern deep Galicia, which, breaking out in France and Spain, rates with “Alcarràs” as the standout Spanish film of 2022.
Sales: Latido Films
“The Chauffeur’S Son”
(Isaki Lacuesta)
From “Elite’s” Zeta Studios, chosen for Co-Pro Series and bidding to become the series debut as writer-director of Lacuesta (“Between Two Waters”), a searing portrait of the perverse collusion of politics and media, exemplified by the real life...
(Estíbaliz Urresola)
A Berlin competition contender and, like “Alcarràs,” redolently grounded – unspooling in a Basque Country village – and yet a big-issue drama. Catalonia’s Inicia Films (“La Maternal”) and Basque Country’s Gariza Films (“Nora) produce.
Sales: Luxbox
“Anqa”
(Helin Celik)
Selected for Forum, a doc feature produced by Barcelona’s Kepler Mission Film and Vienna-based Kurd Celik. The harrowing story of three Jordanian women survivors of male violence.
“The Beasts”
(Rodrigo Sorogoyen)
A stylish feminist Western, set in modern deep Galicia, which, breaking out in France and Spain, rates with “Alcarràs” as the standout Spanish film of 2022.
Sales: Latido Films
“The Chauffeur’S Son”
(Isaki Lacuesta)
From “Elite’s” Zeta Studios, chosen for Co-Pro Series and bidding to become the series debut as writer-director of Lacuesta (“Between Two Waters”), a searing portrait of the perverse collusion of politics and media, exemplified by the real life...
- 2/16/2023
- by John Hopewell and Douglas Wilson
- Variety Film + TV
The Great Italian Films of the 1970sThere was a certain type of great art film which was being made from 1968 through the 1970s which can never be approximated. Active and engaged filmmakers were consciously wakening out of the post-war amnesia and taking a perversely erotically charged political stand against the hypocrisy of the previous generation.
Italy was the hotbed of this examination of fascism coming out of World War II. Luchino Visconti’s The Damned (1969), Bertolucci’s The Conformist (1970), Pier Paolo Pasolini’s infamous Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975). Even the American musical, via Bob Fosse’s adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories, Cabaret (1972) hinted at what the Italians went after with their full force of creative muscle.
Take Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter (1974), set in Vienna in 1957, the film centers on the sadomasochistic relationship between a former Nazi concentration camp officer (Dirk Bogarde) and one of his inmates (Charlotte Rampling). Their sadomasochistic love is their only happiness and it paralyzes the former Nazis who have been reintegrated into polite society.
Universally reviled by U.S.’s top critics, Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times called it “as nasty as it is lubricious, a despicable attempt to titillate us by exploiting memories of persecution and suffering”. Vincent Canby, prominent critic for The New York Times, called it “romantic pornography” and “a piece of junk”. Pauline Kael wrote in The New Yorker, “Many of us can’t take more than a few hard-core porno movies, because the absence of any human esteem makes them depressing rather than sexy; The Night Porteroffers the same dehumanized view and is brazen enough to use the Second World War as an excuse.”
Susan Sontag’s essay Fascinating Facism for New York Review of Books (February 6, 1975) stated, “If the message of fascism has been neutralized by an aesthetic view of life, its trappings have been sexualized. This eroticization of fascism can be remarked in such enthralling and devout manifestations as Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask and Sun and Steel, and in films like Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising and, more recently and far less interestingly, in Visconti’s The Damned and Cavani’s The Night Porter.”
However, its value was recognized by the executive producer Joseph E. Levine who quoted them on the posters of the U.S. theatrical release through his company Avco Embassy.
In a brilliant essay of the film by Kat Ellinger I quote:
Filmmakers were suddenly touching the untouchable, and it made certain people incredibly uncomfortable.”
Unlike Naziploitation, The Night Porter does nothing to cartoonise the Nazi officers that dominate the narrative. It isn’t a case of good versus evil, or that sadism is presented as a form of lasivious softcore pornography. Neither is the film a deliberate political treatise like the art films of Bertolucci, Visconti, or Pasolini. Its biggest transgression is that it humanises one of its main characters, Max (Dirk Bogarde), a former Nazi officer with a penchant for sadism, when he finds his ‘little girl’ again in the postwar period; a former concentration camp inmate Lucia (Charlotte Rampling) with whom he undertook a sadistic affair while she was incarcerated. On reuniting it is clear that their loved never died, so they continue, even though they know it will eventually contribute to their downfall and consequent death. Love in this realm is desperately profane, disgusting, something that should never be. And because of this it remains infinitely fascinating and uniquely humanistic.
Related in spirit was Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris (1972), using sex to express the death of love and male causality, its own furor when it hit American cinemas still continues to court controversy; and Luchino Visconti’s The Innocent (1976), based upon the novel by the decadent writer Gabriele D’Annunzio, expressing the same but in a totally antithetical environment of the aristocracy. Bertolluci’s The Conformist(1970) twisted the repressed homosexual of its title into a sadomasochistic fascist.
One could say, as did Gabriel Jenkinson, “the dynamics of conformity present in the modern consumerist capitalist system result in repression, which in turn manifests as violent sadomasochism — and …if one does not actively rebel against this system, one is complicit in its proliferation.”
Parenthetically on the other side of the earth, in Japan, In the Realm of the Senses (1976) by Nagisa Ôshima about a woman whose affair with her master leads to an obsessive and ultimately destructive sexual relationship also came out of Oshima’s early involvement with the student protest movement in Kyoto in ‘68 and out of his concern with the contradictions and tensions of postwar Japanese society in which he exposed contemporary Japanese materialism, while also examining what it means to be Japanese in the face of rapid industrialization and Westernization.
In 2020 Vincent Canby might have revisited The Night Porter and seen it in a different light. His 2020 review of Visconti’s last film, L’innocente (The Innocent), completed in 1976 shortly before his death was “among the most beautiful and severely disciplined films he has ever made.” It was also brazenly sadistic and sexy to a point that today would be labeled pornographic, and today could not be conceived of, much less made, diving, as it does, into sex, abortion, male domination and violence.
According to The World, public radio’s longest-running daily global news program, a co-production of Prx and Wgbh, in 2012:
British scientists have finally confirmed what women worldwide have been suspecting for centuries. It’s not religious principles that start wars. It’s not even civilization’s thirst for oil. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s the penis.
According to a study published this week in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society publication, the male sex drive is the cause of most conflicts in the world, from soccer hooliganism to religious wars, not to mention family disputes over the toilet seat being left up.
According to this story in The Telegraph, the scientists call it the “male warrior instinct” and claim men are programmed to be aggressive toward outsiders. It apparently used to be a handy instinct, back when you had to kill other suitors in order to gain more access to mates, but nowadays, this only works in some countries and a few US cities. For the rest of us, this unreformed sex drive only means ever-increasing defense budgets.
The magnitude of this discovery is so great, it’s difficult to estimate the potential ramifications.
At only eight inches on average (or that’s what we have been told), it’s smaller in size than most other controversial discoveries, yet — just like the atom — it has catastrophic consequences if in the hands of the wrong people.
And so these filmmakers show us the pathological drive of the unleashed male libido.
But times are different in the 21st century. These films could never be approximated by our Tik Tok generation where porn has created a quick witty and essentially violent vibrato of sexuality. These films of the late ‘60s and ‘70s took the libido at its rawest and showed its drive as an expression of political evil in very different types of stories.
And it might be worth noting that of all these films, the most reviled was written and directed by a woman and in most of the films, it is, in fact, a woman who proves the stronger of the two sexes and disarms the man. What remains viscerally true to this day is that that missile shaped 8 inch organ needs to be beaten into a plowshare.
SexFascismMoviesItalyInternational Film...
Italy was the hotbed of this examination of fascism coming out of World War II. Luchino Visconti’s The Damned (1969), Bertolucci’s The Conformist (1970), Pier Paolo Pasolini’s infamous Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975). Even the American musical, via Bob Fosse’s adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories, Cabaret (1972) hinted at what the Italians went after with their full force of creative muscle.
Take Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter (1974), set in Vienna in 1957, the film centers on the sadomasochistic relationship between a former Nazi concentration camp officer (Dirk Bogarde) and one of his inmates (Charlotte Rampling). Their sadomasochistic love is their only happiness and it paralyzes the former Nazis who have been reintegrated into polite society.
Universally reviled by U.S.’s top critics, Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times called it “as nasty as it is lubricious, a despicable attempt to titillate us by exploiting memories of persecution and suffering”. Vincent Canby, prominent critic for The New York Times, called it “romantic pornography” and “a piece of junk”. Pauline Kael wrote in The New Yorker, “Many of us can’t take more than a few hard-core porno movies, because the absence of any human esteem makes them depressing rather than sexy; The Night Porteroffers the same dehumanized view and is brazen enough to use the Second World War as an excuse.”
Susan Sontag’s essay Fascinating Facism for New York Review of Books (February 6, 1975) stated, “If the message of fascism has been neutralized by an aesthetic view of life, its trappings have been sexualized. This eroticization of fascism can be remarked in such enthralling and devout manifestations as Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask and Sun and Steel, and in films like Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising and, more recently and far less interestingly, in Visconti’s The Damned and Cavani’s The Night Porter.”
However, its value was recognized by the executive producer Joseph E. Levine who quoted them on the posters of the U.S. theatrical release through his company Avco Embassy.
In a brilliant essay of the film by Kat Ellinger I quote:
Filmmakers were suddenly touching the untouchable, and it made certain people incredibly uncomfortable.”
Unlike Naziploitation, The Night Porter does nothing to cartoonise the Nazi officers that dominate the narrative. It isn’t a case of good versus evil, or that sadism is presented as a form of lasivious softcore pornography. Neither is the film a deliberate political treatise like the art films of Bertolucci, Visconti, or Pasolini. Its biggest transgression is that it humanises one of its main characters, Max (Dirk Bogarde), a former Nazi officer with a penchant for sadism, when he finds his ‘little girl’ again in the postwar period; a former concentration camp inmate Lucia (Charlotte Rampling) with whom he undertook a sadistic affair while she was incarcerated. On reuniting it is clear that their loved never died, so they continue, even though they know it will eventually contribute to their downfall and consequent death. Love in this realm is desperately profane, disgusting, something that should never be. And because of this it remains infinitely fascinating and uniquely humanistic.
Related in spirit was Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris (1972), using sex to express the death of love and male causality, its own furor when it hit American cinemas still continues to court controversy; and Luchino Visconti’s The Innocent (1976), based upon the novel by the decadent writer Gabriele D’Annunzio, expressing the same but in a totally antithetical environment of the aristocracy. Bertolluci’s The Conformist(1970) twisted the repressed homosexual of its title into a sadomasochistic fascist.
One could say, as did Gabriel Jenkinson, “the dynamics of conformity present in the modern consumerist capitalist system result in repression, which in turn manifests as violent sadomasochism — and …if one does not actively rebel against this system, one is complicit in its proliferation.”
Parenthetically on the other side of the earth, in Japan, In the Realm of the Senses (1976) by Nagisa Ôshima about a woman whose affair with her master leads to an obsessive and ultimately destructive sexual relationship also came out of Oshima’s early involvement with the student protest movement in Kyoto in ‘68 and out of his concern with the contradictions and tensions of postwar Japanese society in which he exposed contemporary Japanese materialism, while also examining what it means to be Japanese in the face of rapid industrialization and Westernization.
In 2020 Vincent Canby might have revisited The Night Porter and seen it in a different light. His 2020 review of Visconti’s last film, L’innocente (The Innocent), completed in 1976 shortly before his death was “among the most beautiful and severely disciplined films he has ever made.” It was also brazenly sadistic and sexy to a point that today would be labeled pornographic, and today could not be conceived of, much less made, diving, as it does, into sex, abortion, male domination and violence.
According to The World, public radio’s longest-running daily global news program, a co-production of Prx and Wgbh, in 2012:
British scientists have finally confirmed what women worldwide have been suspecting for centuries. It’s not religious principles that start wars. It’s not even civilization’s thirst for oil. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s the penis.
According to a study published this week in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society publication, the male sex drive is the cause of most conflicts in the world, from soccer hooliganism to religious wars, not to mention family disputes over the toilet seat being left up.
According to this story in The Telegraph, the scientists call it the “male warrior instinct” and claim men are programmed to be aggressive toward outsiders. It apparently used to be a handy instinct, back when you had to kill other suitors in order to gain more access to mates, but nowadays, this only works in some countries and a few US cities. For the rest of us, this unreformed sex drive only means ever-increasing defense budgets.
The magnitude of this discovery is so great, it’s difficult to estimate the potential ramifications.
At only eight inches on average (or that’s what we have been told), it’s smaller in size than most other controversial discoveries, yet — just like the atom — it has catastrophic consequences if in the hands of the wrong people.
And so these filmmakers show us the pathological drive of the unleashed male libido.
But times are different in the 21st century. These films could never be approximated by our Tik Tok generation where porn has created a quick witty and essentially violent vibrato of sexuality. These films of the late ‘60s and ‘70s took the libido at its rawest and showed its drive as an expression of political evil in very different types of stories.
And it might be worth noting that of all these films, the most reviled was written and directed by a woman and in most of the films, it is, in fact, a woman who proves the stronger of the two sexes and disarms the man. What remains viscerally true to this day is that that missile shaped 8 inch organ needs to be beaten into a plowshare.
SexFascismMoviesItalyInternational Film...
- 2/11/2023
- by Sydney
- Sydney's Buzz
Hello, everyone! We’re back with the final round of horror and sci-fi home media releases for the month of August, and we’ve got quite a few killer titles headed home today. Scream Factory is giving Paul Schrader’s Cat People remake a 4K overhaul in a brand-new Collector’s Edition release, and Severin Films is keeping busy with several titles today as well, including All About Evil and Fearless, and if you haven’t had a chance to check it out for yourself yet, Jane Schoenbrun’s extremely unsettling We’re All Going to the World’s Fair is headed to Blu-ray this week as well.
Other titles being released on August 30th include Arrow Video’s Giallo Essentials: 3-Disc Limited Edition Collection, Lux Aeterna, Satan’s Children, Jack Be Nimble featuring Alexis Arquette, The Oregonian, Raw Nerve, and Shriek of the Mutilated.
All About Evil: 2-Disc Special Edition
It's...
Other titles being released on August 30th include Arrow Video’s Giallo Essentials: 3-Disc Limited Edition Collection, Lux Aeterna, Satan’s Children, Jack Be Nimble featuring Alexis Arquette, The Oregonian, Raw Nerve, and Shriek of the Mutilated.
All About Evil: 2-Disc Special Edition
It's...
- 8/30/2022
- by Heather Wixson
- DailyDead
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