DARK Movies at the museum - Short Film Night - DEATH
GUM FILMBOX
DARK movie nights at the museum! GUM and Ghent based horror & cult collective KURU treat you to several scientifically (ir)responsible movie nights around the themes of Conflict, Apocalypse and Death. An aftertalk follows each film.
Wednesday October 25 will be special. How far does our scientific or non-scientific fascination with death reach? Through four short films we probe, layer after layer, into morbid depths for an answer. Via poetic impressions to naturalistic tableaux, from the ossuary to the morgue. In short, a short film evening for strong stomachs. Sensitive viewers be warned.
The Ossuary (Švankmajer, 1970) - La résurrection des natures mortes, Living Still Life (Mandico, 2012) - Historia Naturae, Suita (Švankmajer, 1967) - The Act Of Seeing With One's Own Eyes (Brakhage, 1971)
in collaboration with Ghent based horror & cult collective KURU
Wednesday October 25 / 8 pm - 10 pm
pay what you can: € 10 of 8
with intro & aftertalk
In The Ossuary (1970, 10 minutes), Jan Švankmajer, the godfather of Czech surrealism, leads the audience through and around the ossuary beneath the All Saints Church of Sedlec in the town of Kutná Hora. The ossuary contains the skeletons of more than 50,000 victims of the Black Death epidemic. Their bones and skulls line the small but impressive chapel. Originally intended as a straightforward portrait, the documentary matured from Švankmajer's vision into a memorable ode to the macabre.
La Résurrection des natures mortes is the original title of Living Still Life (2012, 15 minutes) and thus deals with a mysterious woman who brings dead animals back to life in a world of decay through stop-motion animation. One day, a widower comes along with a very strange request. Consider filmmaker Bertrand Mandico a modern druid among French cinema's enfants terribles. This gem of a film is strongly rooted in Mandico's phantasmagoric rabbit hole of a dream universe, personified in his enigmatic fetish actress and cult cinema icon Elina Löwensohn.
Historia Naturae, Suita (1967, 9 minutes) further illustrates the obsessive nature of Jan Švankmajer's wonderful mind. He combines medieval images with both living and dead animal species to create eight evolutionary portraits from different biological classes. The music takes care of the rest. The dazzling animation breathes life into this encyclopedic panorama and at the same time takes into account the destructive nature of the beast, as well as that of man.
The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes (1971, 32 minutes) very explicitly records how forensic pathologists carry out their work in a city morgue. The title refers to the literal meaning of the term 'autopsy'. Stan Brakhage, one of America's most important experimental filmmakers, shows everything and spares no one in his uncomfortable dissection of the human condition. The analogue recording without synchronous sound only emphasizes its ritual quality. Critic Jonathan Rosenbaum called it one of the most direct confrontations with death ever captured on film.
