BROOKLYN HORROR FILM FESTIVAL 2021: Preview Good Madam, Earwig, The Sadness and much more.

 

 

The sixth edition of the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival starts tomorrow. Here is a quick look at some of the highlights.

 

GOOD MADAM (Mlungu Wam) South Africa 2021 is the opening night film. This premiere gives New York City audiences their first opportunity to see director Jenna Cato Bass' fourth feature film. A film Variety calls, "A quiet, tightly wound horror film". Good Madam is a very effective story with great resonance of South Africa's master and servant culture. 

EARWIG United Kingdom, France, Belgium 2021  Earwig is the Centerpiece film of the festival. Directed by Lucile Hadžihalilović (Evolution, Innocence) and written by Geoff Cox based on the novel by Brian Catling. Lucile said prior to the film, “I’d like you to be hypnotized by the film.” Towards that end, she succeeds. Here is my full review. 

THE SADNESS Taiwan 2021 I am very much looking forward to seeing Rob Jabbaz. Here is what the organizers of the Brooklyn Horror fest have to say, "With The Sadness, director Rob Jabbaz takes a blood-and-puss-filled syringe to the zombie genre, injecting it with relentless visions of murderous carnage and sexual savagery. You’ve been warned." I might have to get that booster vaccine shot before watching this one. 

 

AFTER BLUE France | 2021 Director Bertrand Mandico created the Incoherence Manifesto in 2012 with fellow filmmaker Katrin Olafsdotir. Bertrand states, "To be incoherent means to have faith in cinema, it means to have a romantic approach, unformatted, free, disturbed and dreamlike, cinegenic, an epic narration." I had this to say about the movie, "After Blue is the direct descendant of Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo. After Blue is the child of David Pelham's 1970s sci-fi, paperback covers. It is also to say Bertrand Mandico's film is midnight madness." You can read my full review here.  

EGO Spain 2021 The festival presents the world premiere of director Alfonso Cortés-Cavanillas new film Ego. The film arrives in Brooklyn with a very intriguing premise. "Ego decides to access a dating website with people of the same sex. His surprise is capitalized when he finds an advertisement for a girl exactly like her that threatens to impersonate her and erase her identity forever." - IMDB

THE FEAST United Kingdom 2021 There has been a running theme in horror films I have seen this year. There have been a lot of pivotal scenes around dinner tables which I find fascinating during these pandemic years as most of us have kept our distance from one another. The Feast directed by Lee Haven Jones and written by Roger Williams centers the film around a dinner. To say more would ruin the film. Bon Appetite! 

 THE LAST THING MARY SAW USA 2021 A strong feature film debut from director and writer Edoardo Vitaletti. A great slow burn horror movie. During a cold winter in the 1800s, a young woman is under investigation following the mysterious death of her family's matriarch. Her recollection of the events sheds new light on the ageless forces behind the tragedy. Scary stuff! 

LUX AETERNA France 2019 A film by Gaspar Noé need I say more...okay I'll also say this...a film with Béatrice Dalle and Charlotte Gainsbourg playing themselves in a movie about making a movie. Sold! 

NELLY RAPP Sweden 2021 The programmers of the Brooklyn Film Festival say this about Amanda Adolfsson's film, "Nelly isn’t like the other kids in her middle school class. To start, she’s a horror junkie, unlike most of her friends, but taking things even further into the abnormal, her family has a long history of keeping people safe from vampires, zombies and other ghouls. As the young Nelly excitedly tries to carry on tradition she’s forced to come of age in the wildest of ways. A charming horror-comedy that’s both hilarious and heartfelt, Amanda Adolfsson’s family-friendly gem winks at genre touchstones like Universal Monsters while still forming its own delightfully playful identity. It’s monster-heavy fun for all ages." 

 

NIGHT TEETH USA 2021 Another world premiere film! The movie marks the second feature from Adam Randall (I See You). A young driver picks up two mysterious women for a night of party hopping. But when his passengers reveal their true nature, he must fight to stay alive. The film looks great and is bolstered by some great performances. 

 

WHAT JOSIAH SAW USA 2021 A family reunites at a farmhouse and deep, dark buried secrets are revealed in the film by Vincent Grashaw. Based on a strong screenplay by Robert Alan Dilts. What Josiah Saw also features an eclectic cast, Robert Patrick, Nick Stahl, Scott Haze, Kelli Garner, Tony Hale...defiantly a film to check out.

 

 

WHEN I CONSUME YOU USA 2021 The Brooklyn Film Festival says this about Perry Blackshear's film, "Wilson Shaw (Evan Dumouchel) and his sister Daphne (Libby Ewing) have suffered through disappointment after disappointment for their entire lives. Only during the final throes of their misery do they discover a malevolent entity has been behind their misfortune all along, and the siblings set out to eradicate it from their bloodline once and for all. With his third feature, following the acclaimed They Look Like People and The Siren (BHFF 2018 Closing Night), Perry Blackshear gathers the same great core acting trio of his previous films plus the excellent Ewing to tell his darkest story yet— one of fierce love and loyalty in the face of ultimate evil." 

Here is the full schedule and how to get tickets

 

TIFF 2021 AFTER BLUE: Reflections by Carol Borden

 

By: Carol Borden 

Bertrand Mandico After Blue (Dirty Paradise) / After Blue (Paradis Sale) (France, 2021) Humanity has moved off Earth, after wrecking it, and colonized another planet called, After Blue. Only “ovary-bearers” survived, as the planet has strange effects on the growth of hair and cis-men died when their hair grew inwards. The surviving high femme women made rules to prevent what happened on Earth from happening again. Well, at least some of it. They allowed only horses for travel and guns--bearing the brands of Gucci and Paul Smith--for hunting. They lived in small groups based on national identity, mostly. The film opens with a teenager named Roxy (Paula Luna) talking to another woman. She tells the story of finding a woman buried up to her neck in sand and releasing her in exchange for three wishes. Unfortunately for Roxy’s friends, the woman is the notorious criminal Kate Bush (Agata Buzek) and she kills all three of them.

As punishment the women of Roxy’s village order her mother, Zora (Elina Löwensohn), the village hairdresser, to hunt down Kate Bush and bring back proof of her death. Roxy comes along to help and because “she has nothing better to do.” And so they meet other women wearing broad brimmed 1970s lady hats for stetsons and glittery eye-shadow along the way and face death and sexual menace.

After Blue looks fantastic, with stylized space sound stages and dressing natural areas to they look like stylized space sound stages. I like the design of the dead. I like the sound design and the score. I like the make-up and the glowing femdroid eyes. Basically, I like almost everything about this film except the world-building and the story. They rub me wrong. I’m not comfortable with the implicit gender essentialism. And while I always enjoy rock people on alien worlds and dig these particular rock people’s geode heads, I’m not comfortable with the Indigenous people of After Blue, the “Indiams” or how they are treated or how they are represented even while knowing that Mandico probably means nothing by it. But I’m not in France. I’m in the United States. And “Indiams” especially rub me wrong after watching the TIFF Land Acknowledgment and a celebration of the work of Indigenous film maker and artist Alanis Obomsawin. And yes, I have watched Westerns with terrible people in them. And I have watched movies, like Neptune Frost, where the people are largely allegorical. But Zora aside, the women of After Blue are one note and that note is unpleasant. And the premise of a planet ruled by women who are sorta fashion-obsessed and whose civilization is catty and/or bitchy is hardly new. Please see nearly any post-World War II space lady movie from Cat-Women Of The Moon (1953) to Queen Of Outer Space (1958). (Ship Of Monsters / La Nave De Los Monstruous (1960) is lovely, though).  Sometimes stream of consciousness just washes up the easiest and shallowest thoughtless representations. I can’t help wondering what Neptune Frost (Rwanda / USA, 2021) or Night Raiders (Canada, 2021) might have been like with these resources. And I really hope we decolonize better before we colonize other worlds. The human women of After Blue have not learned enough.

After Blue reminds me of 1970s French science fiction comics and looks like a very faithful adaptation of one that is happy to stay in the 1970s. But you might not have this reaction. You might find more effective and playful satire than I did. Maybe you’re just looking for style and cool ideas for aliens and alien landscapes to wash over you. Like I said, After Blue is well within the tradition of French science fiction--especially bande dessinée science fiction and if you like that, you might like After Blue (Dirty Paradise).

TIFF 2021 AFTER BLUE (Dirty Paradise): Reflections by Robert Aaron Mitchell

 

If cinema is a dream like state than Bertrand Mandico's latest film After Blue (Dirty Paradise) is pure uncut cinema. 

Bertrand created the Incoherence Manifesto in 2012 with fellow filmmaker Katrin Olafsdotir. Bertrand states, "To be incoherent means to have faith in cinema, it means to have a romantic approach, unformatted, free, disturbed and dreamlike, cinegenic, an epic narration." 

A voice says "You are no longer on your planet. You are in space."  Hues of red and blue wash over us. "The Earth was sick so we had to look elsewhere." Rules were set once After Blue was discovered. Rules to avoid the same errors of Earth. No machines, no wavelengths, no chemistry. Living in micro-communities, based on nationality. Laws were set to cut the bad weeds. When evil appears, it's roots are cut. There are no men on After Blue. Once the planet was colonized, they all died early on. The hair of the men grew inside because of the atmosphere. The population of After Blue continues when women are inseminated with good Earth sperm.

We meet a woman by the name of Roxy (Paula Luna). The village girls have named her Toxic. On a beach Roxy and three other women run around. They find a head submerged in the sandy beach.  They examine it and refer to it as an octo-whore. Soon the three women get tired of this find and strip naked and run out to the water to swim. The head begins to plead for Roxy to unearth it. "If you help me. I will grant you hidden desires. Three desires." The apple as a genie. Roxy frees the woman. Paradise might have been found but paradise still requires guns. As it is, the newly freed woman takes one of the guns stuck in the sand and shoots the three women who are still swimming. Setting off an epic narration of events. 

 

 

The woman Roxy has freed reveals that her name is Kate Bush. She is recognizable because she is tall, has a hairy arm, a tattoo and an eye between her legs. Kate has already granted Roxy her first wish by eliminating her friends.

The village arrives at Roxy's mother's Zona (Elina Löwensohn) salon to demand Roxy and her go out and find and kill Kate Bush. To further reinforce this demand the Gucci rifle they are handed to accomplish this has a blue glowing inscription YOU WILL KILL KATE BUSH.  

Slightly off topic but interesting, director Bertrand Mandico and Elina Löwensohn have began a project entitled "20+1 Projections" The project involves the pair making twenty-one short films in twenty-one years. The themes of aging and desire will run throughout these films. 

When the current Pandemic began to take hold in March and April of 2020 I was personally drawn to post-apocalyptic cinema. Not the drab color palette Mad Max kind of cinema though, the Italians making films in 1970s New York City kind of cinema. The Enzo G. Castellari kind of cinema. The explosion of color and ridiculous leather vest as armor cinema. 1990 Bronx Warriors, The New Barbarians. There is something comforting that during the end times people have great hair and rock regalia that is more fashion esthetic than pure defense. As the pandemic continues, it also comforts me the people crafting films right now, in the Almost End of Blue, are also exploring colorful post-apocalyptic landscapes.

 

After Blue is the direct descendant of Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo. After Blue is the child of David Pelham's 1970s sci-fi, paperback covers. It is also to say Bertrand Mandico's film is midnight madness.  The cinematography of Pascale Granel is exquisite as is the score by Pierre Desprats. 

Clearly with a film of this ambition and weirdness, you are either going to be on board with this trip or you will not be.

On a final note, surprisingly or perhaps not, the world of After Blue looks eerily similar to wandering a cattle ranch in South Texas after eating things that sprout up from the Earth.