UP NEXT AT PINK FLAMINGO:
**This Monday September 18th Cease & Desist Records presents an incredible documentary, The Jangling Man: The Martin Newell Story (tickets available here)**
MONSTROUS FEMININE
SEPTEMBER 20TH TO OCTOBER 25TH
Seduction, transgression, punishment and transformation. Six films about women as the object of desire and fear. Weekly on Wednesdays, 7:30 doors for 8PM screening. All tix $10 on the door
| GREEN SNAKE 青蛇 Wednesday September 20th (1993, dir. Tsui Hark, 99min, Cantonese w/English subs) In this lush, hyperkinetic retelling of an ancient folkloric tale a gorgeous snake woman (Joey Wang) falls in love with a mortal and is willing to sacrifice everything to join him. Her sister (Maggie Cheung) has doubts about the worth of weak and selfish human nature, embodied by a fanatical monk whose obsessive fear of her power and beauty will drive him to destroy them. A fantastical wuxia with stunning visual splendour and fluid action, this is peak Tsui Hark: fuelled by outrage at the hypocrisy and repressive nature of rigid power structures but deeply enamoured with the beauty and mystery of the past. |
| DEADLY WEAPONS Wednesday September 27th (1974, dir. Doris Wishman, 75min, English language) No one will ever make movies like Doris Wishman made movies. One of the most prolific women filmmakers in the history of American cinema, writer-director-editor Wishman created DIY collisions between surrealism and exploitation that feel like they materialised from an alternate universe. DEADLY WEAPONS—the biggest hit of Wishman’s career and her first collaboration with the iconic Chesty Morgan—finds advertising executive Crystal (Morgan) seeking revenge against the mob…by smothering the gangsters with her otherworldly bust. A dreamlike collision between the melodramatics of Douglas Sirk and the subversive wildness of John Waters, DEADLY WEAPONS has been newly restored in 2K from its original 35mm camera negative. (Presented with the kind assistance of the American Genre Film Archive) |
| MAY Wednesday October 4th (2002, dir. Lucky McKee, 93min, English language) Socially awkward veterinarian May lives in her shell until some chance encounters see her test just how far she’ll go to make a friend. Director Lucky McKee’s now cult classic features a mesmerising performance from Angela Bettis that drives this anti-character drama into the heights of the modern macabre and the touching perils of the human condition. Part anti-mumblecore parody piece and part riveting slow dissection of its subject, May lingers in discomfort with an elegance that is rarely achieved in balance with the comic tones that it also excels in, and it revels in the anguish and painfulness of the mundane that exists between those two tonal nodes. |
| THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY’S TEARS Wednesday October 11th L’Étrange Couleur des larmes de ton corps (2013, dir. Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani, 102min, French (mostly) w/English subs) A man’s search for his missing wife leads him into a surreal nightmare journey of shifting perspectives and visions of the uncanny, haunted by memories of a woman he increasingly realises he may not have truly known. Cattet & Forzani have crafted an abstract mystery less concerned with story than it is texture and sensation, the pursuit of a woman as a construct whose meaning changes with each tilted gaze. Like the best gialli, it resists attempts to easily decode its meaning and is most rewardingly viewed as a visceral pleasure that overwhelms the senses. Audience note: this film contains depictions of violence and intense sex scenes |
| FRANKENHOOKER Wednesday October 18th (1990, dir. Frank Henenlotter, 85min, English language) Goopy, slimy and sublimely silly. When his beloved fiancée is killed in a tragic robotic lawnmower incident, amateur mad scientist Jeffrey Franken embarks on a plan to resurrect her- all he needs is a few spare body parts. Intentionally made in the worst possible taste, this (very) loose retelling of Bride of Frankenstein tempers Henenlotter’s grim misanthropy with psychotronic neon body horror and a transcendent performance by Patty Mullen. Lurking beneath the low-brow sleaze is a sly commentary on objectification, and the ways women are sorted into the respectable and the disposable by a sick culture that values the facade of normalcy above all else. |
| THE LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM Wednesday October 25th (1988, dir. Ken Russell, 93min, English language) Ken Russell is HORNY horny, returning here to one of his key themes: the stifling authority of Christianity battling to suppress the vital sensuality of Britain’s pagan history. A mysterious wyrm-like skull unearthed in rural England is the catalyst for an unhinged exploration of human sacrifice and sexy sexy snakes. Anchored by the mesmerising Amanda Donohoe, this gleefully blasphemous and seductive gothic folk-horror riff blends high-minded ruminations on sword-wielding men’s attempts to constrain women’s sexual rebellion with bawdy humour and face-melting visual flair. Audience note: this film contains a brief depiction of sexual assault |