kagablog

By Mike Everleth

Incarnation

Incarnation is the second DVD compilation put out by Montreal’s avant-garde screening series Cinema Abattoir, which is run by Pierre-Luc Vaillancourt. The first compilation was L’erotisme and, while both DVDs share many of the same filmmakers, I don’t want to spend too much time comparing the two discs to each other and rather just write about Incarnation as it stands on its own. All I’ll say is that the new disc is an extremely worthy follow-up to the mind-blowing L’erotisme and cements Abattoir’s reputation as the modern premiere purveyor of transgressive cinema.

Cinema Abattoir defines the theme of Incarnation as “transcendental meditative and contemplative short films.” Now, meditation is normally a method of concentration to put oneself into a relaxed and focused frame of mind. And it’s true many of the films here have a certain repetitive and droning quality to them that resemble a trance-like state, but replace the peaceful Buddhist chant of “Om” performed during traditional meditation with the image of a woman blowing blood out of her ass and you’ll realize this DVD is taking us somewhere opposite our inner nirvana.

Of course, not all of the films are as extreme as that, but most of them do explore different levels of discomfort and/or extreme behavior and emotions. The individual film reviews below are in the order they appear on the disc:

Les Souffrances d’un Oeuf Meurtri, dir. Roland Lethem. Most of the films on Incarnation were produced within the past eight years, with the exception of Lethem’s film, which was made in 1967. It is a film in the classic “underground” sense combining a bunch of different styles of the time as its broken up into four very disparate, but thematically similar, segments. The first segment is in the popular “trance” style of avant-garde film that had fallen out of popularity by ‘67, so I would guess the story of a man having an erotic oral encounter with a starfish is either an homage to “trance” or was actually filmed years earlier. The other three segments have a more modern (for the period) edge, utilizing superimposition effects, color manipulation, gratuitous nudity and gross-out shocks, such as a naked woman having her vagina covered in maggots or a man bleeding out his eyes onto a raw egg that he eats. It’s very much a film of the ’60s, but the combination of classic techniques and progressive visuals make it a very nice unearthed find from a Belgian filmmaker who is still working today, but whom i can find very little info about on the web.

Catharsis, dirs. Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani. Cattet and Forzani are two of the filmmakers who had a film (La Fin de Notre Amour) on L’erotisme and this new one is in the same style: most of the action unfolds through a series of dramatically-lighted, intensely-colored still pictures. The film is also quite gory as a man enjoys several different methods of eviscerating a naked version of himself, including a traditional multiple stabbing and a drill to the head. Catharsis could also be classified under the classic “trance” style of underground filmmaking since the main character — the naked version — wanders with a somnambulist’s gait in repetitive shots to meet his tragic fate. He is unable to escape his violent self and avoid being churned up in a meat grinder.

Pandrogeny Manifesto, dirs. Aldo Lee and Dionysos Andronis. This film is basically just dueling images of Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and his wife Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge as they recite their manifesto on the subject of the melding of the sexes. The P-Orridges had been undergoing surgical procedures to look alike so that they could be considered one being. Sadly, however, Lady Jaye passed away last year, but at least there’s this document recording what they were attempting to achieve. The manifesto reading is fine and Genesis and Lady Jaye are a joy to listen to, but my mind ended up wondering about what the details of their surgeries might actually be while watching the images flip flop back and forth between them rather than focusing on the philosophical underpinnings of the process. But I tend to lean toward the technical aspect of things.

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