Spectacular Now: The Politics of the Contemporary Spectacle

Conference Report by Kilian Schmidt

In societies where modern conditions of spectacles were explained with a focus on production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of contemporary societal, cultural, political, spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a economic and technological phenomena. representation. (Guy Debord: The Society of the Spectacle, §1) Specifically aimed at young scholars, the

conference explored the meaning-making

Following Debord’s famous analysis, the processes that lie underneath media events and conference “Spectacular Now: The Politics of mass spectacles. Though spectacles have existed the Contemporary Spectacle” organised by TU since ancient times (a reflection on Foucaultian

Dortmund University’s Institute of English and thinking would be appropriate here), modern

American Studies took place in November 2016. consumer society and the (hyper-)mediatisation

The title already suggests the controversial of the world have drastically transformed them. character of this conference and its Political debates, protest movements and social contributions. The media-specific aspects of unrest are mediated and marketed to the same

160 extent as entertainment shows and reality TV. Sarah E. Beyvers and Florian Zitzelsberger

Can depoliticisation therefore be seen as the (University of Passau) made a media spectacle spectacle’s own politics? How does an alienated, out of their talk “‘A Thing Is a Thing and Not atomised and passive spectator fit into new What You Say of That Thing’ – or Is It? forms of participatory and (anti-)social media? Alienation Effects and the Conflation of Theatre

Furthermore, did something actually happen if and Film as Meta-Spectacle in Quentin one has not posted about it and earned the new Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight (2015) and currencies of our time – clicks and likes? If all Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Birdman or The of life presents itself spectacularly, what identity Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance (2014)”. They can exist without a spectacular quality? Scholars replaced parts of their live talk with recorded were invited to connect their studies to versions of this same presentation projected onto contemporary representations, depictions and the screen. The speakers analysed how both stagings of spectacles and their inherent politics, films make use of theatrical means to add to investigate our current age and time, and to performative and live-event characteristics, explore new ways of presenting their findings, simultaneously enhancing and abandoning their indeed spectacularly. illusionistic character. The merging of cinematic

and theatrical forms of framing of information,

First Day according to Beyvers and Zitzelsberger,

After a welcome address by the organisers and functions as alienation effects and opens up a

Prof. Dr. Gerold Sedlmayr, Chair of British meta-discourse on the films’ own constructed

Cultural Studies and Dean of the Faculty of spectacularity.

Culture Studies, outlining the topics of the conference, the first panel “(De)Constructing the UnReal (2015–), which airs on Lifetime

Spectacular, Blurring Boundaries” took off with Television, was the topic of Missy Molloy’s a spectacular presentation as indicated above. (Santa Fe College) follow-up presentation. The

161 series gained the channel, formerly associated Performatist Spectacles”. Freitag, a scholar of with low-quality content targeted at a female theme park studies, examined these year-round audience, critical acclaim by satirically depicting spectacles. In their theming – according to the production of a reality TV show similar to Freitag – theme parks traditionally avoid

The Bachelor (2002–). According to Molloy, controversial issues while pursuing a ‘politics of

UnReal skilfully shows and deconstructs the inclusion/exclusion’. In 2015, the British street complexity of such productions’ running themes artist Banksy turned this selectivity upside-down such as surveillance, objectification and perverse with his ‘Bemusement Park’, Dismaland, in spectatorship, adding another frame to the Weston-super-Mare (UK). Freitag argued that already multidimensional nature of reality TV. the spectacular Dismaland reverses common

The main character, Rachel, is shown using all tropes by including topics like the pollution of manner of pressure to get the most spectacular the ocean, government surveillance and the pictures and audio while revealing her own recent refugee crisis, thus expanding the concept mental problems and conflicts. Molloy pointed of the theme park. By broaching such issues, the out how real social issues like race and gender park is as relevant as it is popular with are used by reality TV and UnReal – on a meta audiences. The excessive use of Disney(land) level – to create media spectacles. imagery in Dismaland was identified by Freitag

as a critique of a recent development named

The second and last panel of the first day was ‘autotheming’ – a theme park in/of a theme park, entitled “Politics and Participation” and included or a spectacle about spectacle.

Florian Freitag’s (Johannes Gutenberg

University Mainz) “Banksy’s Dismaland and the Jacobi continued by applying theories of the

Politics of Theming”, and Philip Jacobi spectacular to the true crime genre. Focussing on

(University of Passau) presenting “‘In the End, Serial (2014–16), a podcast produced by Sarah

It Was All About You’: True Crime and Koenig for WBEZ Chicago, whose first season

162 documented and recounted a 1999 murder films including sequences of allegedly real live investigation, Jacobi noted that it had revived death – and how sensational media reports of not only podcasts but the true crime genre itself. such films helped draw attention to them.

Touching upon what the producer herself called Shockumentaries like Faces of Death (John

‘the big things’, topics like love and justice, Alan Schwartz, 1978) gain their spectacular

Serial and similar texts derive their addictive value from the fascination with arbitrary death power from the desire for sensationalism of the scenes, body modifications and atrocities, consumer audience. Furthermore, the paper challenging notions of good taste. These suggested that true crime blurs the boundaries of amateurish productions, according to Walker, truth and even adds a participatory aspect, owe much to the boom in home videos during allowing audiences to submit their own their time, while their apparent real live death investigations and thoughts. The last feature, images consciously reject mainstream cinema, though, opens up ethical dimensions to consider and especially mainstream horror, modes of around this and indeed all kinds of the representation. The black market-like spectacular. transnational distribution and circulation of these

extremely violent movies led to their rarity

Second Day status within this subcultural sphere.

Johnny Walker of Northumbria University opened this day with his keynote “The Macabre Walker further stated that the Traces of Death

Video Underground: Historicising the series (1993–2000) and its producer, Dead Alive

Subcultural Value of Real Death Imagery”, Productions, left a significant mark on this niche exploring the correlations between underground, market and subcultural fan base by not only explicitly gory, direct-to-video horror movies adapting these techniques, but also extending and their fan cultures in the 1990s. Walker beyond them into the arena of extreme metal discussed the myth of the snuff movie – feature music. So-called ‘shock sites’, websites that

163 specialise in the remediation of filmed Hohenstein further observed that similar sequences of death, have gradually been techniques can be found transferred to the ‘real’ influenced by these earlier developments. world. Although the audience of The Hunger

Walker concluded his presentation by noting Games franchise could be criticised for adopting how images like those of the Traces of Death an inhuman, voyeuristic attitude similar to the films might have lost their original spectacular audience inside the fiction, similar spectacles are potential, having achieved iconic cult status. regularly used for political activism and protest,

like the Black Lives Matter movement. The

Panel 3, “Film and Virtuality”, was opened by adaptation of themes and symbols from this

Svenja Hohenstein (Eberhard Karls University fiction (especially in the context of social media)

Tübingen) and her paper “‘It’s a Television shows, according to Hohenstein, how

Show’: Spectacle, The Hunger Games and spectacular attributes can be used for campaigns

Political Activism”. According to Hohenstein, for social change.

Suzanne Collins’s trilogy The Hunger Games was ideal for detecting the characteristics of The third panel also comprised Susanne spectacle, as the novels on which they are based Schmid’s (Freie Universität Berlin) engagement themselves criticise spectacles in their political with “The Return of the Grand Hotel”. context. In The Hunger Games, an annual reality Countering the the worldwide trend for glass and

TV-inspired deathly spectacle takes place, steel tower hotels, a fascination with the turn of functioning as state propaganda, distracting the century 1900s Grand Hotel has emerged, people from political and social issues and thus noticeable in both film (e.g. Skyfall [Sam securing the government’s power. Conversely, Mendes, 2012] or The Grand Budapest Hotel the rebellious characters use staging and [Wes Anderson, 2014]) and literature. Schmid broadcasting to mobilise oppressed people and applied Debord’s theory of the spectacle as encourage them to rise up against ‘The Capitol’. materialised worldview to the cosmos of

164 (Grand) hotels and contemplated the notion of turned around positions of power by using the nostalgia frequently evoked by such settings. authorities themselves. The speaker concluded

The second keynote, by Neyir Zerey (SPoD by pointing out how this form of spectacular

Social Policies Gender Identity and Sexual protest was key to this year’s events and has a

Orientation Studies Association), revealed higher potential for influencing acceptance of astonishing empirical data about LGBTI+ rights LGBTI+ in Turkish society than the common in Turkey, stressing the interdisciplinary nature carnivalesque parades showcasing what is of this conference by combining sociological perceived as ‘perverse’ behaviour. methodology and cultural studies theories of the spectacular. LGBTI+ rights in Turkey being a Taking on a similar topic, the fourth panel was very contradictory and controversial matter, dedicated to dimensions of gender. Melanie

Zerey focused on Istanbul Pride Marches and Stengele (University of Konstanz) began with a how these epitomes of visibility and paper titled “‘J. F. K. Wanted to Send a Man to performativity have the potential to transform the Moon. Obama Wants to Send a Man to the the city into a spectacular space. This nowadays Women’s Rest Room’: Transgender Rights and highly carnivalesque event was met with bans the Spectacle of the Public Rest Room”. and brutality in 2014 and 2015, forcing the Stengele critically examined what spectacle organisers to rethink their concepts. This led to resulted after North Carolina passed House Bill

2016’s Pride being a specifically different one, 2 in spring 2016, prohibiting cities from passing focussing on performance arts protests and anti-discrimination ordinances intended to creative initiatives rather than on ‘excessive’ protect LGBTI+ people and thereby forcing parades. A rainbow drawn onto a busy street was transgender people to use the public restroom turned into a spectacle by police forces corresponding with the gender indicated on their cordoning off this simple and peaceful scene. birth certificate. The media’s role in framing this

According to Zerey, the protesters thereby political spectacle is essential, as major

165 companies threatened to withdraw from North subject of debate. The documentary, though,

Carolina following the international attention caused even more attention. It was banned in that it triggered. It also imposed a discourse on India, while parts of it (for example, an gender roles and state authority onto American interview with one of the convicted rapists) went society, while there have been reports on viral on social media, especially YouTube. Thus increased violence against the transgender the influence on spectacle-making of social community. Almost ironically, this spectacular media was essential to this paper. Even though discourse takes place around one of the most the film helped to raise awareness of the issue private of public spaces. Analysing the around violence against women, Laemmerhirt spectacular qualities of this incident, Stengele in argued that India’s Daughter can rightfully be her conclusion problematised the actual criticised for re-establishing a racially connoted implementations of House Bill 2. colonial discourse, depicting a British

perspective displaying hegemonic tendencies

A 2015 BBC documentary by British filmmaker even in its very title.

Leslee Udwin and the discourses surrounding it were central to the last talk, Iris-Aya The variety of topics, issues and themes touched

Laemmerhirt’s (TU Dortmund University) upon by this conference testifies to the

“Creating Spectacle out of Pain: India's significant extent to which the spectacle reaches

Daughter (2015)”. This film recounts the into our daily (mediated and thus real?) lives. It deadly gang rape of a 23-year-old Indian woman also reminds us of how diverse the scholarly in 2012 that led to a media spectacle inside India enterprise on this topic has to be in order to itself which made the government’s policy grasp all of its dimensions. towards violence against woman once again a

166 Fantasia Turns Twenty: The Return of the Retro Aesthetic

Review by Donato Totaro

The 2016 edition of Fantasia marked its theatre prior to the lights going down feels like a twentieth anniversary as a leading light in the rock concert. Everyone from the volunteers to world of genre cinema. Since its inception in the staff and programmers make each guest feel

1996 Fantasia has made its mark not only with respected and cared for – and in some cases, discoveries (J-Horror, Takashi Miike, Sion loved. There is also a precious egalitarianism in

Sono, internet horror, to name a few) but timely the rank and file of Fantasia, with every film, retrospectives, audience pleasers, formally from the unfancied short to the first-time feature complex films that challenge genre and genre to the feted grand-gala feature, promoted for fans, and, since 2012, the Frontières maximum exposure. The short film and the

International Co-Production Market, a film documentary are two genres that are awarded market aimed at genre cinema. Lasting around particularly tender care. Short films are often three weeks, Fantasia is an endurance test even shown before appropriate features and given for the film-festival junkie, but the vibrancy of their due in countless short-film programmes, the host city, Montreal, makes it a challenge including the flagship “Small Gauge Trauma” with ample filmic and social rewards. Perhaps programme, Mitch Davis’s baby, which is what sets Fantasia apart from other well-heeled always one of the festival’s most anticipated festivals is the rippling enthusiasm that extends film blocks. This year, long-time programmer from the programmers to the audience members. Davis added – after much consternation and

At times the buzz in the 700-seat Hall Building Facebook consultation – a short block aimed at

167 To celebrate their twentieth edition, the

organisers had a few special events – such as an

exhibit of the unmistakable art that has graced

T-shirts and posters for twenty years – but kept

the focus on the films and the guests. Two of the

marquee guest names reflect the festival’s past

and present: Takashi Miike (the past) and

Guillermo Del Toro (the present). Both were

honoured with prizes, Del Toro the Cheval Noir

Award and Miike the Lifetime Achievement

Award. Miike and Fantasia go back a long way,

Takeshi Miike receives the as he had his North American premiere at Lifetime Achievement Award. Fantasia in 1997 with Fudoh: The Next promoting female directors: “Born of Woman”. Generation (Gokudô sengokushi: Fudô, 1996)

There were countless other short-film blocks, and has since appeared with over 30 films including “Fragments of Asia”, which included a (shorts, features, TV programmes included). An surprise screening of a Miike short, “Celluloid illustrated history of Miike at Fantasia has been

Experiments”, “My First Fantasia” (free copiously archived by colleagues Randolph animation blocks for kids), “International Jordan and Peter Rist for the online film journal

Science Fiction Short Film Showcase”, Marc Offscreen.1 Del Toro visited Fantasia on a career

Lamothe’s specially curated “DJ XL5’s Zappin’ high, with multiple projects brewing. Along with

Party” (one of the many Fantasia elements such excellent recent films as the über Kaiju unique to Quebec), and many programmes love-in Pacific Rim (2013) (which has spawned devoted to local filmmakers. Let’s just say that a video game, naturally) and the precious neo- short films are not overlooked at Fantasia. Gothic Crimson Peak (2015), he has several

168 features in pre-production or announced, an sadistic god-like toys that force them into bizarre ongoing horror/science fiction TV show, The death traps. If you will, Battle Royale (Batoru

Strain (2014–), and a travelling exhibit, which rowaiaru, Kinji Fukasaku, 2000) meets Cabin in opened on 21 July 2016 at the Los Angeles the Woods (Drew Goddard, 2012) meets The

County Museum of Art, “Guillermo Del Toro: Hunger Games (Gary Ross, 2012) meets Saw

At Home with Monsters”. At Fantasia proper, (James Wan, 2004) with a hint of Sion Sono’s

Del Toro introduced a documentary on a subject Tag (Riaru onigokko, 2015). All of the monsters dear to his heart, Creature Designers: The are based on old traditional toys: a Daruma doll,

Frankenstein Complex (Le complexe de a huge wooden cat, a set of Russian dolls and so

Frankenstein, Gilles Penso/Alexandre Poncet, on. It is tempting to read this in the vein of

2015), which he followed with a Master Class. modernity-vs.-tradition satire, with Japanese

tech-driven youths pitted against traditional-

Miike was represented by two films that, while style monster toys. not from the director’s top-drawer, have enough visual panache and outré content to appease the Fantasia is always at the forefront of genre faithful: Terraformars (2016) and As the Gods trends and cycles, including the recent love-in

Will (Kamisama no iu tôri, 2014). Terraformars with genre films that feature a retro aesthetic. is a space opera about a twenty-sixth-century Two major figures in this postmodern

Mars ruled by genetically modified seven-foot reinvention of genre had their first major tall anthropomorphic cockroach monsters, with a exposure at Fantasia: the Belgian auteurs Hélène tendency to decapitate humans. That description Cattet and Bruno Forzani, and American all- alone was enough to have Fantasians lining up rounder Anna Biller. The Belgians are unique in around the block! The better of the two films is their ability to transplant their ultra-formalistic,

As the Gods Will, a gory, special-effects-heavy experimental tendencies onto their geekish, allegory (?) that pits teenage students against cinephiliac love of 1970s Italian giallo. Though

169 Cattet and Forzani made their mark on the world Although a character that also came to mind for scene with Amer (2009) and The Strange Colour her look and her role as a powerful sorceress of Your Body’s Tears (L’étrange couleur des was Ruth from Mario Bava’s Kill, Baby, Kill larmes de ton corps, 2013), they cut their teeth (Operazione paura, 1966), played by Fabienne and honed their excessive style across an Dali. The Love Witch was filmed on 35 mm the impressive body of five short films between better to replicate the glorious Technicolor stock

2001 and 2006, all of which played at Fantasia, of the 1960s and 1970s. The sets, art design, often in their presence. Anna Biller has served in costumes, colour palette and use of filters to multiple creative roles in all of her films, shorts soften the image combine to create a state of and features. Her first feature, Viva (2007), fever-induced dream. The performances are played at Fantasia in 2007. Set in 1972, it delivered on the cusp of camp, reeled in by the recreates the world of the sexploitation film with attention to aesthetic detail and the seriousness wit, style and panache. Biller topped Viva with of the subtexts (female creativity, patriarchal her next feature, which also played Fantasia this ideals of femininity, narcissism). Biller’s year: The Love Witch (2016), starring Samantha greatest achievement – apart from her many

Robinson as Elaine, a young, artistically inclined technical skills, involving scoring the music, woman obsessed with an idealised notion of editing, producing and undertaking production devotional love. Elaine is looking for a strong design, art direction, costume design – lies in man to return her unconditional love, but, making a film that challenges viewers to decide lacking the time or patience for conventional whether Elaine’s actions and behaviour throw courtship, she concocts her own love potions, the feminist movement back to the dark age, or with tragic results. With her straight, jet-black forward into a post-post-feminist age. You hair and sultry dark eyes, Robinson is decide. channelling Euro-horror greats such as Florinda

Bolkan, Edwige Fenech and Barbara Bouchet.

170 Director Michael Reich (left) and leading actor Michael Pinkney (right) present She’s Allergic to Cats.

Another retro title that shifts across time-frames certain point, there is a strong possibility that the in the 1960s and 1970s with a mannered style is narrative actions are Kalt’s fantasy projections.

The Arbalest (Adam Pinney, 2016). Pinney’s approach is unique in that the retro aesthetic is She’s Allergic to Cats (Michael Reich, 2016) is structured as a fictional account of a real an analogue wet-dream fantasy. Reich chose to character, the inventor of the Kalt Cube, a play shoot his film, for the most part, to capture the on Ernő Rubik, the inventor of the eponymous look of low-resolution video art. This is partly to cube. The work is playful at every level: it is a feed into the status of the lead character Michael film about an ‘invented’ inventor of puzzles Pinkney’s (played by Pinkney) as a failed video embedded within a puzzle-like film. Foster Kalt artist living in East Hollywood. However, as he

(Mike Brune) is a Charles Foster Kane-like explained in the Q&A, director Reich shot the narcissist who steals a man’s idea for a toy and film in high resolution and degraded it in post- becomes rich, but remains unhappy because the production. While shooting in digital and then to woman he loves, Sylvia Frank (Tallie Medel), recreate a video aesthetic in post often feels does not reciprocate his love. One of the things disingenuous, Reich had a valid aesthetic reason that makes the film so interesting is that, after a for doing this. In certain shots, at times only for

171 The author with Pat Tremblay (right). a few seconds, the film slips into high definition Winding Refn’s glittering The Neon Demon

– like Pinkney’s first sighting of his dream girl, (2016).

Cora, played by daughter of Nastassja Kinski and granddaughter of Klaus Kinski, Sonja The retro aesthetic gets a shakedown in Pat

Kinski. Pinkney works as a dog groomer by day Tremblay’s Atmo HorroX (2016), a film which but fantasises about producing an all-cat remake will burrow itself into your head and have you of Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976), a plot point asking: ‘what the hell did I just see?!’ Atmo which made me think of Hal Roach’s early HorroX is not your usual retro film because it is sound all-animal comedy shorts, like The retrofitted through Tremblay’s esoteric and

Dogway Melody (Zion Myers/Jules wide-ranging cultural touchstones and deep

White,1930). This latter point may not be so off appreciation for kitchen-sink technology (for a the wall if you factor in that director Reich sense of Tremblay as a tastemaker, read his list himself worked as a dog groomer. The film is a of the top ten weird movies2). At times the film fascinating, surreal satire on the struggles of an looks and sounds messy and dirty, the colours artist in Hollywood, a polar opposite to Nicolas bleeding everywhere, and lights flaring, as if the

172 images and sounds were being sent down from Tremblay. If he didn’t exist, the aliens would another planet through a faulty satellite. have to send one down.

Tremblay is a Montreal-resident DIY filmmaker who has managed, with very few means and To briefly note, other films with a retro aesthetic resources, to make three feature films over the that played at Fantasia 2016 include the French past ten years, his first feature showing at the found footage À la recherche de l'Ultra-Sex

Festival of New Cinema, and his last two at (Bruno Lavaine/Nicolas Charlet, 2015), which

Fantasia. Atmo HorroX is nothing if not does for the 1970s and 1980s sex film what ambitious, a science-fiction, anti-pharmaceutical Craig Baldwin’s Tribulations 99: Alien conspiracy film with no discernible dialogue, Anomalies Under America (1992) did for the that runs 101 minutes and is structured to induce Cold War-era science-fiction and conspiracy frustration, annoyance or restlessness through film, and Bad Blood: The Movie (Tim Reis, scenes of calculated longueur and repetition. 2016), a throwback to the 1980s body horror

Aliens, helped by a binocular-obsessed ‘scout’, film. There were two films referencing the are scouring the city in search of human victims. spaghetti western: retro-horror advocate Ti

However, the humans seem to have their own West’s (The House of the Devil [2009], The issues, driven by a sinister pharmaceutical Innkeepers [2011], The Sacrament [2013]) In a company to a condition of mania, somnolence or Valley of Violence (2016), and JT Mollner’s absurdist repetition. Pat Tremblay is DIY to the Outlaws and Angels (2016), the latter starring core. His arsenal of props and art direction is Clint Eastwood’s daughter Francesca Eastwood; dependent on what can be found in the home. also in retro mode was Parasites (Chad Ferrin,

The main alien is dressed in nylons adorned with 2016), directed in the spirit of the 1980s urban prickly nut shrubs and with hot-dog balloons action film. And finally, Red Christmas (2016), protruding from the crotch area. God bless Pat an impressive debut feature from Australian

funny man Craig Anderson, which blends the

173 grind-house aesthetics of the 1970s holiday- saddened to hear of his passing three years later. horror film with that same era’s streak of social As a tribute to this director dear to their hearts, consciousness. In Red Christmas Anderson uses Fantasia programmed a delicious mini-spotlight a powerhouse performance by Dee Wallace on Polish genre cinema, culminating in a

(who was in audience, along with Anderson and screening of Żuławski’s troubled metaphysical other crew and cast members) as a matriarch science-fiction brain twister, On the Silver Globe whose reasoned decision to abort a deformed (Na srebrnym globie, 1988). With this film foetus comes back to haunt her many years later Żuławski is true to the nature of science-fiction when the thought-to-be aborted child returns as a literature, which has always privileged idea over lumbering ‘monster’ to claim justice on spectacle, contrary to cinema science fiction. On

Christmas Day. Anderson manages to elicit the Silver Globe is hard to properly judge, given genuine emotion and tackles the theme of its fractured production history: it was started in abortion with surprising nuance and sensitivity, the mid-1970s, but its production was halted by while never renouncing the gory accoutrements the communist government in 1978. Żuławski you would expect. returned to it a decade later adding subjective

POV tracking shots of a flâneur-like figure

For many of the original programming team of moving through the streets of contemporary

Fantasia (like Mitch Davis and former Poland with a voice-over explaining the missing programmer Karim Hussain) the Polish director footage. What we do have is some of the most

Andrzej Żuławski embodied the passionate and flamboyant, extravagant and disorienting crazed approach to cinema that they would imagery of any fantastic film. On the Silver cultivate over the twenty years of Fantasia’s life. Globe renounces linear narrative for religious

They were thrilled when they were able to and political parable, drawing from the Bible, bestow a Lifetime Achievement Award on the western, science fiction and horror. The

Żuławski in 2013 (interviewed here3) and conceptual scope of the film is so broad – time

174 travel, space travel, messianic figures, alien closed-off, unsettling environment, the species, found footage – that it evokes Andrei Dybbuk’s haunting presence invokes Poland’s

Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966), Solaris troubled Holocaust history very effectively. It is

(Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972), Zardoz (John hard to deny the assertion that The Lure (Córki

Boorman, 1974) and 2001: A Space Odyssey dancingu, Agnieszka Smoczyńska, 2015) was

(Stanley Kubrick, 1968), while remaining the most wildly entertaining film of the fest: a wholly original. In terms of the legacy going genre-defying Polish updating of Cat People forward, there is little doubt that On the Silver (Jacques Tourneur, 1942), re-imagined as an

Globe influenced Aleksei German’s final and East European satirical musical-horror fantasy. equally cryptic film, Hard to Be a God (Trudno Two Mermaid sirens, Silver and Golden, come byt' bogom, 2013). ashore to a coastal town, recalling Jean Rollin’s

coastal pirate-horror film The Demoniacs (Les

The three other films in the Polish spotlight were démoniaques, 1974), and find work at a strip

Demon (Marcin Wrona, 2015), a creepy, genre- bar, singing, dancing and luring men to drink bending supernatural tale about a young groom, and spend money. The Lure has an infectious

Peter (Itay Tiran), who on his wedding day energy, with fantastic 1980s-style becomes possessed by the Dybbuk of a dead club/dance/pop music and dance choreography bride, a young Jewish woman named Hana. that remains simple but inventive. One of the

Director Wrona (who tragically committed sisters, Golden, played by the Jennifer Connelly suicide less than a week after the film was look-alike Michalina Olszańska, becomes completed) sets his tale on an island-village jealous when her more delicate sister, Silver community, which underscores the growing (Marta Mazurek), finds a human boyfriend. Like sense of claustrophobia that hovers over the Irena in Cat People, this elicits Golden’s dark, wedding party once Peter’s behaviour turns brutal, ‘wild female side’. The film also has erratic. Because the film places the family in a interesting parallels with recent films that use

175 female ‘otherness’ to comment on what it means in communist-era Czechoslovakia. Backed up to be human: cyborg, android or alien in Steven against the wall, Hepnarová feels trapped in an

Soderbergh’s Solaris (2002), Ex Machina (Alex either/or scenario, and writes the following letter

Garland, 2014), Under the Skin (Jonathan before driving a truck along a crowded Prague

Glazer, 2013) and Lucy (Luc Besson, 2014). pavement, killing eight and injuring many more:

“I am a loner. A destroyed woman. A woman

On the surface, Fantasia is all about destroyed by people … I have a choice – to kill entertainment and pushing boundaries, but myself or to kill others. I choose to avenge my sometimes it takes viewers into a dark and haters. It would be too easy to leave this world sobering place, offering a complex view of as an unknown suicide victim. Society is too human nature, which is the case with the fourth indifferent, rightly so. My verdict is: I, Olga film in the Polish spotlight, I, Olga Hepnarova Hepnarová, the victim of your bestiality,

(Já, Olga Hepnarová, Petr Kazda/Tomáš sentence you to death.” The film approaches its

Weinreb, 2016) and its companion piece, the subject with an austere and minimalist aesthetic

Austrian-German Agonie (David Clay Diaz, – static shots, long takes, monochrome black and

2016). Both films present fictional accounts of white, diegetic music – which culminates in a real-life murders committed by troubled non-judgmental portrait of a tragic, splintered contemporary East European youths. I, Olga soul whose legacy includes being the last

Hepnarova stars the dark-haired mermaid from woman to be executed in Czechoslovakia.

The Lure, Michalina Olszańska, in an about-turn performance as a 22-year-old lesbian, Olga Diaz’s Agonie opens with the grisly facts of a

Hepnarová, who committed mass murder on 10 murder: a young man murders his girlfriend with

July 1973 as a calculated response to a life of a kitchen knife, dismembers the corpse and emotional and physical abuse suffered at the deposits the body parts in different skips around hands of her parents, authority figures and peers the city. With these facts duly noted, Diaz

176 Alex lets off steam in Agonie. proceeds to intercut between two young men, more generalised, metaphorical depiction of life ostensibly suspects, a conservative-looking circumstances weighing down contemporary

Christian (Samuel Schneider), studying to be a young people: indifferent or distracted parents, judge, and a punkish-looking Alex (Alexander worries about jobs and economic prospects,

Srtschin), fresh out of military training and sexual identity, peer pressure, and possible looking for direction and release from a mental-health issues. The film is shot in a regimented life. Like I, Olga Hepnarova, Agonie reserved, realistic manner, with long takes, static owes much of its impact to a controlled exercise framing or subtle camera movements, and in style. Agonie is a taut, well-directed judicious use of music. The film isn’t interested psychological drama with the violent murder in suspense – it tells us right at the start about serving as a pretext for a dual character study in the murder – but in the minutiae of detail across youth anomie. Although the film is based on the the lives of the two lead protagonists, 24-year- true story of a 24-year-old man who, without old Christian and 20-something Alex. The film’s motive or provocation, killed and dismembered only concession to suspense lies in the audience his girlfriend, Diaz directs it so as to make it a having to figure out which of the two characters

177 will be the eventual murderer. But most viewers contemporary youth who feel disconnected from will have little trouble working that out. What is the usual safety nets society offers (education, fascinating is the way that Diaz structures the entertainment, family, authority figures). The film so that it alternates between the two film is disquieting because Diaz does not offer characters, using a deceptively simple, parallel- any precise causes of the youthful dissatisfaction cutting style, moving equally from one life to the or explain why the young adults are perennially other in an almost mundane rhythmic fashion. courting violence. Given that the demographics

The two characters, from different classes, are of Fantasia are younger than that of any other unalike in most respects. Their worlds never film festival in Montreal, this is a vision which meet, and yet Diaz’s style ‘equalises’ them and should resonate with its audiences. In fact, it the effect of this is to ‘trap’ the two dissimilar should resonate with everyone, regardless of men in the same stifling world. With Agonie age.

Diaz has woven a powerful cautionary tale about

1 Rist, P. and Jordan, R. (2017) “Takashi Miike: http://366weirdmovies.com/pat-tremblays-top-10- Fantasia Filmography”, Offscreen, 21 (3), weird-movies/ http://offscreen.com/view/takashi-miike-fantasia- 3 Totaro, D. (2013) “An Interview with Andrzej filmography Zulawski and Daniel Bird”, Offscreen, 18 (5), 2 Tremblay, P. (2011) “Pat Tremblay’s Top 10 (+) http://offscreen.com/view/an-interview-with-andrzej- Weird Movies”, 366 Weird Movies, 5 September, zulawski-and-daniel-bird

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