News: Beastly Wonders Double Feature

CineCult return with a double feature of obscure or previously banned European arthouse fare. The theme is sexuality, suppressed and now exploding forth across the screen in the most outre styles that the 1970s could muster! An evening of arthouse horror, fairy tale, and euro-sexploitation madness.

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders
Dir: Jaromil Jires. 1970. (73 minutes)
A beautiful masterwork from the Czechoslovakian surrealist movement, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders is a delightful cocktail of fairytales, provincial romance, art horror and Freudian wet dreams, which is sure to induce feverish imaingings and pinings for lost worlds. Filmed two years after the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the countries of the Warsaw Pact it is considered to be one of the last films to come out of the Prague Spring (a time of artistic liberation and exploration). It is the oft told tale of a young girl's sexual awakening, but as you've never seen it before, and perhaps never told so beautifully. Beguiling and magical, haunting and just a little bit silly, Valerie's adventures through the looking glass won't soon be forgotten.

The Beast
Dir:Walerian Borowczyk. 1975. (94 minutes)
The only film to have ever caused a riot at the usually reserved London Film Festival, Walerian Borowczyk’s certifiably insane 1975 masterpiece is perhaps the most controversial picture ever made, the kind of movie Jane Austen might have directed had she spent more time on Dutch porn sites. Banned for many years, this is possibly the first public screening in Australia of this depraved cult classic, and is bound to make you look at your CineCult hosts in a whole new way, conceivably through steel bars. The plot concerns an eighteenth century mansion, an American heiress contracted to carry a male descendant of a crumbling aristocratic family and, well, a beast with a humongous womb ferret. Keep the nearest exit in plain view watching this one folks, that could very well be your hosts Ben and Tony making strategic exits well before the credits finish rolling…

Tickets cost $5 for both films, a pittance for a night of unbridled depravity, corruption and uncomfortable sideways glances.There will be a brief intermission between the films, drinks available at the bar, and maybe even popcorn again if the machine hasn't exploded and burnt someone's house down.

CineCult@303
Tuesday, February 17, 7:00pm
Bar 303, 303 High St, Northcote

Source: Tony Mcmahon