APPLAUDING MAUDIT
Starting tomorrow January 12, 2021, and running through January 24, you’ll find online for free a treasure trove showcase of genre-driven cinema at the Second Annual Film Maudit festival, 2.0, inspired by the legendary artist Jean Cocteau’s 1949 festival, Festival Du Film Maudit, which celebrated a group of films that were sadly overlooked and neglected in his time. (The term “film maudit” means “cursed films.”)
Come celebrate these new outré, unusual and startling works. The program is a blend of narrative, documentary and experimental films that in style or subject matter are deliberately bold, extreme, confrontational or unusual. Presented by the legendary L.A. Performance Space and Gallery Highways, there are 18 feature films and 21 shorts programs, specially commissioned programs, and new film scores performed by artists who reflect the diversity of Los Angeles. including films rarely if ever, seen in festivals: works addressing socio-political issues and taboo subject matter that challenges conventional artistic assumptions and sexual mores.
Programs include erotic art pioneers Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens’ Water Makes Us Wet, featuring a live stream Q&A with both; new, original music scores performed live to silent films; and multiple Feature and Shorts Programs that showcase works from 25 countries in 16 uniquely curated categories from Ms. Fear to Shattering Form – with animated documentaries to experimental works handmade on film; extreme horror to comic surrealism. The BEHOLD section includes NSFW! curated by Planet Queer, Hi Kicks Entrails, curated by performance artist Ironstone, and QLX: the Performance of Queer Latinx.
Film Maudit 2.0 highlights this year include the U.S. premieres of Feature Films: Mathius Marvellous Shop, a Spanish/German surrealistic satire; Kriya, a magical Indian thriller, and the Los Angeles premieres of Woman of the Photographs; a powerful Japanese film about image and reality for a beautiful model; The Columnist, a darkly comic horror film from The Netherlands; A Dark, Dark Man, the Kazakhstan/France thriller just long-listed for the Golden Globes; and Darkness (Buio) the first feature film by Donatello Award-winning director Emanuela Rossi.
Check out all of them! (Popcorn not included.)
