Sequenzi di Morte

The central point of the transversal history of cinema that I present is an aesthetic/technical analysis of ‘reality’ and ‘staged reality’. From the very beginning, ‘cinema’ has been faking, building reality: film-makers began to produce ‘Mondo films’ (‘the ugly bastard son of peepshow and anthropological cinema’). And why? Because they needed a good photographic standard (not too far from the one of fiction). Modern television is, on the contrary, seeking a more complete interface with street reality: if an amateur records low-quality, time-coded images, that is the language of ‘truth’. The look of snuff movies would certainly be quite rough. How could such films eventually become evidence of a crime for the police? The history of the spectacle of life and death, of institutional horror grows behind a big lie called ‘the right to information’.

Programme

Van de volgende films worden fragmenten vertoond/Fragments will be shown from the following films:

Mondo Cane (Gualtiero Jacopetti, 1963)
Africa Addio (Gualtiero Jacopetti, 1963)
Execution of Czolgosz (Thomas Edison, 1901)
Le sang des bêtes (Georges Franju, 1949)
Post Mortem (Fetus Productions/I.C.U., 1979)
The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes (Stan Brakhage, 1972)
Contemporary Embalming (N.F.D.A., late 80s)
Buio Omega (Joe d’Amato, 1979)
Autopsis (Juan Lougar, 1973)
Blitz at Nocera Inf. Sanatory (1994)
Addio Ultimo Uomo (Alfredo & Angelo Castiglioni, 1978)
Savage Man, Savage Beast (Antonio Climati & Mario Morra, 1975)
Brutes and Savages (Arthur Davis, 1975)
La donna e’ uno spettacolo (Claude Lelouch, 1964)
Noi e l’amore: comportamento sessuale variante (Antonio D’Agostini, 1991)
Tomboy (Claudio Racca, 1977)
Shocking Asia II: The Last Taboos (Emerson Fox, 1985)
Radio Bikiki (Robert Stone, 1987)
The War Game (Peter Watkins, 1981)
The Killing of America (Leonard Schrader, 1981)
Charles Manson (Family Movies, John Aes Nihil)
Faces of Death I (Conan le Cilaire, 1978)
Mad Video (Japan, late 80s)
True Gore (Malcolm Dixon Causey, 1987)
Executions (Still Movement Pictures, 1995)
Cannibal Holocaust (Ruggero Deodato, 1979)
The Man from Deep River (Umberto Lenzi, 1972)
Gesichter des Sterbens (Akira Ide, eighties)
Peeping Tom (Michael Powell, 1960)
The John F. Kennedy Killing (Abraham Zapruder, 1973)
Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer (John McNaughton, 1986)
Diretta-Rai Alfredo Rampi (RAI TV, 1981)
Man Bites Dog (Benoit, Bonzel, Poelvoorde, 1992)
Grandi crimini e processi del XX secolo (John G. Haigh, 1993)