It’s only when the pieces of the puzzle fall into place that we become aware of the big picture. The “cineramas” presented here have all been conceived individually, be they the fruits of our latest reflections or previously shelved additions, like the focus on the queen of exploitation cinema Roberta Findlay constantly postponed because of the pandemic. The competition programmes are the result of long-term endeavours and the manifestation of the union of wildly varying sensitivities of seasoned film selection veterans. Paradoxically it is thanks to the contrast between them that the pieces so easily come together as different ingredients of a remedy against the standardisation of the contemporary cinematographic offer. Socially engaged documentary filmmaker Travis Wilkerson responds to the acerbic humour of the pornographer Stephen Sayadian, the focus on cinema Camp winks at the work of the Bulgarian Mara Mattuschka, while Peter Strickland opens the ball after he had been the one to close it in 2018 with his memorable In Fabric.
Unless otherwise specified, all films offered are prohibited for people under 16 years of age.
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COMPETITION
Sunday 23.10 at 20:30 - Projection of the best feature film 2022 - Jethica by Pete Ohs
CINERAMA
Aesthetics of excess, artifice, fabulosity and folly, Camp has distinguished itself in cinema through movies that never shrink from any excess, any outrageousness. This will be demonstrated by four productions on the program of this LUFF's edition: Seeds and its tyrannical matriarch flanked by neuropathic offspring; Multiple Maniacs and its symphony of perversions orchestrated by Lady Divine; the gothic-porn fresco Thundercrack! where nymphomania and zoophilia are on the menu of a depravity festival and finally the whacky soap opera The Devil's Cleavage, biting parody of post-war US tearjerkers. Between experimentation and exploitation, these jewels of Camp tiara prove the indecent vitality of a concept prompt to put genders head over heels.
Pascal Françaix, auteur de Camp! vol.1 à 3 - Marest éditeur
Don't call her a feminist filmmaker, let alone an author, or she'll get angry. When asked how she would define herself, her answer is resounding: as a pragmatic woman. The one who has always wanted to make gold before art, is today, to her astonishment, a mythical figure of the New York cinema of exploitation. Director of a good number of porn and some horror films, she was one of the few women to have worked in this field. Methodical and organised, she could shoot three films at the same time and edit one more with the offcuts. Also producer and screenwriter, Roberta Findlay enjoyed above all to hold the camera herself. She was called "the human tripod" as she managed to remain stable and refine the lighting on set. Through three stunning films, LUFF pays tribute to a simply indispensable filmmaker.
Your eyes have probably already caught Sayadian's work. While reading Hustler, Larry Flint's satirical porn magazine for which Sayadian led photographic campaigns with a wry sense of humor. Or on movie posters he conceptualized (De Palma's Dressed to Kill, Carpenter's The Fog, ...), or via video clips - for Wall of Voodoo in particular. In 1983, in the company of the photographer Francis Delia and the writer and scriptwriter Jerry Stahl, he started to shoot avant-garde porns. Conscious of being free to inject into his work what he wanted as long as he reached the quota of sex scenes, Sayadian signed singular flicks where aesthetics explode and excitation dies away, condemning their commercial career on the porn market but propelling them into the circuit of Midnight Movies that celebrated Pink Flamingos and Eraserhead in their time. His porn Café Flesh and his incredible (and non-X-rated) Dr. Caligari having recovered their surrealist brilliance thanks to recent restorations, the LUFF proposes you to (re)discover them in the presence of their author.
On top, Sayadian will introduce three pieces of mindblowing cinema that marked him at different periods of his life.
{See also: installation "Sideshow on a Trip to the Abyss: Stephen Sayadian"}
Bulgarian artist born in 1959, Mattuschka first studied mathematics, linguistics and anthropology, before branching out into an artistic curriculum at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, where she specialized in painting and animation. In parallel with her career as a painter, she has been making short films mixing performance, body art and experimentation since 1983. This "exhibitionism transformed into art", according to Peter Tscherkassky, questions her own identity as an artist and a woman, with humor and a certain masochism, reminiscent of the Viennese actionists. Our selection explores the Mattuschkian spectrum through her works in 16mm (1984-1997), a selection of short films shot in video (2003-2009) and her last feature film shot in 2018.
It would be almost unfair to use the traditional expression "filmmaker and political activist" to introduce Travis Wilkerson, as these two labels are inseparable when it comes to his work.
Born in 1969 in Colorado (USA), Wilkerson has constantly linked political thought to artistic practice and has been making militant documentaries in the purest Agitprop style since the 1990s. By seizing the techniques of collage and composition of images specific to Soviet communication to integrate them into his practice of cinema, he has invented revolutionary audio-visual objects from a visual point of view but also, you saw me coming, from a thematic perspective. For a visual, anti-racist, anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist smack, follow Wilkerson!
Jean-Pierre Bouyxou is an agitator and fervent anarchist. In 1968 he was 22 and his sharp pen opened him the pages of most of the leading magazines of the last 60 years: from Hara-Kiri to Siné Hebdo by way of Métal Hurlant and Paris Match - just to mention a few. He is also a novelist, an essayist, a director of adult movies, an actor (Vortex by Gaspar Noé), a citizen of the airy-fairy country of Groland and a passionate cinephile. Author of a few experimental shorts in the late 1960s, JPB offers here a selection of french speaking shorts combining psychedelia (Chromo Sud), fantasy (Maximiliani Ultima Nox), avant-garde (Etes-vous malade?) and the mischievous humor of his friend Noël Godin (Grève et pets).