Mouse Heaven
Kenneth Anger, USA, 2004, 10 min

Puisqu’on est dans l’opulence, le glamour, les symboles et l’illusion.

Arena: Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon
Nigel Finch, GB, 1991, 60 min

Profile of Kenneth Anger, looking at the uproar his books on Hollywood scandals caused and journeying through the darker side of Hollywood’s history, including film clips, and Anger playing a guide with comedian Mike McShane playing the God of Hollywood. It also includes a look at some of Anger’s own work… Film historian Kevin Brownlow has repeatedly criticized the book, citing Anger as saying his research method was, « Mental telepathy, mostly. »

 

Le Révélateur
Philippe Garrel, France, 1968, 67 min

 

Le Révélateur est un film muet. Un couple et son enfant fuient devant une menace informe et pourtant indicible. Un film sans rires et sans murmures. Dans un paysage de désolation, d’humidité et d’humiliation, on voyait l’être le plus faible se révolter : l’enfant.

 

The Color of Pomegranates
Sergei Parajanov, Soviet Union, 1968, 78 minutes (Armenian release), 73 minutes
Soviet release : Five minutes were cut mainly due to religious censorship for release in the Soviet Union beyond Armenia

 

Steeped in religious iconography, The Color of Pomegranates is a deeply spiritual testament to director Sergei Parajanov’s fascination with Armenian folk art and culture. It is also a controversial work, which, coupled with another of his films, Shadows of our Forgotten Ancestors, led to his arrest and imprisonment in a Soviet Gulag for four years. The Soviets insisted he was guilty of selling gold and icons illegally and committing “homosexual acts.” In reality, his only crime was offending the tenets of socialist realism, both in his daring surrealistic form and in his choice of subject matter. While many of the popular films of this era in Soviet cinema were largely propaganda designed to serve the ideological interests of the regime, Parajanov chose to focus on the ethnography and spirituality of the Ukraine, Armenia, and Georgia.