Offscreenings

The filmmakers behind Amer bring us an exercise in style which takes its cues from 1970’s Italian cult films. The pair have since become accomplished filmmakers in their own right with little to envy cinematic heavyweights. The viewer is swept into a highly sensual experience amidst an oppressive atmosphere, punctuated by a rhythm that is as intoxicating as it is enthralling.

In the presence of Belgian directing duo Bruno Forzani and Hélène Cattet, and the film crew.

A young couple and their transvestite maid prepare a sex orgy with the usual suspects: the slut, the star, the stud and the adolescent. This colourful tribute to 70s genre films was one of Cahiers du Cinéma’s main picks for 2013.

The Fuck Bombers, a guerilla film-crew, manage to film the bloody clashes between two yakuza gangs. Sion Sono, the enfant terrible of Japanese cinema, offers an energetic, off-the-chain and ultra violent ode to the genre film.

Chris Sullivan spent 15 years creating this superb animation film through which he scrutinizes the slums in the heart of America. From the Bukowskian ugliness of pockmarked figures, senile mothers and drifting drunkards surfaces astounding beauty.

A somewhat dorky loner begins an intense romantic relationship with his computer (whose seductive voice could be none other’s than Scarlett Johansson’s). With an honesty that is stripped of cheap sentimentality yet not without its share of tenderness, this highly original sci-fi drama is a striking rendering of modern society, individualist to the point where relationships take place via the seclusion of interposed screens. The latest from the director of Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, Spike Jonze.

An average family man secretly joins an S&M club which promises surprise visits from professional dominatrixes. When they begin showing up at his workplace, at home and on every street corner, he tries every which way to put an end to the madness. The latest comedy from the director of Big Man Japan and Symbol.

After accidentally killing a Vietnamese man, a Japanese expat in Saigon goes on the run in a war-ravaged country. This film, shot in 1975, was unfinished and considered lost for many years. Finally completed last year, it is a treat to behold.