Friday, June 23rd, 2006
8:30 - Live Music by Belacqua (click for details)
9:00 - Showtime
TRT: 1:30:00
On the lawn of Automotive High School | CLICK for DIRECTIONS
50 Bedford Ave, between N. 12th and Lorimer, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
In the event of rain the show is indoors at the same location.
BugCrush: Sex and Horror
In horror movies, sex often carries a moral subtext. Passion is a threat, and desire appears deviant. Promiscuity leads to danger, and the licentious are punished. But in this program of short horror films, sexual confusion is the subject, not the subtext. The characters here suffer because their idea of sexual normalcy is viewed as abnormal by those around them (First Date), or because psychopaths prey on their uncertain status in society (Guy 101). Elsewhere, horrible things happen when sexual conduct is so outrageous that the lines of reality begin to blur (Dirtyglitter 1: Damien), and the concept of love is being systematically warped beyond recognition (L'Amour Est...). But the difference between these shorts and conventional horror films is that sex is not the root of evil here. Sex is a liberation that's often scary to face (Bugcrush, Dish).
THE FILMS: Guy 101 (Ian W. Gouldstone | England | 8:30)
Told with an eerie calm, this is a terrifying story of one stranger meeting another on the internet, and hearing a horrific but erotic story of robbery, rape and pleasure.
First Date (Gary Huggins | Kansas City, MO | 20:00)
A man in a halfway house shows his frightening tenacity in his search for a car to take on an internet date with a boy who seems oddly unintimidated. Just wait. Official Selection of the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.
Dish (Meloni Poole | England | 11:00)
Can she have her cake and eat him? One stranger's fantasy is another's nightmare.
Dirtyglitter 1: Damien (Aron Kantor | Los Angeles, CA | 14:00) www.dirtyglitter.com
A precariously intoxicated hustler finds photographs of himself in a gallery and sets out on a cross-town mission to find the mysterious artist.
L'amour estô (Victor Throe | England | 5:00)
This animated film plays out an age old ritual in which an innocent young girl flees her lover...a mad scientist conducting sadistic experiments on her in the name of love.
Bugcrush (Carter Smith | Maine | 30:00) www.bugcrush.net
Bugcrush is the story of Ben, a small-town high school loner, whose fascination with Grant, a dangerously seductive new kid, leads him into something much more sinister than he could ever have imagined. Winner of the 2006 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize for Short Film.
THE MUSIC:
"After the absinthe's been drained and the gray-whitish
fleck dries from your nostril, Belacqua is the perfect tonic
for a night spent holding razors to your wrists and laughing.
They ain't jazzy. Not in the least. Yet they don't lack
for complex strangeness under the minimal swirl. The lean
groaning goth orchestra—two guys? with beards?—with
the hard, depressive demeanor is jarring..."
—New York Press
