Maya (Raymond Bernard, 1949)

The Criterion Collection, a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films presents Maya.

Maya, a Hindu word describing magic and illusion, is embodied in Bella (Viviane Romance), a bewitching prostitute in an atmospheric port town who conjures the fantasies of visiting travelers and temporarily becomes the women of their dreams. The pragmatic Bella has no expectation of finding true love or leaving her profession until she meets Jean (Jean-Pierre Grenier), a passing sailor who saves her from the police and devotes himself to building a life with her, provided fate does not intervene. Based on Simon Gantillon’s successful play and produced by Viviane Romance herself, Raymond Bernard’s Maya deftly blends the styles and techniques of poetic realism, film noir, melodrama, and Cocteau-like fantasy to create a world of mystery and eroticism.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• Restored high-definition digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• “The Film That Made You,” a 1989 conversation between Viviane Romance and Louis le Roy
• Interview with film critic Italo Manzi on the casting and distribution
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: Essay by filmmaker Guy Maddin

Knife + Heart (Yann Gonzalez, 2018) – Ithaca Fantastik 2018

The Criterion Collection, a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films presents Knife + Heart.

In the neon glow of 1979 Paris, Anne (Vanessa Paradis) makes her living producing low-budget gay pornography and struggles with the heartbreaking rejection of her longtime lover and current film editor Loïs (Kate Moran). She aims to inspire Loïs back into loving her with increasingly ambitious productions, even using the murders of her actors by a leather clad killer as inspiration, but as the killings continue and her troupe becomes increasingly cautious, Anne assumes the role of amateur sleuth investigating the secret of the mysterious figure that stalks her company. Deftly blending Parisian porn silliness and Italian slasher conventions with a pulsing score by electronic music group M83 and a perfect period production design, Knife + Heart is an affectionately queer tribute to cinema’s body genres and to love in its many forms.

Disc Features:

• 4K digital master, approved by director Yann Gonzalez and director of photography Simon Beaufils, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Two audio commentaries, one featuring Gonzalez and actors Vanessa Paradis, Kate Moran, and Nicolas Maury, and the other featuring Gonzalez, Beaufils, co-writer Cristiano Mangione, and production designer Sidney Dubois
• New interview on the film’s soundtrack with Yann Gonzalez and his brother Anthony Gonzalez
• New interview with historical advisor Hervé Joseph Lebrun on the 1970s Parisian porn scene
• Mondo Homo: A Study of Gay French Porn in the ’70s, Lebrun’s 2009 feature-length documentary
• Trailer
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: An essay by Anthony Nocera

SFFF Day 2 Report – Sex and the Unruly Screen

The Saskatoon Fantastic Film Festival’s second day was unusually specific in its program, devoting itself to short films that explored “innocence being encroached upon by outside forces” and a pair of horror-thriller features set around the sex industry. It was an impressive night of screenings, but also one that certainly made demands of its audience.

The “Paradise Lost” block of shorts was long on atmosphere and scares but slim on explication. Most films chose to grab their shocks and get out rather than flesh out their worlds. Faye Jackson’s The Old Woman Who Hid Her Fear Under the Stairs (2018) recalled Bobby Miller’s The Master Cleanse (part of SFFF’s program from 2016 and now titled simply The Cleanse). The short considers the situation of its title character who extracts her sense of anxiety out of herself, hides it in a tin, and faces down some dark, ominous threat that stalks her outside her home. Jackson’s film is wonderfully constructed, full of humour and dreadful tension, and its quality therefore demands more of itself, needing to unpack its conflict and its resolution before letting its credits roll. And the same could be said of other shorts in the block. Milk (Santiago Menghini, 2018) is a chilling tale of a boy trapped between two unsettling maternal figures and choses aesthetics over explanation. Wild (Morgana McKenzie,  2018) is a pastoral fantasy about a girl’s encounter with a magical, deadly, and ultimately unresolved female figure in her uncle’s cornfield. Saturn Through the Telescope (Dídac Gimeno, 2018) follows a boy’s efforts to watch a scary movie at home and is a slickly made and energetic short, while Make a Stand (Camille Aigloz, Lucy Vallin, Michiru Baudet, Simon Anding Malandin, Diane Tran Duc, and Margo Roguelaure, 2017) is a gorgeously animated film set in pre-Columbian Mexico and that seems to tease a supernatural spectacle that never arrives. Uncertainty is a great tool of the macabre, but it’s best used as a lacuna where meaningful questions spring forth. These shorts are uniformly affective and expertly fashioned, sure to be enjoyed by viewers. My only wish is that these films more fully met their narrative challenges as well as the aesthetic ones.

Crisis Jung (Baptiste Gaubert and Jérémie Hoarau, 2018) – Ithaca Fantastik 2018

A MAELSTROM OF METAPHYSICAL MAYHEM AND LIBIDINAL LUNACY

Welcome to a world ravaged by explosions of violence, a wasteland without love. Jung, the broken-hearted hero of legend, embarks on an epic quest to reunite with his lost love Maria who was savagely decapitated by the enormous titan Little Jesus. Along his bloody path, Jung finds allies in a bearded maiden, a massive cannibal, and a mysterious drifter and faces challenges in Little Jesus’ minions, encounters that force Jung to face deep questions that oppose his preconceptions of others and, more importantly, his understanding of himself. Armed with the mastery of “ten big punches” and the transformative power of “VIOLENCE,” can Jung subdue the monstrous virtues of Little Jesus, save his fair Maria, and fulfill his legacy? Find out in ten easy episodes.

Produced by renegade French animation studio Bobbypills, Crisis Jung is a perversely entertaining riff on 1980s children’s adventure-fantasy animation, one that imbues its grandiose conflicts and easy moral lessons with pansexual twists and body horror trauma.

Special Edition Contents:

• High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation
• DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
• French and English audio tracks
• Behind-the-scenes featurette
• Complete storyboards
• Stills gallery
• Feature trailer
• FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Collector’s booklet featuring production design artwork and new writing by illustrator and programmer Rupert Bottenberg

Demon (Marcin Wrona, 2015)

The Criterion Collection, a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films presents Demon.

Adapted from Piotr Rowicki’s 2008 play Adherence, Marcin Wrona’s Demon is a horrifyingly comic and darkly atmospheric exploration of suppressed histories and dissolving minds. Set at a crumbling Polish country house, Polish-Brit Piotr is set to marry his fiancée Zaneta and meet for the first time her appearance-conscious parents. But as the ceremony proceeds, Piotr begins to come undone, and a dybbuk, an iconic ancient figure from Jewish folklore, takes hold of the groom and the entire celebration. Combining horror movie possession with unearthed national traumas and frivolous consumption, Demon is a modern art-horror classic.

Disc Features:

• 2K digital transfer with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Almonds and Raisins, new interviews with actors Itay Tiran, Agnieszka Zulewska, and producer Olga Szymanska
• Theatrical trailer
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: An essay by film critic J. Hoberman

The Temple of Wild Geese (Yuzo Kawashima, 1962)

The Criterion Collection, a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films presents The Temple of Wild Geese.

Ayako Wakao stars as Satoko, mistress to an accomplished artist who passes her along on his death to the lascivious head priest of a prominent Buddhist temple famous for its paintings of wild geese. She is drawn to a melancholy young disciple who also resides at the temple in similar dependence to the priest and who is treated cruelly for his efforts. Fascinated by the pitiable young man and aware of their similarly impoverished upbringings, Satoko seeks him out, slowly drawing him closer to her and unwittingly placing further strain on his tortured soul. Yuzo Kawashima’s film, exquisitely shot by cinematographer Hiroshi Murai, is a sharply observed exploration of moral weakness and a darkly ironic adaptation of Tsutomu Minakami’s 1961 semi-autobiographical novel.

Disc Features:

• New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New interview with critic, filmmaker, and festival programmer Tony Rayns
• New program with Eric Nyari on the film and its restoration
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: An essay by film scholar Irene González-López and Tsutomu Minakami’s original story