Power, pleasure & pain: Gaspar Noé (NSFW)
12 shorts show style and key-topics of the controversial French-Argentinian director.
«Choquer n’est pas une envie, mais un plaisir»
– Gaspar Noé
Hard, provocative, disturbing, Gaspar Noé’s filmography often suggests an altered state, a perceptual and visceral reaction to both what is seen and the way it is shown. From love, pleasure, luxury, to nihilism and despair, we are drawn into hallucinatory worlds and stories at the edge of the human where the deepest and most primitive parts of ourselves are triggered, evoked, frightened. Here is a selection of short films of the controversial French-Argentinian director.
Tintarella di Luna (1985)
Fiction – Drama – France
35 mm – Scope
Color / Black & White
18 minutes
Synopsis: (Gaspar Noé’s first short film) A hidden village hidden among cliffs from where no one can escape. The plague spreads, the food became scarce, and the weakest were killed. A woman, after visiting her lover, need to cross a bridge to get to his house, but on the way is murdered by a maniac. These events are observed by a kind of God guarding the mysterious village.
Pulpe amère (1987) – Film not avaiable.
Fiction – Drama – France
16mm – 1:37 Format
Color
6 minutes
Synopsis: A night in Buenos Aires, a man enters the room ofhis maid and tries to rape her while a radio drama describes the thoughts of a man caught in a passionate love.
Carne / カルネ (1991)
Fiction – Drama – France
16mm blown-up to 35mm
Color
40 minutes
Synopsis: A horse meat butcher from paris suburbs seduce a winding worker who disappears after the birth of their daughter Cynthia. The butcher raised alone his child who spend her days watching television. Their lives are a seemingly infinite monotonous routine. Time passes and the butcher keeps on washing his daughter like a baby, but she grow and he has to repress the temptation of incest.
Une Expérience d’Hypnose Télévisuelle (1995)
(in L’Oeil du Cyclone)
Fiction – Experimental – France
Video
Color
27 minutes
Description: this video is a parodic attempt to hypnotize the viewer through techniques known as “mechanical” and sensory processes like fascination or the hypnotic gaze: «What interests me is the hypnotic trance in which one can plunge a viewer. When you make a film and it works, you’re like a shaman, a hypnotist.» – Gaspar Noé
Sodomites (1998)
Fiction – Drama – France
2,35 – 35mm
Color
7 minutes
Synopsys: a Phallus, a muscular Maciste, hung like a bull, and Sodoma, a beautiful sodomite with a horse’s mane, meet at night in a deserted place. The King give them, under the gaze of Amazons in battle dress, a condom and lubricant.
Intoxication (2002)
Documentary – France
Cinemascope – 16 mm
Color
5 minutes
Description: Short documentary filmed around the the same time as Irréversible (in 16mm Scope), in which his friend Stéphane Drouot – director of the cult film Star Suburb – discusses life with AIDS and his struggles to make films.
EVA 1, 2 & 3 (2005) – 3 short movies directed by Gaspar Noé for le “Grand Journal of Canal+”:
Sony HDW-F900
Synopsis: A man and a woman masturbate to the same porn film in different room: an eloquent cinematic narrative about despair, loneliness and one man’s abandonment to pathologies of societal decay. The shortfim is a segment of Destricted: a 2006/2010 British-American drama film series that explores the line where art and pornography intersect.
SIDA (2008)
Documentary – France
DV – Panasonic DVX100
Colour
19 minutes
Description: In a hospital in Burkina Faso, a man infected by HIV. This film belongs to 8: a project including 8 shorts centered around 8 themes directed by 8 famous film directors involved and sharing their opinion on progress, on the set-backs and the challenges our planet faces today.
The Ritual (2012)
Fiction – Drama – Spain / France / Cuba
35 mm (Red One Camera)
Color
12 minutes
Synopsis: Yamilslaidi, an attractive African-Cuban schoolgirl is forced by her parents to go into a cleaning ritual. They are determined to get their daughter rid of the “curse” she has been put on. The Ritual is a segment of 7 days in Havana: a contemporary snapshot of this iconic and eclectic city, seen through a feature-length movie made up of 7 chapters directed by 7 international filmmakers.
by Tommaso Fagioli
