World cinema classics #25

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJTYIa1X06U]

Häxan (1922) – Benjamin Christensen

Here with a wonderful Youtube-added soundtrack by Coil. (via surrealdocuments)

Related posts Nick Cave-esque, He spoke humanely about evil

Previous “World Cinema Classics” and in the Wiki format here.

Icons of erotic art #3

There are those works of erotica — although very few, otherwise they would be classified as pornography — which are erotic, meaning arousing, and those which are not. Our third entry in this series belongs to the second category. Although not erotic, it does provide a certain a shiver, or frisson, as the French would say. I am talking about The Rape [1] (1934) by Magritte, one of the more Sadean artists of French surrealism. The painting depicts a faceless woman –her face is replaced by her torso. She is mute, her mouth replaced by her pubic hair. The painting [2] was also used for the cover of André Breton‘s pamphlet What is Surrealism?.

Digression #1: Please let me remind you of the fabulous blog lemateurdart.

Digression #2: Speaking of rape, below is a very powerful painting by Degas, titled Interior (The Rape):

Previous entries here, and in a Wiki format here.

World cinema classics #24

Steve + Sky (2004) – Felix van Groeningen

Steve+Sky (2004) is a Flemish film by director and screenwriter Felix van Groeningen (Dagen zonder lief). To the right of the screen capture is Titus De Voogdt, to the left the Delfine Bafort, the Belgian model/actress who recently starred in Looking for Alfred by Johan Grimonprez. The film was produced by Dirk Impens, best known for Daens, currently working on an adaptation of Dimitri Verhulst’s novel De Helaasheid der Dingen.

The film is situated in a Ghent “route nationale” red light district (locally and euphemistically known as “De Warme Landen”, literally the “warm countries”), and beautifully photographed by Ruben Impens who treats this Belgian vernacular architecture with a gloss of 1980s nostalgia.

The petty criminal Steve (Titus De Voogdt) is released from jail and looks up his ex cell mate Jean-Claude (Johan Heldenbergh) in the latter’s strip club. There he meets the intriguing Sky (Delfine Bafort). They start a passionate but impossible love affair in a story reminiscent of Betty Blue and the American production Buffalo ’66.

The soundtrack was compiled by Soulwax who chose “De meeste dromen zijn bedrog” by Marco Borsato, the cult hit “Putain Putain” by TC Matic, Reese‘s “To the Rock (to the Beat)” and “Beats of love” by Nacht und Nebel for the clubbish post-punk/New Beat atmosphere of the film.

The film editor is Nico Leunen, who learned the trade from Ludo Troch.

The film is noted for its naturalism with dialogues such as “A hole is a hole and a dick has no eyes.” (Jean-Claude) and a hilarious dispute between Jean-Claude and his pubescent daughter in which she asks him for money. When she gets the money he says: “Thank you, daddy!” and she replies “Thank you, asshole!”

Jan Sulmont at Kutsite.com has a fine review.

Previous “World Cinema Classics” and in the Wiki format here.

“I am interested in women as words.”

Thinking About Women is work of feminist literary criticism by Mary Ellmann first published in 1968 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc. In it, she supposedly said “I am interested in women as words.” The publisher describes it as “a scathingly witty attack on literary misperceptions of women and prejudice against women in letters by an Oxonian critic and writer.” From the cover: “An original, often starling, genuinely funny, and deeply serious investigation of our conceptions of femininity as revealed by writers from Jane Austen to Mary McCarthy and Norman Mailer. “

Anne Koedt used this book to refute Freud’s two-orgasm theory in her “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm“.

A tale of two orgasms

The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm

The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm is a 1968 essay by Anne Koedt. I was very much intrigued by the tale of the two orgasms before I was sexually experienced. In her introduction to the essay, radical feminist Anne Koedt writes:

“Whenever female orgasm and frigidity are discussed, a false distinction is made between the vaginal and the clitoral orgasm. Frigidity has generally been defined by men as the failure of women to have vaginal orgasms. Actually the vagina is not a highly sensitive area and is not constructed to achieve orgasm. It is the clitoris which is the center of sexual sensitivity and which is the female equivalent of the penis.” [1]

Empirical proof of vaginal orgasm came relatively late in my sexual life, and proved to be very liberating.