Film Programmer Horror Shock!!!!

My time at the Melbourne and Brisbane International revealed that programming festivals is not as easy as it sounds. Hats off to the coordinators who deliver such diverse Cinema diet.

My only foray into this arena was at age sixteen, when I volunteered to program the Wellington College Film Society screenings. And as has often happened in my life, a combination of errors and omissions collided one Saturday evening. I broke the 11th Commandment: “Thou shalt not assume!” If you break the 11th, you will surely end up breaking the 12th Commandment: “Thou shalt not get caught!”

The raked bench and desk seats of the Science Lecture Theatre was full of 120 or so pupils, their visiting parents, and school staff, awaiting the start of a 16 mm. screening of a classic from the silent era. I had booked the German expressionist THE CABINET OF DOCTOR CALIGARI (1920.) I had seen some clips of CALIGARI on TV. Looked cool. Wanted to see it.

 

I had also needed a short, something running under 20 minutes to screen first as was the custom. Cruising down the running time column, I found UN CHIEN ANDALOU (1929) clocking in at 18 minutes. I figured it was maybe some Robert Flaherty-esqe nature study of the wild dogs of Andalusia, some canine NANOOK OF THE NORTH perhaps.  Neither film was categorized adults only in the Gaumont/British 16mm catalogue, permission for screening of which would have had to be sought from school authorities. These were just titles in a column of more titles and rental prices. Somehow the two words Bunuel-Dali in the director’s column rang no warning bells for me. Perhaps because I myself have a hyphenated surname, perhaps because the film makers of my research interest at that time were Hitchcock, Kubrick, Anthony Mann, and Hammer Films, perhaps because my history class was pending, I gave it no further thought, made the booking and hurried off.

CUT TO: 3 weeks later.

Having signaled the projectionist to start, I walked to my seat in the front row, aware that many of my peers in the Film Society wondered how a silent film other than Charlie Chaplin would be fun, so why was I inflicting it on them, while the accompanying adults argued how culturally enriching the experience would be.

The lights go down and the first images appear.

“Once upon a time” reads the caption in French, Oh, it’s a fairy tale…

A man (Bunuel), smoking furiously, hones the blade of a cut throat razor on a leather strap, carefully testing its sharpness on his thumbnail…Interesting.

He goes onto the balcony and gazes at a full moon, then pries open a seated woman’s eyelids…You definitely have my attention .

A thin cloud slides across the moon.

The razor slices open the eyeball. Liquid spews.

AAAAGH! A collective gasp/intake of breath as 120 people respond to Bunuel and Dali’s symbolic statement that we have to ” look at life with new eyes”. Still alarmingly real today, it was in fact a calf’s eyeball that was slit.

A typically British hierarchical dilemma is at hand. Ambushed in front of their children by provocative imagery not discussed in polite society, every adult wants to stop the film, but is unsure of how to proceed. Every kid wants it to continue. As indecision, nervous body language and coughing reigns behind me, the film continues with more incendiary  shots. A hermaphrodite pokes at a severed hand in the street. Ants pour out of the hole in its palm. A man is physically restrained from raping a woman by the weight of two priests.

And two grand pianos on which lie two dead donkeys, all of which are  attached to ropes he drags behind him.  Bunuel/Dali’s assault on the Catholic Church was finally too much, even for faculty of a decidedly Protestant school.

(In fact, nothing could have driven home Bunuel and Dali’s critique of bourgeois inertia better than the polite paralysis of this little British audience.)

When the hands started fondling her naked buttocks, I realized I was doomed. Been in denial a little up to then. I guess. Kept thinking the shock level had peaked with each new disturbing event. A surreal movie had become a truly surreal experience for me. Celestial chuckles from Dali and Bunuel.

The projector noisily ground to a halt. The lights came up. I felt the pressure of 240 eyeballs on the back of my head. He did it. Deliberately. A prank. No, I didn’t! It was an accident. I should have checked. I broke the 11th Commandment. That’s not like the 5th. Give me a break!

Up to this point, I had not been a popular boy. Strike One: over six foot, but disinterested in rugby - my sport was fencing which, curiously for a combat sport, was regarded by the rugger buggers as  ” only for fairies”. Strike Two: obsession with films. ” When you leave school, are you planning to live at the Cinema?” a master had asked with withering scorn. “If I can. ” I had replied.  In the pre-geek era, it was not cool  to be obsessed by film. I was not cool. I was weird.

Until the inciting incident , that is. Weird became anti-authoritarian. I had thrown a water balloon into a gathering of parents and teachers, and drenched faculty with embarrassment. That was cool. My coolness was confirmed when I was caught using the school 8 mm camera to stage a trench warfare battle scene with blanks, thunder flash grenades and 30 members of the Cadet Corps, then filming the elite drill cadre goose stepping and doing elaborate Turkish arms drill.
Disrespectful treatment of the Armed Forces…  Now that’s something young people respect. Needless to say, I no longer programmed Film Society screenings. Who cares? For a while, I was cool.

Here’s a link to the trailer for UN CHIEN ANDALOU hosted by Bunuel’s son.

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=19753810