Flaming Ears (Angela Hans Scheirl, Ursula Pürrer, and Dietmar Schipek, 1991):
Horse Hospital, Bloomsbury, 6.30pm
The weekend of feminist science fiction continues at the popular Horse Hospital arts venue.
Here is the Horse Hospital introduction: A vengeful comic book artist, a red rubber suit wearing alien and a
pyromaniac performance artist play out a story of love and revenge in
the lesbian populated future city of Ache. This violent and sexual
anti-romantic tale takes cues from the early short films of Ursula
Pürrer and Angela Hans Schier in its playfulness and provocation. Blown
up from super-8, the grainy texture and saturated colours add to its DIY
and experimental appeal and heighten the artificiality of this
crumbling fantasy world.
“Imagine the film that J.G. Ballard might have made if he’d been born an Austrian dyke.”
B. Ruby Rich, San Francisco Weekly
Review by Marjorie Baumgarten:
Unlike little else that has come before it (except, perhaps, Lizzie Borden's 1983 gem Born in Flames),
this 1991, Austrian-made, futuristic, lesbian thriller/romance/science
fiction co-direction is in a league of its own. Set in the year 2700,
the future portrayed here bears faint resemblance to any present we call
our own. The fact that this universe is primarily comprised of lesbians
is only one of the ways in which this film creates its overriding sense
of unfamiliarity. Then there's the strangeness of the characters
themselves, and a host of disorienting narrative and visual techniques
that compel the viewer to constantly construct meanings anew. Shot in
Super 8 and blown up to 16mm, the resultant graininess and threadbare
aesthetics only contribute to Flaming Ears' dislocating effect.
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