The Revelation Perth International Film Festival begin this week and as always has a smorgasbord of intriguing, challenging, provocative and unique offerings.
Famed for showing films that you’re unlikely to get to see elsewhere on the big screen, the 27th outing of the annual festival is filled with not-to-be-missed titles.
The Visitor – Bruce Labruce
Director Bruce Labruce first came to prominence in the early 1990s with cult films including No Skin Off My Ass, Super 8½ and Hustler White.
Critics often list LaBruce as being part of the New Queer Cinema movement, but he’s said he feels more aligned with queercore music movement that spawned bands like Pansy Division.
in 2013 La Bruce released Gerontophilia, a film about young man who begins working in a nursing home and develops a sexual and romantic attraction to one of the elderly residents. The film was seen as a more mature offering.
2020’s Saint-Narcisse continued this more sophisticated approach to filmmaking, while still telling a confronting story – it’s about twins separated at birth who meet later in life begin an incestuous relationship.
The Visitor is a return to the kind of filmmaking LaBruce first got out attention with. It’s artsy and camp and filled with moments of revulsion and intrigue. Is it pornographic – that’s certainly up for debate.
On the banks of the Thames a naked black man climbs out of a suitcase, he moves in with an upper-class family and slowly begins to seduce them one by one. This sex filled film takes its inspiration from Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1968 film Teorema and it had its world premiere earlier this year at the Venice International Film Festival.
Kids – Larry Clark
When Larry Clark’s Kids was released in 1995 it was surrounded in controversy. Not just because of the film’s unforgettable final scene, but also for its raw depiction of teenage sex, hedonistic alcohol and drug use, crime and youth lacking a moral compass.
This film introduced the world to actors Chloë Sevigny and Rosario Dawson, both made their screen debuts here. The screenplay was written by Harmony Korine, who would go on to write and direct his own films including Gummo, Julian Donkey-Boy, Spring Breakers and The Beach Bum.
Larry Clark, who had worked as a photographer prior to making his directorial debut with this work, would go on to make the memorable Bully in 2001 and the following year made an even more controversial film Ken Park.
The film, based on a script Korine wrote years earlier, is banned in Australia, and has not been screened in the USA outside of its premiere at the Telluride Film Festival in 2002.
Thirty years after the film first screened it will be fascinating to rewatch this movie, and re-access it’s meaning and message.
Power Alley – Lillah Halla
Seventeen-year-old Sofia is a key member of her volleyball team and her skills mean that opportunities are within her reach, but then she finds out she is pregnant, and in Brazil abortion is illegal…
What follows is a coming-of-age drama about queer-hood, friendship, family, community and people with uterus experiences, deftly directed by debut feature director Lillah Halla, with a powerful, largely young, cast who deliver strong performances and invest the film with a genuine energy.
This Brazilian film has been described as a bold and strong debut from director Lillah Halla. Head down to the screening for a special Q&A session with actor Loro Bardot hosted by OUTinPerth.
I Should Have Been Dead Years Ago – Jason Axel Summers
This documentary explores the life, music, and artistic output of Stuart Gray (AKA Stu Spasm), the notorious underground rocker who created the most psychotronic group to emerge from Australia – the legendary Lubricated Goat.
The band had a memorable nude appearance on the ABC in the 1980s which caused some controversy. Filmmaker Summers discovered the music of Lubricated Goat’s music when working at a radio station in the early 90s which started him on a journey of discovering the band and their frontman Stu Spasm.
Shot over 20 years, featuring archival footage, photos, interviews, Gray’s sculptures and paintings, live performance footage including Gray’s current band, The Art Gray Noizz Quintet.
The story of a compulsively creative iconoclast who finds his artistic redemption without commercial success.
Kim’s Video – David Redmon
Legendary New York video store Kim’s Video had 55,000 tapes for rent in its St Mark’s Place store.
Everything you could imagine (and some you probably couldn’t) graced the shelves of Mondo Kim’s, one of five stores opened by Youngman Kim in Manhattan during the heady days of VHS.
But then, in 2007, it closed and, strangely, the vast collection of tapes ended up in Sicily.
How and why this happened becomes the driving force for what is described as a bizarre and thrilling documentary, as David Redmon searches for the missing tapes, in a journey that takes him from the New York to Sicily…
I can’t wait to see this because we love a video store. in the 80s I spent all my time at the local video store watching a diverse range of films. In my early 20s I would travel across the suburbs to track down rare and obscure movies. Then my parents bought a video store – and my whole family worked there for years.
The Revelation Perth International Film Festival is on from 3-14th July 2024. See all the films on offer at their website.
