Every Frame a Painting Show: The Second (Tony Zhou, Taylor Ramos, 2024)

One of my most anticipated events from this year was the visit of audio-visual essayists extraordinaire Tony Zhou and his partner Taylor Ramos. Their YouTube channel “Every Frame a Painting” was a marvelous showcase of the potential of videographic criticism to be both entertaining and insightful. Their videos were smart, well-paced and edited like feature films and they set the template for how videos can be their own art form. I hope events like this will set a precedent for future Fantasia editions.

Zhou and Ramos are close to legendary for their short-lived but highly influential YouTube channel EFAP which ran for about two year but had two million subscribers on the back of only 29 videos. They really set the gold standard for videos that were instructional but also highly entertaining. Their works were exclusively formalist, interested in responding to process problems that interested them: What does an editor think and feel? What made Keaton’s comedy gags so good? The Coen bros Reverse shot; Chuck Jones; The Marvel Symphonic Universe, etc. The experience led to being part of a David Fincher/David Prior Netflix upscale of the video essay, the one season series Voir. Ramos works as an animator, Zhou as an editor. They now live and work in Vancouver.

They put their skills and contacts together to make the transition to writer/director of fiction, with their first short film, The Second, which they are touring festivals along with a 40 minute presentation on the process behind the short, from pre to post production. They later said they have planned two different markets or exhibition processes for this short. One would be what they are doing today: touring with the film and offering a slide presentation on its production. And the second venue will be online, where the short will be curated along with a series of new audio-visual essays. When I asked them about this they were still unsure of how the new video essays would relate to the short. But they are envisioning and considering their different audiences, the old one familiar with their YouTube channel, and festival goers.

The short, which since its festival run is viewable on their resurrected platform Every Frame a Painting, is simple but engrossing and a story which purposely leaves many unanswered questions for the viewer to ponder. The story seems to be present day and is set in a social world that seems familiar to us. A middle aged man, Philip (Paul Sun-Hyng Lee) calls his son Danny (Ethan Wang) through his bedroom door, imploring that they have to leave shortly. Everything seems normal in this world except that the ancient custom of arranging duels to settle arguments, scores, or right an insult, is still present. We wonder about how a world otherwise similar to ours would allow this archaic act to survive. Danny meets the Officiate (Aaron Schwartz) and three other men in an open field. The challenge is between Danny and ‘The Medic’ (Sam Osei), a young African American. The officiate asks if there are any offers to settle the affair prior to his call to arms. The Medic says he is willing to let the affair slip so long as Danny admits his error and makes an apology on camera. The father tries to convince the son to accept the truce but Danny says the permanent shame would be worse than death, so he refuses. Duel on. Before the final call the father pleads with the son and warns him not to put himself through what he did, suggesting he has the option of “wasting his shot”. The cutting gives us a quick cut to Danny’s hand moving the gun out of the frame left, suggesting that Danny heeds his father’s advice, and has ‘wasted his shot.’ Zhou and Ramos were adamant about leaving the reasons and causes up to the audience. We never learn what the inciting argument was. Or who was right or wrong. In one respect the duel if pushed to allegory suggests this is a more honorable way to settle situations that are at an impasse. One can’t help but stretch this out to global issues between Nations. My own reading relates to what his father told him just before the duel. Clearly the father went through a similar duel years ago and (obviously) won his duel, but the burden of that victory weighed on him forever. The son, who is searching for his father’s approval, decides to heed his father’s warning, even if it means leaving his father with an even worse pain, the loss of his only son. Zhou and Taylor’s debut short functions as a testing ground for forming their editorial skills in a fiction setting. Stylistically the film exploits the natural verdant setting that feels equally at home as a setting for a funeral or a wedding. In short it fits the ritualistic nature of the duel as it is played out by the players involved: the two duelists, the Second, played by the father Philip, and the Officiate, and a few witnesses. This recalls such films as Barry Lyndon, The Duelists and the climax of John Wick 4.

Retro Titles and Special Events

The Avenging Eagle (1978, Chung Sun, HK)

The Hong Kong Shaw Brother screenings are always a welcome treat that draw in healthy Fantasia crowds. These films represent the old school Fantasians, fans who have been attending the festival since 1996 and those early years when the Asian films, especially the retro screenings, were special events because fans were able to see films they saw most likely on bootleg videos in all their 35mm glory.

In The Avenging Eagle Double Sword Sleeve Cheuk Yi Fan (Sheng Fu) is a white-dressed stranger, who encounters a tired, war-weary warrior Black Eagle (9th eagle) Chik Ming Sing (Lung Ti) in the desert and offers him water. Eagle deceives him and rides off with his better horse, leaving him with his tired horse, and no water. Yi Fan catches up with him with the intent of payback but ends up helping him survive an attack from three men out to hunt him down. Black Eagle is dressed in black, Yi Fan in white, although neither of these characters are bad. Though Yi Fan ends up being the ‘more’ morally just one. The bulk of the film is in fractured flashback as Black Eagle retells his backstory of why he is being tracked down and hunted.

We learn Black Eagle was one of thirteen orphans trained by evil leader Yoh XI Hung (Feng Ku, eating up the role of the crusty old heartless villain) of the Iron Boat Clan, who taught them well in martial arts but at a price: they must remain wholly loyal and committed only to him. As a token of their allegiance to him, they are each given an eagle medallion they must always wear which makes them beholden to his every command. Hung builds his wealth using his pupils to kill, steal and pillage and protect.

When Black Eagle is injured trying to rob a wealthy clan he is nursed to health by a family led by lawman Wang An and falls in love with the sister Siu Fung (Szu Shih). When he returns to the Iron Boat Clan he is reprimanded by Master Hung, who orders to kill the family who healed him, out of spite. Chik is emotionally tortured but leads the attack on the family, which ends with Black Eagle’s would be lover Fung stabbed and dying in his arms. Now estranged from the Iron Boat Clan, Black Eagle forms an uneasy alliance with Yi Fan, who also wants to put an end to the evil tyrant Hung, for reasons that only become clear at the end, when Black Eagle and Yi Fa team up to defeat Hung and then discover how their paths have brought them to this final confrontation.

This film is wall to wall action, with some good dialogue exchanges especially between the two heroes. While the story is standard Shaw Brother fare, it holds our interest and offers a few surprises. The camera never draws attention but it is in constant movement. The fight choreography is excellent, though not at the level of the best Shaw Brothers films, with super high jumps caught in slow motion, flips, back heels and an assortment of bodily movements. Costumes are flamboyant and colorful and Sun interjects some inventive fight props. Yi Fa with his hidden wrist brace knives and Eagle with his large three section nunchuks. Set-pieces are staged in the usual Shaw Brother studio backlot sets, like the many forest scenes and the attack on the Inn. Sun also adds still frames to alter the rhythm of fights, stopping time for a split second then returning to regular speed.

Cockfighter (1974, Monte Hellman) & Book Launch of Kier-La Janisse’s book, Cockfighter

In conjunction with the book launch of the long-in-gestation Cockfighter book by Kier-la Janisse, Fantasia played a film that fell under the radar during its release and has been remembered for a unique nearly silent performance by cult actor Warren Oates as passionate cockfighter Frank Mansfield. Produced by Corman and noted by him as one of the few films he made that lost money (the William Shatner anti-racist tract The Intruder being the other). And watching it for the first time I can see how it would not have caught fire with audiences back in the early 1970s, as the narrative is not built on twists, surprises or dramatic confrontation. It is part road movie, part character study, and gains immeasurably from the on location shooting in Georgia (where cockfighting was still legal) by the great Spanish-born, Cuban raised cinematographer Néstor Almendros (1930-1992), who employs a naturalist lighting scheme.

Oates as Frank Mansfield is on a vow of silence as the film starts, remaining as such until he wins the prestigious Cockfighter of the Year Award. He joins the pantheon of characters who have signed on a vow of silence, Liv Ullman in Persona and Erland Josephson in The Sacrifice to name the two most famous (at least to me). Harry Dean Stanton, dressed to the nine yards, is a competitor, Jack Burke, who beats him early on winning Frank’s trailer, car, girlfriend, Dody White Burke (Laurie Bird) and puts Frank in a precarious position, unable to match the funds needed to enter the up scale event held by town mayor. To raise the funds Frank sells his home, currently inhabited by his sister-in-law Francis Mansfield (Millie Perkins) and brother Randall Mansfield (Troy Donahue), putting them on the street, and none too worried about doing that. Frank visits his home town to reacquaint with his former girlfriend Mary Elizabeth (Patricia Pearcy), who hasn’t seen him for six months. In one of the more beautiful shots in the film, Frank and Mary have a catch up talk lying on the grass in front of a river. The right to left moving background river is blown out by softness and overexposure which abstracts it, so they look like they are floating on clouds. The very long take makes the image feel even more dreamlike and demonstrates how Almendros’ naturalist approach can still result in some wonderfully expressive moments.

The most controversial parts of the film are undoubtedly the violent treatment of the male chickens who are filmed in combat without any typical Hollywood illusions of make believe. The fights are staged only in so far as the actors are playing cockfighters, but the fights themselves are not fictionalized but are real animal snuff moments. You can argue that these cocks would have died anyway, but there are moments outside the arena where animals are mistreated or harmed. For example, the final scene where a victorious Frank goes after the disturbed Mary, who admonishes him for his lack of any conscience when it comes to the animals that die under his aegis. Out of ugly spite, Frank takes his barely living cock, rips off his head and places it in Mary’s hands. This is done on camera, without any cut aways or special effects.

Frankly I am surprised this film has the reputation it has while Cannibal Holocaust is vilified for its animal death scenes. Hellman does instill a critical eye every now and then with slow motion close-ups of the cockfights which increase our disgust at the barbarous act, and choice intercuts to the viewing audience, spectators and betting participants. Or the off the record cockfight gambling in the hotel room, where the bathtub is used as a pit for the losing cocks (dead) and we cut to the tub filled with dead cocks (Hellman did not have to include this disturbing image as a cut-away, hence it feels either gratuitous or critical).

Instead of his wife, Frank chooses to spend his time with fellow cockfight enthusiast Polish Omar Baradansky (Richard B. Shull), and wranglers like Buford (played by James Earl Jones’ dad Robert Earl Jones (big family resemblance). The cast here is top notch, with early roles for such soon to be established actors as Steve Railsback as cheating cockfighter Junior, gangly, youthful Ed Begley Jr. as Tom Peeples, a spoiled cockfighter who cries and then attacks Frank when his bird quickly dispatches his prize winning cock. In the final scene a disgusted Mary who witnessed the tail end of a fight, leaves Frank, but he is still a happy man, and speaks his first words on camera (we have only heard him in VO until then), telling Omar when he asks if everything is OK with his fiancée, “She loves me.”  It is clear that along with Frank’s unhealthy obsession with cockfighting, he is delusional. Apparently Oates was happy when he learned he had no lines to memorize in his mute role. So what we get is an expansive tool kit of gestures, mimes, and body movements to express his emotions, ranging from joy, anger, laughter to bemusement. The script was written by the book’s author Charles Willeford who wrote about his experiences in a 1975 Film Quarterly issue (29/1, p. 20-24). Kier-la Janisse’s book can be purchased at the spectacular optical website.

Hollywood 90028 (Christina Hornisher, 1973) & the Book Launch of Heidi Honeycutt’s I Spit on Your Celluloid

Another tie-in screening to a book launch, of Heidi Honeycutt’s I Spit on Your Celluloid, was a special screening of Christina Hornisher’s once-thought-lost 1974 serial killer gem HOLLYWOOD 90028, in celebration of Grindhouse Releasing’s new 4K restoration (the screening also marked a Canadian premiere). After an introduction by Heidi Honeycutt which placed the film into its historical and cultural context (the film is featured in her book) we were treated to a screening of this odd bird of a film. The captivatingly beautiful Jeannette Dilger as Michele and Christopher Augustine as Mark star in this hazy, intentionally meandering hippie serial killer film. Mark is a serial killer who kills out of boredom or depression rather than psychosis or mental disorder. Mark plays an aspiring filmmaker from Indiana living in Hollywood but stuck working as a camera operator on porn loops for scuzzy producer Jobal (Dick Glass). He meets Michele on a shoot and befriends her. She is reluctant to advance things, happy with her stale but comfy relationship with musician Paul.

The opening scene has Mark cruising streets, picking up a young black woman, taking her back to his apartment for some afternoon sex. He remains dressed as she strips and the camera pans up and down her body, suggestive of an assaultive male gaze. In the throes of sex Mark strangles her to death. This opening, along with other of Mark’s character traits, recalls the Michael Powell masterpiece, Peeping Tom, which also features a lowly camera operator (focus puller) also named Mark, who murders women.

The scenes between Mark and Michele recall the young hippie couple from Zabriskie Point (1970), with their comedic banter and laid back attitude. Much of their dialogue is filmed with long tracking shots and the dialogue post dubbed in voice over. One sex scene between them uses split lens and shifting focus to render the scene a hip vibe while censoring any actual sex. Mark picks up a free thinking ‘airhead’ and takes her to the beach. They rent a boat and ride it out to sea. The woman is very chatty and interested in some love making but Mark seems irritated by her constant banter, strangles her and throws her overboard. At home he listens to a tape recorded message from Michele where she breaks up with him. She expresses love for him but at this point in her life just wants no complications. And Mark, she states, is not comfortable in his skin and makes her uncomfortable. It is clear that Michelle sees Mark as the troubled soul he is and uses tact to distance herself. Mark rushes over to her. They make love but the scene cuts away to the morning. Mark discovers Michele’s inert body in the bed, as if he has no awareness of what he did. Guilt ridden he takes off and the scene cuts abruptly to his dramatic suicide, hanging himself from the famous Hollywood sign, with his 16mm camera recording his own death from a tripod nearby. Clearly Hornisher has seen Peeping Tom, starring a same named serial killer Mark (Karlheinz Böhm). What makes this as much a ‘city film’ as a serial killer film is Hornisher’s strong interest in the garish signage of the seedier sides of LA, including a wonderful montage of colorful sex shop storefronts. Co-star Jeanette Dilger only made two other films, both in the 1970s, American Graffiti (1973) and Young, Hot n’ Nasty Teenage Cruisers (1977).

Ababouiné & the Prix Denis-Héroux 2024 - Career Award: André Forcier

One of the mainstays of Québec cinema, André Forcier, was feted with the Prix Denis-Héroux 2024 - Career Award and as part of the celebrations Fantasia played his then latest film, Ababouiné (2024). Forcier has been making idiosyncratic films about Québec past and present since his debut film in 1971, Le retour de l’immaculée conception.  For a deeper analysis of his career and the film I refer you to this Offscreen essay by Ray Ellenwood, “Over the Top with André Forcier” and an interview by Ray Ellenwood with Forcier and his wife Linda Pinet.

Ababouiné signals a return to form for Forcier with an at times hilarious, at times searingly anti-clerical period piece set in a lower working class area of Southend Montreal in 1956-1957 (Pointe-St. Charles or Griffintown, though in the film it is called ‘Molasses Town’, due to the sickly sweet smell emanating from all the local distilleries). Like some of his earlier works, Forcier blends realism with fantasy and real historical events are slightly twisted for comic or dramatic effect. For example, the famous Father or Brother André, who was canonized by the Catholic Church in 2010, had his heart stolen from its reliquary in St Joseph’s Oratory in 1973 and returned 11 months later. In Ababouiné the children of neighborhood steal the heart decades earlier as a way to blackmail the Church and it ends up being cooked and served to the clergy by Michel’s adopted aunt/mother Délima (Pascale Montpetit), in a perverse variation on the Christian ritual of the Eucharist (eating of the body and blood of Christ).

The setting of 1956-57 is strategically poised at the tail end of the conservative rule of Québec Prime Minister Maurice Duplessis’ Union Nationale (1936 to 1939, 1944-1959) and the start of the period of modernization in the 1960s. What has sometimes been labelled by historians (largely for dramatic effect) ‘La Grand Noirceur” (the period of Great Darkness) and the Quiet Revolution. In fact, the overstated nature of the opening shot, a street level tracking and zooming out shot of the young Michel Paquette’s (Rémi Brideau) crippled feet walking along the sidewalk, struggling against a powerful wind that carries along leaves, debris and garbage cans may just be a symbolic reference to the imminent ‘winds of change’.

Though a work of fiction and imagination, Forcier layers the film with events and names from both Québec history (and in some cases, strictly Montréal) and World history. The Refus Global, an anti-establishment and anti-clerical manifesto released in Québec in 1948 by a group of young radical artists who went by the name the Automatists, is referenced in the film by the manifesto the elderly printer Archange publishes called “Long live a secular Quebec!” (“Vive le Québec laïque!”). The film references the Montreal Royals, the Brooklyn Dodgers  minor league farm team that nurtured the great Jackie Robinson the year before he broke the color barrier in the Major Leagues (1947). The local radio station, CKVL, stages a game between a Cuban baseball team and the Royals, and radio host Léo Rondeau (Réal Bossé) yells out Fidel Castro at every chance. The children of the neighborhood love baseball, and in one of the film’s funniest scenes, Michel’s energetic play by play announcement of a local game sabotages the Cardinal Madore’s  (Rémy Girard) daily religious sermon, ‘the family prayer’, which every child must rush home to listen to with their family or risk parental ire. The radio station owner Eddie Vautour, played with gusto by the wonderful 84 year-old Donald Pilon, reminds everyone “No politics in a Catholic province!” (“Pas d’politique dans une province catholique!”) Forcier even references the burgeoning unions that caused a strive among the Catholic Church and eventually placed a wedge between the anti-Union policies of the Union Nationale and the Catholic Church.

With a modest budget Forcier does a wonderful job recreating an ubiquitous working class Montreal neighborhood of that period. The cobblestone roads, the dusty laneways separating housing complexes, the winding exterior iron staircases, the nondescript gray walls. The film takes its title from a dictionary of lost and forgotten French words that the central character Michel is helping to print with his surrogate grandfather, Archange (Gaston Lepage). The books and pamphlets the non-conforming Archange wants to print all seem to have political implications. Ababouiné  is a clarion call against the rational order and ‘proper’ French. The pamphlet promoting the separation of Church and State (“Vive le Québec laïque!”) raises the hackles of Cardinal Madore and his Vicar Cotnoir. The Cardinal Madore’s motorcycle riding army of Zouaves, dressed in ridiculous Renaissance uniforms, have uncontested authority to raid Archange’s small printing office to destroy his press and burn the manifesto, a likely reference to the totalitarian firemen in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451! The manifesto and its printing may also be a reference to the original pamphlet wars of the early 16th century that led to Luther’s Protestant Reformation against the dominance of the Catholic church.

By far the harshest and most serious political attack in the film comes in the character of Vicor Rosaire Cotnoir, played devilishly well by Éric Bruneau. Bruneau’s character is sometimes depicted in an over the top to-be-laughed at manner, such as the scene where he literally sucks and licks on the Cardinal Madore’s feet, in a way that is humiliating but sexual at the same time. It is by far the most difficult scene to watch, partly because of how it sets up the two later scenes where Cotnoir takes sexual advantage of the one sole religiously fervent student, Angéle (Maïla Valentir), who is smitten by him. And the second more harrowing scene where he rapes Michel. Éric Bruneau’s performance represents these two extremes of the film’s satire: broadly comic and dangerously evil. The performance made me think of the characterisations of the historical characters in Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, where Henry Daniell’s more stoic and underplayed performance as Garbitsch (Goebbels) is used to offset the more buffoonish performances of Chaplin as Hitler (Hynkel) and Jackie Oakie as Napaloni (Mussolini). The Fantasia crowd absolutely ate up the wildly inventive and ludicrous ending, where, lo and behold, miracles do happen.

Born of Woman Short Film Program

The Born of Woman short film program is always one of the highlights of Fantasia and 2024 was no exception. These were the films in the 2024 program, in the order they appeared.

Izzy (Yfke Van Berckelaer, Netherlands, 2024)

Izzy is a highly formal study in female frustration. It opens with rigidly overhead framed sex scene where the man orgasms, rolls over and the camera remains on the wholly unsatisfied woman. Cut to the woman at her workplace, the man she had sex with working next to her. The boss enters to babble on about work non-sense. The next scene is at a theatre where our protagonist has to put up with sexist remarks from a man behind her. The frustration builds up to a frantic montage of the woman screaming, until the men around her explode into glittery paper. It ends back at her bed, only now she is satisfying herself, thank you.

The Bleacher (Nicole Daddona, Adam Wilder, 2024, US)

An eerie stop motion animation set at a laundromat, where an irate woman will not let her missing sock go, and she ends up in a nightmarish hell of lost socks. The puppet animation characters are dark, scowling, bent over from years of frustration. The tone is surreal, a world on its own, sinister and insular.

Wildflower (Wan Xin Tang, 2023, US)

Heavily steeped in personal neurosis and Asian folklore, a woman returns from the butcher with a dripping plastic bag of raw meat. She eats it like an automaton. Her apartment is dank, windows covered in newspaper, reflecting her depressed state. She erects a mound of earth in her living room, to birth a blood eating flower. People we’ve seen at the butcher shop form a circle and walk around the earth nude and silent. In the Q&A director Tang explains the circle of people is a ritual leading to the woman’s suicide. It ends with the woman burying herself in the woods, becoming one with the blood flower. Not entirely convincing largely because the meaning of the actions are too steeped in personal hagiography and hence hard to decipher.

Mosquito Lady (Kristine Gerolaga, 2023, US)

Best of the show so far. Grimy, sweaty, creepy. Also couched in Filipino folklore but transcends the local flavor. A young pregnant American Filipino woman wants to abort her fetus, fearing what her more conservative parents will say. Her parents (framed only at the legs at first) damn her for becoming pregnant. The woman remembers her mother’s tale of the Mosquito Lady, a demon that thrives on fetuses. She visits a local woman who is purported to be one, and enters what looks like an abandoned home. She meets its occupant, the dreaded demon lady, who tries to dissuade her but is too tempted by the feast in her belly. In some cases the pregnant woman is spared, but she can not be sure. The demon woman turns into her hideous self, a great make-up design of a torso with innards dragging themselves along the floor. The attempt does not work and it ends with the woman back with her parents, knowing the baby will be born.

Dead Tooth (Romane Ailahtan, France, 2023)

A nightmare of a day for a nice young woman who is stressed when a co-worker arrives late to relieve her for a dentist appointment that she will now be late for. And things get much worse. Bystanders knock into her. The waiting room has one rude woman ahead of her. A man joins them and sits next to her. She invites his approach and they kiss after small talk. When he catches sight of her dark tooth, he loses interest immediately. The secretary is as disinterested in the clients as the secretary from the animated show Dr. Katz. She steps out for a smoke and when she sees the rude woman leaving, rushes in for her spot. She trips and hits her chin on the steps. Bleeding and flustered she arrives only to see her spot taken by the man who came after her. When she finally makes it to the seat, well, we discover the female dentist is ruder than anyone she has already met. When she gives the signal for pain the dentist admonishes her for it. She places an uncomfortable, garish mouth piece into her mouth the keep her exposed and vulnerable to the dentist’s ways. Finally the poor victim reaches her tipping point and viciously attacks the dentist with a syringe. She has finally decompresses and returns to work, red from head to toe, ready to resume her bar shift.

Les yeux d’Olga (Sara Carlot Jaber, Belgium, Netherlands, 2023)

The star of the show. Reminiscent of a Concordia student film from 2012 by Xavier Hamel, which was greatly influenced by Last Year at Marienbad, La Mort au Doigts, with its deeply rich black & white. Vivianne de Muynck stars as a senior citizen aged vampire whose daughter places her in a senior home, where she vows to only feed from the aged residents who are near death. Muynck steals the show with her gestures, movements, and expressions that range from pure desire, to disgust to romance. She ends up being a sort of guardian angel for the seniors, trying to adapt herself to the daily routines. Jaber laces the humor with stinging social satire at the treatment of seniors at such care facilities. When she is unable or unwilling to kill she steals from the blood bank. A male nurse catches on to her and works with renewed safety, afraid of her every movement. The vampire falls for a former music composer, and turns him so he can regain his sprightly former self, taking to dancing with the vampire. An Asian nurse is also revealed as a vampire, though whether turned by Muynck or not is unclear. A real treat, joyous, light, airy, like a cool summer breeze.

I’m Not a Robot (Victoria Warmerdam, Danish, 2023)

Wonderful short that surprises with a tone turn from comedy to deep drama. The opening shot is s slow dolly in to a woman seated at her desk in profile, the space a glitzy, hi-tech company. She is in need of a software update but can’t get through the reCAPTCHA tests to prove you are not a Bot. Frustrated she calls IT to help her get through to the update, but is asked to do another survey, with disconcerting questions like, “Do you remember your parents”, at the end of which the support person stuns her with the then obvious, “Are you sure you are not a Bot?” This is where the tone changes from comedy to existential dread, as she slowly discovers, not unlike Deckard from Bladerunner, that she is in fact a Bot created to please her boyfriend. One of the conditions placed on her being that she can not die before her boyfriend, to save him from the grief. She tests that theory by jumping off the roof of the company building. The fall strikingly handled in one take. Cut to a close-up where her head resting in a pool of forming blood, as her eyes open to the sound of chirping birds and the strains of a cover of Radiohead’s Creep, sung by Scala & Kolacny Brothers. How good is this short? It went on to win the Academy Award for Best Short in 2025. A first time for Fantasia ?

Berta (Lucía Forner Segarra, Spain, 2024)

Segarra’s third and concluding entry into a trilogy of female who kill films. Marta (2018), about a young woman who wants to become a serial killer and sets out on her goal, using a visor to protect herself from blood spurts. Dana (2020), which I wrote about in my 2021 report features a rape revenge story that builds to a social movement of women who want to enact justice against a judicial system that consistently frees rapists and serial killers. And the final concluding (?) piece of the trilogy, Berta (2024), which concerns a singular incident of a man who awakes to find himself immobilized and tied to a table, subject to Berta’s whims. She calmly ekes out a confession and gets him to admit his past rape of her at age 17. Berta implies the worse: castration. She sets up the physical reality of this for both us and him, a surgical gown stretched out to hide his genital area and a second one with a round hole cut out in the center, for access to the penis. The camera remains on the safe side of the table, and she appears to castrate him, with blood spraying everywhere. The reveal is a cruel joke, fake blood, much to the relief of the man. In this short Segarra’s aim is not to punish but to instruct and convince mankind of their sexism and sexual violence. The man awakes by the side of the road, traumatized but not entirely freed from any physical harm, as we see the name Berta etched into his chest, so he won’t ever forget. The tone is just right, with dark humor, tension, great dialogue, and a devilish political bite. Viva Berta!

Quick Notes on Other Notable Events

The amiable Heidi Honeycutt was everywhere at Fantasia this year. Along with the aforementioned book launch of her wonderful historical and critical study of women in horror, I Spit on Your Celluloid, Honeycutt introduced the tie-in screening of Hollywood 90028, was on hand emceeing the Born of Woman short film program, moderated a panel on women in horror titled “Her Horror Legacy: a Discussion on Women Directing Horror Movies”, which featured panelists Yfke Van Berckelaer, Sapna Moti Bhavnani, Heather Buckley, Rioghnach Ni Ghrioghair, Kier-La Janisse, Kristina Klebe, Izzy Lee, Maude Michaud, Toby Poser, Elizabeth E. Schuch, Lucía Forner Segarra, Jenn Wexler and Anouk Whissell. And if that wasn’t enough, when co-host of the Colors of the Dark podcast Rebekah McKendry was too sick to attend, Honeycutt stepped in alongside Elric Kane on the Live Recording of the Colors of the Dark Podcast, with guest Chuck Russell.

As a little detour, Elric Kane was also on hand at the screening of his debut solo feature, The Dead Thing. The Dead Thing is a melancholic romantic ghost story with shades of Carnival of Souls. Reminiscent also of many 1960s Italian gothic chillers like Castle of Blood and Lady Morgan’s Vengeance. Blu Hunt stars as listless, depressive Alice, living with her bestie Carla (Katherine Hughes). She works at a tech company scanning stuff and has her phone glued to her hand flipping through a date match app, Friction. After a series of one night stands she meets someone different, Kyle (Ben Smith-Petersen). They hit it off but then he disappears. She follows up, stalking him on the streets, at his work. A co-worker unsettles Alice by showing her Kyle’s obituary notice, pointing to the street outside as the cite of his death. Alice wanders the streets and finds Kyle’s broken headphones on the side of the road. But is he truly dead when she sees him with another woman? She uses another account and tags him for another date, only now Kyle does not recognize her. Is he fooling her? Or is he a ghost, unable to self realize? Alice still takes to him, although time spent with him becomes hazy, and indistinct temporally. Not unlike Kay/Barbara from Krytpic. Sex becomes a trippy experience, their bodies seemingly morphing into each others.  Sex also becomes dangerous and lethal. Alice has entered her own Wonderland. What will come of Alice? I’ll leave you the pleasure of discover. No doubt Fantasia regulars smiled at the product placement of Kier-La Janisse’s book, House of Psychotic Woman.

Drawing Monsters: a Ghoulish Chat with Artist Gary Pullin Artist, drawer, painter Garey Pullin was an invited guest who gave a talk moderated by Justin Langlois about his multifaceted career as illustrator/artist for horror magazines, movie posters and vinyl album covers. There were many ‘Monster Kids’ in the audience wearing black t-shirts sporting their favorite Pullin art. And Pullin was super generous after the talk sticking around to sign albums, posters, physical media jackets, and other memorabilia.

Volume 29, Issue 6 / June 2025 Festival Reports   every frame a painting   fantasia international film festival   hedi honeycutt   kier-la janisse   taylor ramos   tony zhou   women in horror