5th Annual
Daybreak to Dead-of-Night Hugo Film Festival
NEONÆSTHETIC
Official Selection
Each film is linked to a subscription or rental service where it can be streamed. For Kanopy, you can usually gain access through your local public library.
Tokyo Drifter, 1966 (Japan) [NR]
83 min
Directed by Seijun Suzuki
Starring Tetsuya Watari, Chieko Matsubara, Hideaki Nitani
In this jazzy gangster film, reformed killer Tetsu’s attempt to go straight is thwarted when his former cohorts call him back to Tokyo to help battle a rival gang. Director Seijun Suzuki’s onslaught of stylized violence and trippy colors is equal parts Russ Meyer, Samuel Fuller, and Nagisa Oshima—an anything-goes, in-your-face rampage. Tokyo Drifter is a delirious highlight of the brilliantly excessive Japanese cinema of the sixties.
In the Mood for Love, 2000 (Hong Kong) [PG]
99 min
Directed by Wong Kar Wai
Starring Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung
Hong Kong, 1962: Chow Mo-Wan (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) and Su Li-Zhen (Maggie Cheung Man Yuk) move into neighboring apartments on the same day. Their encounters are formal and polite—until a discovery about their spouses creates an intimate bond between them. At once delicately mannered and visually extravagant, Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love is a masterful evocation of romantic longing and fleeting moments. With its aching soundtrack and exquisitely abstract cinematography by Christopher Doyle and Mark Lee Ping Bing, this film has been a major stylistic influence on the past two decades of cinema, and is a milestone in Wong’s redoubtable career.
The Double Life of Véronique (La double vie de Véronique), 1991 (France) [NR]
98 min
Directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski
Starring Irène Jacob, Philippe Volter, Sandrine Dumas, Aleksander Bardini
Krzysztof Kieślowski's international breakthrough remains one of his most beloved films, a ravishing, mysterious rumination on identity, love, and human intuition. Irène Jacob is incandescent as both Weronika, a Polish choir soprano, and her double, Véronique, a French music teacher. Though unknown to each other, the two women share an enigmatic, emotional bond, which Kieślowski details in gorgeous reflections, colors, and movements. Aided by Slawomir Idziak's shimmering cinematography and Zbigniew Preisner's haunting, operatic score, Kieślowski creates one of cinema's most purely metaphysical works. The Double Life of Véronique is an unforgettable symphony of feeling.
Neptune Frost, 2021 (United States, Rwanda) [NR]
110 min
Directed by Saul Williams, Anisia Uzeyman
Starring Cheryl Isheja, Kaya Free, Eliane Umuhire, Dorcy Rugamba, Rebecca Mucyo, Tresor Niyongabo, Elvis Ngabo
Multi-hyphenate, multidisciplinary artist Saul Williams brings his unique dynamism to this Afrofuturist vision, a sci-fi punk musical that’s a visually wondrous amalgamation of themes, ideas, and songs that Williams has explored in his work, notably his 2016 album MartyrLoserKing. Co-directed with the Rwandan-born artist and cinematographer Anisia Uzeyman, the film takes place in the hilltops of Burundi, where a group of escaped coltan miners form an anti-colonialist computer hacker collective. From their camp in an otherworldly e-waste dump, they attempt a takeover of the authoritarian regime exploiting the region's natural resources – and its people. When an intersex runaway and an escaped coltan miner find each other through cosmic forces, their connection sparks glitches within the greater divine circuitry. Set between states of being – past and present, dream and waking life, colonized and free, male and female, memory and prescience – Neptune Frost is an invigorating and empowering direct download to the cerebral cortex and a call to reclaim technology for progressive political ends.
CriterionChannel(subs), Kanopy(subs)
Apple(rental), Amazon(rental), Vudu(rental), KinoNOW(rental)
Zola, 2020 (United States) [R]
86 min
Directed by Janicza Bravo
Starring Taylour Paige, Riley Keough, Nicholas Braun, Ari'el Stachel, Colman Domingo
"Y’all wanna hear a story about why me & this bitch here fell out? It’s kind of long but full of suspense.”
Thus began the odyssey of one A’Ziah King, aka ZOLA. From acclaimed writer/director Janicza Bravo, Zola's stranger than fiction saga, which she first told in a now iconic series of viral, uproarious tweets, comes to dazzling cinematic life.
Zola (newcomer Taylour Paige), a Detroit waitress, strikes up a new friendship with a customer, Stefani (Riley Keough), who seduces her to join a weekend of dancing and partying in Florida. What at first seems like a glamorous trip full of “hoeism” rapidly transforms into a 48-hour journey involving a nameless pimp, an idiot boyfriend, some Tampa gangsters and other unexpected adventures in this wild, see-it-to-believe-it tale.
Suspiria, 1977 (Italy) [R]
98 min
Directed by Dario Argento
Starring Jessica Harper, Stefania Casini, Flavio Bucci, Miguel Bosé
Partially based on Thomas De Quincey's 1845 essay Suspiria de Profundis. The film stars Jessica Harper as an American ballet student who transfers to a prestigious dance academy but is confronted by a series of bizarre and horrific deaths. Described by Argento as "an escalating experimental nightmare", Suspiria is packed with vicious violence, ultra gory effects and dazzling cinematic set pieces, a gruesomely Gothic masterpiece of the macabre.
Beyond the Black rainbow, 2010 (Canada) [R]
109 min
Directed by Panos Cosmatos
Starring Michael Rogers, Eva Allan, Scott Hylands
Set in the strange and oppressive emotional landscape of the year 1983, Beyond the Black Rainbow is a Reagan-era fever dream inspired by hazy childhood memories of midnight movies and Saturday morning cartoons. Deep within the mysterious Arboria Institute, a disturbed and beautiful girl (Eva Allan) is held captive by a doctor in search of inner peace. Her mind controlled by a sinister technology. Silently, she waits for her next session with deranged therapist Dr. Barry Nyle (Michael Rogers). If she hopes to escape, she must journey through the darkest reaches of The Institute, but Nyle wonʼt easily part with his most gifted and dangerous creation. Beyond the Black Rainbow is the outlandish feature film debut of writer and director Panos Cosmatos. Featuring a hypnotic analog synthesizer score by Jeremy Schmidt of “Sinoia Caves” and “Black Mountain,” it is a film experience for the senses.
Climax, 2018 (France) [R]
97 min
Directed by Gaspar Noé
Starring Sofia Boutella, Kiddy Smile, Romain Guillermic, Souheila Yacoub
With Climax, Gaspar Noé, enfant terrible of French cinema and director of the highly controversial Irreversible, Enter the Void and Love, returns with perhaps his most critically-acclaimed work yet. Following a successful and visually dazzling rehearsal, a dance troupe set about celebrating with a party. But when it becomes apparent that someone has spiked the sangria, the dancers soon begin to turn on each other in an orgiastic frenzy. Starring Sofia Boutella (The Mummy, Atomic Blonde) along with a cast of professional dancers, and featuring a pulse-pounding score by the likes of Daft Punk, Aphex Twin and Gary Numan, Gaspar Noé's latest offering shows a director at the height of his hallucinatory filmmaking powers.
