Tag: monochrome

Categories
Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Cyborg
A Documentary

Director – Carey Born – 2023 – Germany, Spain, UK – Cert. 12a – 87m

***1/2

Cyborg artist Neil Harbisson, unable to see in colour, has had an antenna implanted in his head to hear colours instead – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 20th

This opens with a title sequence of weird, psychedelic images of what appears to be moving coloured liquids forming strange, never to be repeated natural patterns. If that implies a striking visual sensibility, that’s deceptive, since this documentary follows a fairly straightforward structure of following people around with cameras and talking to them as it introduces us to cyber artist Neil Harbisson and his artist partner Moon Ribas.

Neil stands out from other people because he has an antenna protruding from the back of his head to dangle in front of his forehead. He was born with the unusual condition of achromatism, which means that he sees not in colour but in monochrome. (Less severe, more common forms of colour blindness include the inability to differentiate between green and red.) This came to light in his childhood when the family got a new colour TV, and he and his sister would watch cartoons. At this point, the film throws in a clip of the children’s sci-fi cartoon series Robotrix (John Gibbs, Terry Lennon, 1985).… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

A Snake Of June
(Rokugatsu
No Hebi,
六月の蛇)

Director – Shinya Tsukamoto – 2002 – Japan – Cert. 18 – 77m

*****

Unlike any terrorised female narrative you’ve ever seen, at once bizarre and hugely rewarding – currently streaming on BFI Player as part of the BFI Japan 2021 programme

This review originally appeared in What’s On In London, June 2003.

In an unnamed (but suspiciously Tokyo-like) Japanese city where it’s constantly raining, a mysterious phone caller blackmails repressed housewife Rinko (Asuka Kurosawa). If that sounds clichéd, set your prejudices aside because Shinya Tsukamoto’s unique, new film is unlike any terrorised female narrative you’ve ever seen. The motives of the caller (director Tsukamoto himself) are scarcely what you might expect.

From the moment Rinko opens a postal package labelled “Your Husband’s Secrets” to find photographs of herself masturbating (which she flicks into life like a series of animated stills) via her subsequent following orders involving short skirts and vibrators through to the extraordinary finale, the piece walks a difficult path between humiliating and liberating women.

With the year’s most arresting opening – a stripping model reduced to orgasmic ecstasy in serial, rapid-fire static images to the flashing of a stills camera – it’s likely to engross some viewers while offending others.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Secretary

Secretary

Director – Steven Shainberg – 2002 – US – Cert. 18 – 106m

*****

A Snake Of June (Rokugatsu No Hebi, 六月の蛇)

Director – Shinya Tsukamoto – 2002 – Japan – Cert. 18 – 77m

*****

Double DVD review originally published in Third Way, February 2004.

The cover image (rear view of a female figure in tight, short skirt and stockinged legs, bent down, hands grasping ankles) suggests titillation, but the American production Secretary is actually a serious drama – albeit one laced with a healthy dose of black humour – about a sadomasochistic relationship. But beneath its fetishistic surface, it is something else – an exploration into why two specific people (and why they in particular rather than any others) make one flesh. And how that works for them if the two people are initially in some way damaged (as we all are).

Although from a very different culture, its Japanese counterpart A Snake Of June – made by the experimental cyberpunk auteur Tsukamoto (of Tetsuo: The Iron Man fame) – explores much the same territory. Being small, low budget productions frees both films from mass, multiplex mainstream audience demands, allowing their directors to instead tackle (inter)personal relationship issues in depth.… Read the rest