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Showing posts from September, 2024

Glorious Golden October Alert!

It always sucks a little bit when the summer ends; the days get darker and shorter, the weather gets chillier, the city gets fuller, the leaves change colors... But pre-fall, September and early October, is still a nice enough time before hell ascends to Berlin and stupid winter begins. And this year it's an even better time than usual, because there's so much going on that it's head-spinning!

The Revenge Story Served Scorching Hot: Saýara

Since its emergence in the early 70s, the rape-revenge trope has become a staple of horror fiction equally hailed as loathed. A painfully necessary and yet controversial evil to tap the full cathartic potential of the genre, it usually relies on exploitation, provocation, transgression, shock-value and preferably lots of gore, over the top and graphic sexual violence, and bad taste in order to point at a specific social ill . Critics rail at a certain kind of voyeurism as well as instrumentalizing, making light of, and even glorifying of sexual violence against women while others, such as Australian scholar Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, call for film-specific interpretations. Although meant as a negative opinion on the subgenre, instrumentalizing or exploiting a subject in art, no matter how hideous, traumatic, and real it is for its survivors in real life, are valid and effective ways of handling that subject and should be seen in an objective light. All the more in the case of the l...

FFF Reviews 2024 - Part Two

And here I go with the second part of my favorite FFF movies of this year's 38th edition. While writing these I realized that I watched and really enjoyed a lot of French and French language movies this past week. Having studied and spoken French for my whole life, but not being able to connect with the country per se, I actually miss French, just not the French, lol. I also enjoyed watching light-hearted movies and laughed a lot during this festival. Here are some more reviews, some funny, some serious.

FFF Reviews September 2024 - Part One

Another September, another Fantasy Filmfest. And it has already ended, damn! As I mentioned before, I didn't find the lineup as a whole unanimously interesting, but a few picks ended up being partly OK, partly great for me, so let's take a look at them. There may be mild spoilers in what I discuss here, but I'll never give away the punchline of the respective films.

...the Soul of Wit - Short Reviews

Hey everyone! Despite the ongoing Fantasy Fimfest fever I found some time to quickly post some of my latest write ups, I hope you enjoy just as much as I enjoy the hot weather in Berlin!