Event Info
Shock Corridor Cinema Presents Pasolini's SALO or THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM (1975):
Shock Corridor Cinema Presents:
Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salò o le 120 giornat...
8:00pm
$2
Event Description
Shock Corridor Cinema Presents:
Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom). (1975, 112min. In Italian w/ English Subtitles).
Tuesday, March 22nd. 8pm
The Fifty Fifty Arts Collective
2516 Douglas St. @ Bay St.
Two Dollars
A one-of-a-kind project that takes no little defending, and may indeed be indefensible. It’s the cruelest, most obscene, and most intellectually toxic work ever made by a major director. Once seen, it is forever remembered. --Criterion
Pasolini's Salò, or The 120 Days of Sodom is, quite simply, the infant terrible of the modern cinema. Banned in too many countries to mention Salò is perhaps the most coveted of hard to locate titles out there: pre-owned DVD copies usually fetch upward of $200.00 by thirsty cinephiles on ebay. Obscenely grandiose in its indictment on fascist Italy, the film is relentless in representing the unthinkable: sodomy, the consumption of feces, the body stripped of all dignity in a theatre that is both bizarre and oddly familiar in modern culture. Think the events at Abu Ghraib prison meets European Art cinema of the 70s and you are beginning to envision the climate of this film.
Salò is based on the Marquis de Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom, and makes some nods to Dante’s Inferno. Set in Italy during the waning days of World War II, Salò tells the story of four debauched Fascists who retreat to a chateau and begin using innocents to satisfy their basest desires. On the surface Pasolini's film is a vehement critique of all things fascist: government, wealth, the regulation of sexuality. On a more implicit level, Salò prompts us to consider our own voyeurism as the film progresses towards an extended sequence in which the viewer becomes complicit with the gaze of those in power, a look that is coded both as one of fascination and that of perversely controlling.
With the current obsession towards "reality television" and its at times, obscene cringe button appeal (not to mention the modern day fascination with the Popular Documentary) the current climate of our visual culture appears to have finally caught up to Salò. A film largely ahead of its time and rightfully considered a landmark of the modern cinema. in a rather bizarre twist of fate Passolini, under suspicious circumstances, was murdered a few weeks prior to the film's premiere, an act which over the years has become a symbol for censorship and its implicitly sadism - the very issue Salo takes up in its unthinkable representations.
Come see for yourself why Salò has earned its notorious reputation as one of the most visually excessive films of all time. be certain to bury your pre-judgments for you may be surprised by what you see . . .
please note: 18+ for this screening.
Venue
2516 Douglas Street
since 2003
In-Person Event
Tue. March 22nd 2005 + Add to Calendar
the fifty fifty arts collective
