International House Philadelphia: Program Guide Fall 2013 | Page 36

Fellini Satyricon Wednesday, December 18 at 7pm ARCHIVE FEVER! 5.0 – Twenty Years After, Il Maestro Fellini Satyricon Thursday, December 19 at 7pm FULL EXPOSURE Post Tenebras Lux dir. Carlos Reygadas, Mexico, 2012, 35mm, Spanish with English subtitles, 115 min. Post Tenebras Lux dir. Federico Fellini, Italy, 1969, 35mm, Italian with English subtitles, 138 min. A place that might be ancient Rome is recreated and torn down over a couple of delirious hours by Federico Fellini. The Latin text that provides a spring board, a fragmentary account of debauchery, dissolution, and sexual adventure during the reign of Nero, is shaken and poured out as the most intoxicating cinematic cocktail the world has ever seen. Bizarre, jarring, angular, operatic, sordid, stunningly beautiful. Superficially it is a historical pageant in full sail, but also a dream of the past, buffeted by modernist strategies. “Petronious’ Satyricon is a mysterious text, first of all because it is fragmentary. But this fragmentary character symbolizes the very fragmentary nature of the Ancient World as we conceive it today. This is why the text and the world it represents are so fascinating. During the shootings I was faced with an unknown landscape, the fog was so thick that only for few seconds it dissolved and allowed me to see the landscape. The Ancient World is to me like a lost and unknown world. The only way I can approach it is through creativity and imagination, without resorting to any historical background or information.” – Federico Fellini, Un regista a Cinecittà ihousephilly.org Post Tenebras Lux (“light after darkness”), ostensibly the story of an upscale, urban family whose move to the Mexican countryside results in domestic crises and class friction, is a stunningly photographed, impressionistic psychological portrait of a family and their place within the sublime, unforgiving natural world. Director Carlos Reygadas conjures a host of unforgettable, ominous images: a haunting sequence at dusk as Reygadas’s real-life daughter wanders a muddy field and farm animals loudly circle and thunder and lightning threaten; a glowing-red demon gliding through the rooms of a home; a husband and wife visiting a swingers’ bathhouse with rooms named after famous philosophers. By turns entrancing and mystifying, Post Tenebras Lux palpably explores the primal conflicts of the human condition. — Mike Maggiore, Film Forum