FWM and Lightbox Film Center present an evening of films curated by Artists-in-Residence Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley, inspired by their current exhibition Blood Moon.
The Syphilis of Sisyphus (11 min, 2 sec), set in Paris, 1852. A pregnant prostitute Sisyphus powders her nose while extolling the power of cosmetics to “fix” nature’s flaws. Walking the nighttime streets of Paris, she encounters a troupe of traveling entertainers, who—in a sequence of comic imitations—ridicule French history. The ludicrous plays rouse Sisyphus to join in a baguette battle, which excites the attention of the Morals Police, who cart her off to Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital. Though incarcerated and straightjacketed, Sisyphus solicits the male doctors.
(Black-and-white HD video, sound; 2011, 11 min. 2 sec.) Written and co-directed by Mary Reid Kelley; co-directed, filmed, and edited by Patrick Kelley; drawings, makeup, costumes, and props by Mary Reid Kelley.
Followed by
Invention for Destruction (81 min) is an eye-popping escapade revolving around a scientist and his doomsday machine—and the pirates who will stop at nothing to gain possession of it. Freely adapting the fiction of Jules Verne, and inspired by Victorian line engravings, Karel Zeman surrounds his actors with animated scenery of breathtaking intricacy and complexity, constructing an impossibly vivid proto-steampunk world. Released abroad at the turn of the 1960s, Invention for Destruction went on to become one of the most internationally successful Czechoslovak films of all time.
(Karel Zeman, Czechoslovakia, 1958)