Friday, February 12, 2010 at 7:30pm
Perfumed Nightmare
Perfumed Nightmare (Mababangong Bangungot)
Kidlat Tahimik, 16mm, 1977, 91 mins
Produced and directed by Kidlat Tahimik, this brilliant semi-autobiographical fable tells the story of a young Filipino born in 1942 (during the Occupation), his awakening to, and reaction against, American cultural colonialism. In his small village, Kidlat dreams of Cape Canaveral and listens to the Voice of America; he's even the president of his village's Werner Von Braun fan club.
"One of the most original and poetic works of cinema made anywhere in the seventies." - Werner Herzog
“The Perfumed Nightmare, the highly original first feature by Filipino director Kidlat Tahimik, is a kind of comic Third World psychodrama. The filmmaker plays himself as a rustic naïf, the ideal subject of neocolonialism...More underground than most Third World films, it’s far more Third World than most underground ones. As a blueprint for an 'undeveloped' cinema, I haven’t seen anything comparable since Ousmane Sembene’s Black Girl or the early films of the Brazilian cinema nove. Tahimik is a man of undeniable wit and he details a certain consciousness so engagingly than, uneven as it is, The Perfumed Nightmare seems likely to become some sort of classic.” - J. Hoberman
"The Perfumed Nightmare makes one forget months of dreary moviegoing, for it reminds one that invention, insolence, enchantment - even innocence - are still available on film." - Susan Sontag
Tickets - $7, available at door.