Part of Summer 1994
Exploring the boundaries of sexual pleasure and abuse, New York filmmaker M.M. Serra has constructed a number of self-reflective and poignant films that examine the nature of our psyche. This program will consist of M.M. Serra’s two major kinescope (video to film) projects–Mary Magdalene and L’ Amour Fou, as well as an earlier short work, Turner, and a recent ‘work-in-progress’.
‘L’ Amour Fou is a curious meditation on the pleasures and terrors of S/M, in which interviews with enthusiasts collide with choice porn clips, Fleisher cartoons, Hans Bellmer poupees and a couple of sphincter-tightening routines’ (Manohla Dargis, Village Voice)
‘Mary Magdalene is Freud’s Dora told by Dora … a trip into child abuse mediated by the abused as an adult conversing with her child self. Powerful and poignant, the film is disturbing. Voices from the past move into the present … a complicated architecture in which form enacts the content in an eerie match with resonance for millions of women and enough power and poetry to play and perhaps penetrate the consciousness of men who fail to think of sexual abuse as conscious violence.’ (Abigail Child)
