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Roland Lethem

Roland Lethem

Directing

Biography

Roland Lethem (born 1942) is a Belgian filmmaker and writer. Influenced at his beginnings by Buñuel , Cocteau , the surrealists and by the Japanese cinema ( Seijun Suzuki , Ishirō Honda , Kōji Wakamatsu , Yoko Ono ), stunned by the Festival of the experimental film of Knokke in 1967 and by May 1968, Roland Lethem wants to push the people to look at the things of which they say they are freed, it's to say to place them in front of their responsibilities. Even if sometimes the results leaves much to be desired, the idea of ​​each one of his films is seductive and exemplary. A fact is certain, his films are disturbing, they are sometimes unpleasant to look at. The narcissistic and provocative play of the debut turned itself into direct, visual, and verbal insult, and in slandering. His dream was one moment to be able to film the intimate life of the pope or the sexual plays of the Belgian sovereigns. Through violence, pornography and cruelty of some scenes, Roland Lethem is a gentle, generous man with a lot of humor. The work of Roland Lethem evolves, becomes political, ecological. The Ballad of the cursed lovers, 1966 or The Bloodthirsty Fairy, 1968 still tell stories. The Sufferings of a ravaged Egg , 1967, poem of love in several parts (Étoiles/Stars, Corps/Bodies, Hymen/Marriage or Hymen (ambiguous in French), Oeuf/Egg) dedicated to all who conceive and to all who are conceived, irresistibly makes you think at the Histoire de l'oeil (Story of the Eye, 1928) of Georges Bataille .

Known For

Cinématon
4.9

Cinématon is a 156-hour long experimental film by French director Gérard Courant. It was the longest film ever released until 2011. Composed over 36 years from 1978 until 2006, it consists of a series of over 2,821 silent vignettes (cinématons), each 3 minutes and 25 seconds long, of various celebrities, artists, journalists and friends of the director, each doing whatever they want for the allotted time. Subjects of the film include directors Barbet Schroeder, Nagisa Oshima, Volker Schlöndorff, Ken Loach, Benjamin Cuq, Youssef Chahine, Wim Wenders, Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Samuel Fuller and Terry Gilliam, chess grandmaster Joël Lautier, and actors Roberto Benigni, Stéphane Audran, Julie Delpy and Lesley Chatterley. Gilliam is featured eating a 100-franc note, while Fuller smokes a cigar. Courant's favourite subject was a 7-month-old baby. The film was screened in its then-entirety in Avignon in November 2009 and was screened in Redondo Beach, CA on April 9, 2010.

Cinématon

1978Movie
The Bloodthirsty Fairy
5.3

Two mysterious men dressed in black and with cigarettes dangling from their mouths drop a large, presumably heavy (since it takes two to carry it) package off on a doorstep and walk away. When the home’s owner returns he drags the package inside, then goes about doing a few more activities before deciding to finally open it. Upon removing the paper, he notices it’s a large steel barrel. Using a blowtorch, he gets the lid off and sees it’s full of oily water… but rising out of the water is a nude, voluptuous, smiling woman, who immediately starts to entice the man by massaging her breasts. Naturally, being in a barrel for who knows how long, she needs to get cleaned off and hops into a bubble bath. While she’s lounging in the tub, the man gets into bed, lights a cigarette and starts to remove him clothes in anticipation. We get to see fantasies from both the man and “the fairy.” —The Bloody Pit of Horror

The Bloodthirsty Fairy

1969Movie
The Sufferings of a Wounded Egg
3.0

A surrealist saga in four parts: 1.) The credit sequence in which title cards show successively larger foetuses pulsating on the screen until the baby is born and cries. 2.) Etoile-directly referring to Cocteau, Lethem shows an adolescent sucking a starfish and then giving birth to a smaller starfish. A statement of inadequacy. To give birth involves an emasculation and a loss of vitality. 3.) Corps-two images of a man on a couch groping for each other, watched by a mysterious peeping Tom. As the two superimposed images come together, the heavy breathing subsides…the statement that the birth of desire is a self – realisation. 4.) Hymen – The decaying body of a girl is shot through green filters, and the final image reveals her vagina crawling with maggots and overlain with a crucifix. A representation of Catholicism preventing the free expression of desire.

The Sufferings of a Wounded Egg

1967Movie