In a few years he’ll probably go mad.
That’s whats being said about the director of Black Biscuit; Fabrizio Federico aka Mr Bugalloo.
His first feature film is a uniquely draining, frighteningly human, intense experience - Black Biscuit is giving cinema directions to the next century.
It’s a pill that offers a 12 course meal in one dose.
The price is right – the cost of admission is your mind.
Here is a list of the subjects it covers: child death from trip and fall, careering, prostitution, religion, immigration, exorcism, voyeurism, cults, sexism, concert violence, the death of Michael Jackson, benefit fraud, media, drug abuse, mental illness, humiliation, homosexuality, self harm, celebrity & pop culture, S&M, homelessness, and money.
So is this film too dangerous?
What makes it rebellious is that it’s not guided by commercial intent.
Surreal and hauntingly dreamlike, it’s approach is like a cinematic meat grinder. Anti-film at it’s most dissident; and the audio samples that echo through out
the film of cult leaders like Charles Manson and Jim Jones ring chillingly appealing.
Black Biscuit's genius & madness, walking hand in hand approach; added with it’s total commitment to unlearning the rules of cinema; forges a lost and desolate beauty out of the pig iron professionalism that mainstream cinema has become.
It’s like an 8 year old on glue unleashed into the schools film lab.
A 2 hour trip to Nutsville courtesy of Mr Federico; each scene is a universe within it’s own infinity of laws. With rapid fire film collages, quasi stoned conversations, non-actors, mistakist footage, spontaneity, and a multiplex of different visual looks and styles.
Black Biscuit set’s it’s own standards.
This is the work of ragged majesty; Federico has dismantled Jonas Mekas & co
and put them back together upside down.
The film is all about the spirit of freedom, what happens, happens.
Black Biscuit revolves around the idea of society’s modern drifter. These characters live way outside conformist societies straightjacket. They barely know what day it is.
If the idea that ‘youth is wasted on the young’ this film also brings into perspective that you better follow your dreams before your soul gets corrupted.
Social reportage given to you by Syd Barrett with pupils the size of dinner plates. It’s unhinged.
The chaos periodically fades away into pastoral interludes, before lurching back into elated ill structure; both spectral, sorrowful and enlightening.
Despite encompassing bummer elements – it is wholly optimistic and radiant.
It remains unsurpassed in it’s ability to inspire, challenge and baffle.
It’s completely self indulgent – but that is an artists right. A right to create what they feel, and this is what critics and money men have always failed to grasp – the freedom and magic that an artist has at the tip of their fingers is atomic.
But is it jealousy on their part ?
Being an artist means being free to do what ever the hell you want. God forbid an artist creates something vague and you have to ponder it’s meaning longer than 15 minutes. It’s almost considered a criminal offence to be daring and different, but at the same time the public crave diversity – but can they still take it ?
Maybe artists are overestimating the viewer. The publics cries of ‘We want new movies’ ring like hollow lies; what they really want are 1940’s opiate kind of movies, where they don’t have to do a whole lot of thinking – there’s a reason Spielberg, Lucas, and Jackson make billions.
So have today’s modern viewers become lazy and docile, or is the counter culture miles away reality ?
I think today’s biggest problem is that the commercial industries rationalization is ‘If doesn’t sell it’s shit’.
Far from true…………..It makes it holy.
