WR: Mysteries of the Organism

(WR: Misterije organizma)

BAMPFA Collection Print
Film to Table dinner follows

  • Pavle Levi
    Introduction

    Pavle Levi is a professor of film and media studies at Stanford. He has written extensively about  Yugoslav cinema and the films of Dusan Makavejev.

featuring

Milena Dravic, Jagoda Kaloper, Ivica Vidovic, Jackie Curtis,

After the screening, enjoy a Film to Table dinner at Babette, the cafe at BAMPFA. Join an intimate group of fellow filmgoers for a four-course, prix-fixe meal in a convivial, dinner-party atmosphere. Purchase dinner tickets in advance at babettecafe.com (film tickets must be purchased separately).

Dusan Makavejev brings a surreal combinatory style and radical sexual politics to a docu-fictional exploration of Wilhelm Reich and his implications for world revolution. The stated aim of this seriously ideological work is amusement; it comes described as “a fantasy on the Fascism and Communism of human bodies, a summary of information about the political life of human genitals, and a proclamation of the pornographic essence of any system of authority and power over others.” In a new twist on old Eisenstein, juxtaposition is the key to Makavejev’s bold and funny construct, which offers Tuli “Kill for Peace” Kupferberg as urban terrorist; a session with a plaster-caster; documentation on Reich and the hysteria this Eisenhower voter provoked in book-burning America; Stalin’s ghost, popping up at inopportune moments; and a narrative fiction about a Yugoslav beautician and free-love advocate (Milena Dravic) who “loses her head” over a sexually repressed Soviet ice-skating champion, confirming one of Reich’s theses on Stalinist puritanism. Makavejev declared, “If you don’t leave the cinema after five minutes of this film, you become the film’s accomplice.”

FILM DETAILS 
Screenwriter
  • Dusan Makavejev
Cinematographer
  • Pega Popovic
  • Aleksandar Petkovic
Language
  • English
  • Serbo-Croatian
  • with English subtitles
Print Info
  • Color
  • 35mm
  • 84 mins
Source
  • Edith R. Kramer Collection at BAMPFA