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Friday, Mar 11, 1994
WR: Mysteries of the Organism 7:00
With our February 24 and 26 programs, this is our third evening with writer-director Dusan Makavejev, who is this year's Avenali Visiting Professor of Humanities under the auspices of the Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities. (WR: Misteriste Organizma). In an exploration of Wilhelm Reich and his implications for world revolution, Makavejev distills the sexual/political concerns and combinatory style of his earlier features. 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 Yugoslavian 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.
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