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10th CRASH: INTERNATIONAL FANTASTIC FILM FESTIVAL

TRASH IS NOW CRASH. AND CRASH IS RESISTANCE!

 

In the TRASH 2017 catalogue, we already gave the heads up: “TRASH is really trash only in name. Soon, not even that. It’s an international fantasy cinema festival of unimpeachable quality, made by and for­­­ lovers of film.” And we made good on that promise. From this edition (the 10th) on, our festival is named CRASH: INTERNATIONAL FANTASTIC FILM FESTIVAL. The spirit is still intact: the best of international horror, sci-fi and fantasy cinema. But why CRASH? 

 

First of all, CRASH brings to mind a rupture, a break. There’s something powerful and dynamic in the expression, commonly used as a comic book onomatopoeia. Rupture, impact, potency and dynamism are characteristics at the very core of the kind of cinema that we try to bring to the festival screen. On the other hand, for those that follow us from the beginning, it’s easy to see the connection with the old namesake ‘TRASH’. That is, CRASH is, indeed, a rupture – but the kind of rupture that doesn’t turn its back on the past.

This is the third edition in a row where we place genre cinema at the heart of the show. That was never as necessary as it is now. Brazil is goes through dark days that hold the promise of getting even darker and more shadowy. Historically, fantasy cinema has always risen up to the occasion of probing the dilemmas of its time.

In movies such as Nosferatu, Dr. Caligari’s Cabinet and Metropolis, German expressionism foresaw and warned about the dangers of Nazism. During the 1950s and 1960s, American b-movies dealt in an unique manner with macarthism, the Cold War and nuclear paranoia. Thus, fantasy cinema has  the inexhaustible potential of asking questions about the days we live in. It’s what legendary sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick would call the “shock of dysrecognition”: society’s critique directed towards itself through allegories that distort the reality we see.

This is the prism through which to see the 10th edition of CRASH: critique and resistance. For that end, we gathered together an incredible team of curators, comprised of specialists such as Carlos Primatti and Beatriz Saldanha. Also part of the team is the legendary underground film-maker Gurcius Gewdner, and the irredeemable cinephiliac André LDC. The result is a show that is truly fantastic - 75 movies in total,  from 21 countries -, something that entertains while at the same time it scratches the ‘contemporary wound’. Fascism, torture, homophobia, dictatorial regimes, sexual repression, tyranny and violence are dissected through the lenses of horror, sci-fi and fantasy.

10th CRASH, however, is not only restricted to the courage and fearlessness of its vigorous curatorship. Throughout the event, debates, workshops and releases of all kinds will take place, unfolding in a veritable mosaic of genre cinema, transmogrifying in a meeting point for all those that see art as a battlefield and a place of resistance.

Send in the nightmares, for now we’re ready for them.

Márcio Júnior & Márcia Deretti

Directors - CRASH 2018

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