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SPOTLIGHT ON THE SPOTLESS MIND
This is a very special edition of Acidemic, as we focus on the themes and implications of Michel Gondry's endlessly fascinating
cinema masterpiece, ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND: time travel, love, memory, color, desire, adaptation, amnesia,
and the blurry twilit crossroads between fiction, belief, and reality. Our French correspondent, Severine Benzimra catches
us up on the state of Gallic cinema (which she notes is "not just Gondry"); emerging writer Jonathan Doughty kicks things
off with a look at Winslet's changing hair color; abstract artist Audra Graziano contributes the SUNSHINE-inspired piece,
"Forget." Noted film historian David Del Valle brings an in-depth look at Carpenter's IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS via the lens
of Lovecraft adaptations through the ages.
From me you get an in-depth look at the time travel/amnesiac aspect of Jess Franco's 1967 trash-art classic, SUCCUBUS,
and a comparison of SUNSHINE with reincarnation stories from the 1930s, like THE MUMMY, LOST HORIZON and SHE. Also a deep
look at the Lacanian implications of the "did she or didn't she" aspects of Elia Kazan's BABY DOLL.
Last but not least I added the full collection of five short "promo" films made for the Josh Furst book, SABOTAGE
CAFE, starring Mandy Richichi. A chronicle of a runaway teenage girl, the five films show what appears at first to be a rapid
descent into hell but may in fact be something else entirely. Can our perceptions as spectator of an event change it from
bad to good for those involved? And what about the Drunkards of Borneo? A loose tribute to the original "mash-up" film, Joseph
Cornell's ROSE HOBART (1931), DRUNKARDS OF BORNEO (2008) returns to the same source material Cornell used for HOBART, the
lurid 1931 pre-code jungle thriller, EAST OF BORNEO, to make a ten minute psychedelic "bromance" in the tradition of PINEAPPLE
EXPRESS, and yet, pre-dates that film half a year. Enjoy!
-Erich Kuersten
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