Begotten is a 1989 American experimental horror film written, directed, and produced by E. Elias Merhige. It stars Brian Salsberg, Donna Dempsy, Stephen Charles Barry, and members of Merhige’s theatre company, Theatreofmaterial. Its unconventional narrative depicts the suicide of a godlike figure and the resulting births of Mother Earth and the Son of Earth, who set out on a journey across a barren landscape. The film does not contain dialogue, with its visual style evoking early silent films.
The film’s storyline draws upon creation myths in Christian mythology, Celtic mythology, and Slavic paganism, featuring narrative motifs and religious imagery that reoccur throughout Merhige’s work. Other influences include the transgressive artist Antonin Artaud and the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. The film’s visual style was inspired by Georges Franju‘s Blood of the Beasts, Akira Kurosawa‘s Seven Samurai, Stan Brakhage‘s The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes, and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
Begotten was originally conceived as a work of experimental theatre featuring dance and live music. It become a film project after Merhige realized that his vision would be too expensive to produce live. The film was shot on location in New York City and New Jersey over five and a half months. After it was completed, Merhige spent two years trying to find a distributor willing to market it. The film debuted at the Montreal World Film Festival, and later screened at the San Francisco International Film Festival, with the film critics Tom Luddy and Peter Scarlet in attendance. Impressed by its cinematographer and visual imagery, the two brought it to the attention of the critic Susan Sontag, whose enthusiastic praise and private screening to critics and filmmakers in her own home were instrumental to its eventual release.
black & white, mono, fullscreen, 78 minutes. DVD-R comes packaged as shown in color DVD case, wrapped in plastic!
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