Indonesia, 1965. Civil war and a military coup that led to over one million deaths in a mere year’s time. Then it just kept on rolling. The estimation is that 2,5 million people were killed by the military and various paramilitary groups during that first phase of dictatorship. And also by freestyle gangsters who joined the fun for empowerment and a fierce hatred of communism. Perhaps not so much for the overall political ideas but because they had been told that the communists would ban American movies. Reason good enough for you? This surely sounds like insane chaos and violence en masse. No one really in charge and everyone out to slaughter someone. This was of course a perfect environment for small time hoodlums like Anwar Congo and his buddies. They made a living scalping cinema tickets, but soon found new friends in the (para)military world. Why? Because they had no objections whatsoever to killing plenty of people, as long as these were communists. And as there...

What happens when the sex drive goes into compensatory overdrive? Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac (2013) and Steve McQueen’s Shame (2011) show us just what, and therefore deserve to be compared. Great and at times (literally) penetrating filmmaking or merely exploitation of human weaknesses? That I leave for you to decide, but I do strongly recommend both films. If you have the time, preferably as a wonderful feel-bad double bill. A four hour Lars von Trier display of a nymphomaniac’s exploits and adventures, from childhood to womanhood. Enticing concept, eh? After Antichrist’s (2009) darkly humorous exposure of the inherent risks of non-resonant relationships, and Melancholia’s (2011) purely emotional angst romanticism, this new offering is pure flesh and then some. The catch phrase of the film’s marketing campaign is “Forget about love” and that is certainly true to the (hard) core. Protagonist Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is a slave of...

“Satan has been the best friend the Church has ever had, as He has kept it in business all these years!” Thus wrote Anton LaVey in his The Satanic Bible in 1969. And how true that has been all through the centuries since that dire Church Council in Nice in 375 AD, when human decency and civilization took a considerable turn for the worse. Without the Devil as a terrifying scapegoat figure, the (mainly) Catholic Church would probably not have been able to secure its imperialistic ambitions. No wonder then that Satan as a visual icon in our Western mythology comes mainly from a Catholic culture. From the Church-organized morality plays of the middle ages for the analphabetic proles, with villains lavishly dressed up as devils, and up until the massive Satanic onslaught in French 19th century decadent culture, there’s always been only one protagonist that really matters: le Diable. Two recent books have focused on a very interesting phenomenon: stereoscopic visions of...