Stereo (1969)

Part of the David Cronenberg

7:30 p.m. Wednesday 29 July 2009

Director:	David Cronenberg
Certificate:	BBFC 12
Length:	65
Format:	16mm
Language:	English
Country:

Cronenberg’s icy first featurettes show a young director already sure of his fecund thematic territory, investigating the convergence of fringe medicine and outlaw sexuality in Stereo (1969), wherein subjects at a sex-research institute undergo brain surgery to acquire telepathic powers, and Crimes Of The Future (1970), which arranges a bizarre interface of dermatology and paedophilia.

We’re happy to have been given permission to screen Cronenberg’s first two major efforts, and on the same night. Both films contain early examples of the themes now common in his work.

The exploration of new states of consciousness, sexual experimentation, telepathy and polymorphous sexual relationships are all present.

Other films in the David Cronenberg:

15 Film: The Brood (Dir. David Cronenberg) (1979)

15 Jul 2009, 7:30 p.m.

Oliver Reed (!!) stars as an unconventional therapist who encourages Samantha Eggar to undergo “psychoplasmic” therapy – whereby mental and emotional trauma takes physical form – and produces scores of deformed, murderous children who prey upon her young (human) daughter. Made after a difficult custody battle between Cronenberg and his former wife, The Brood is perhaps the director’s most cathartic and autobiographical film.

19 Film: Existenz (1999)

19 Jul 2009, 7:30 p.m.

Cronenberg returns to original-screenplay work with the crafty virtual-reality adventure eXistenZ (1999), which glistened with spinal bioports and sticky-icky “game pods”. Released around the same time as The Matrix, the movie appeared as the smarter, scrappier arthouse cousin to the self-important blockbuster.