Thematic Retrospective: GRINDHOUSE
Temples of Perversion
From the 60s to the early 80s, the poisonous flower of American cinema came into bloom; its name was grindhouse. The term was employed to describe the decrepit movie palaces of the inner city, which, seeing their revenue dwindling turned to an eclectic, exploitation-oriented clientele with a taste for the guilty pleasure material mainstream studios wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole.
Places you’d be lucky to leave in one piece, grindhouse theatres provided a safe haven to the underbelly of society. For almost 24 hours a day they ground out double and triple bills of pure, uncontaminated sleazefest, including shocking pseudo-documentaries and mock snuffs, bare-breasted lovelies and hardcore porn, cannibal feasts set in exotic locations, women’s prison revolts and Nazi S&M parties, zombies and bloodsucking lesbians, sadistic gang bangers and orgiastic nuns. Their main aim was to deliver a blow to social taboos and all sense of good taste ? in one word, to provoke. Ultraviolence, sex and horror (in any combination) were the necessary ingredients of any self-respecting grindhouse hit.
The advent of the video era in the early 80s marked the demise of grindhouse cinema. But despite strict censorship, grindhouse sleazemeisters found an accommodating home in video continuing to corrupt younger generations in their privacy of their homes.
This year the 13th Athens International Film Festival offers you an exquisite selection of the nastiest grindhouse features, some of which are presented for the first time in Greece, restoring grindhouse to the place where it belongs: the silver screen.
Places you’d be lucky to leave in one piece, grindhouse theatres provided a safe haven to the underbelly of society. For almost 24 hours a day they ground out double and triple bills of pure, uncontaminated sleazefest, including shocking pseudo-documentaries and mock snuffs, bare-breasted lovelies and hardcore porn, cannibal feasts set in exotic locations, women’s prison revolts and Nazi S&M parties, zombies and bloodsucking lesbians, sadistic gang bangers and orgiastic nuns. Their main aim was to deliver a blow to social taboos and all sense of good taste ? in one word, to provoke. Ultraviolence, sex and horror (in any combination) were the necessary ingredients of any self-respecting grindhouse hit.
The advent of the video era in the early 80s marked the demise of grindhouse cinema. But despite strict censorship, grindhouse sleazemeisters found an accommodating home in video continuing to corrupt younger generations in their privacy of their homes.
This year the 13th Athens International Film Festival offers you an exquisite selection of the nastiest grindhouse features, some of which are presented for the first time in Greece, restoring grindhouse to the place where it belongs: the silver screen.
