It’s one hell of a year for experimental, shocking religious horror. It’s not just Ken Russell’s The Devils receiving a theatrical 4K restoration release this year, but also the even more experimental and disturbing Begotten.
Restored in 4K from the original 16mm negative and optical soundtrack, Kino Lorber opens Begotten at the IFC Center on October 1 before it begins touring nationally.
Frequently winding up on “most disturbing” lists since its initial release in 1989, Begotten doesn’t follow a conventional plot or structure but instead centers on ritual.
God Killing Himself (Brian Salzberg), Mother Earth (Donna Dempsey) and Son of Earth-Flesh on Bone (Stephen Charles Barry) are players in a myth of primal gore, in a silent experimental film that records death and rebirth.
Kino Lorber’s synopsis reads: “The entire film is what those names do to each other and to the earth. God Killing Himself tears open his body and dies. Mother Earth rises from what remains and takes his seed into herself. She gives birth to Son of Earth — Flesh on Bone. He is cast into a barren world, seized by the Nomads, tortured, killed, and briefly returned to life by his mother. The Nomads destroy her too. The Robed Figures gather what remains of mother and son, grind their bodies down, and return them to the soil. The ground flowers.”
Begotten was written, directed, and produced by E. Elias Merhige, who would go on to helm Shadow of the Vampire and music videos for Danzig and Marilyn Manson.
Though silent and shot on 16mm using a black-and-white reversal film stock, it’s packed with disturbing imagery from the outset. The type that earned Begotten its reputation among adventurous cinephiles. It also directly influenced Panos Cosmatos’ Beyond the Black Rainbow, and films like Baskin.
A new trailer highlights Begotten’s singularity and disturbing vision ahead of the restoration’s theatrical rollout, below.
