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#03
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O FANTASMA
2000, Portugal, dir. João Pedro Rodrigues, 87 mins
NOTES:
Originally written for the Perverts newsletter, 04/09/25
I want to share a quote I recently came across from French filmmaker Robert Bresson — I feel it encapsulates the thesis of Perverts as a curatorial project:
“The thing that matters is not what they show me but what they hide from me and, above all, what they do not expect is in them.”
“Perversion” is a moralized designation given to otherwise natural human impulses and curiosities. But shame never succeeds in eliminating unsightly social phenomena. Morality, I think, is the dividing line between messenger and predator, thought and threat. A pervert without morals is potentially dangerous, but a perv with a moral compass could be the author of the next universally-resonant piece of cultural media. Idk, I’m thinking of like, Jeffrey Dahmer versus David Lynch, for example. Sorry to be extreme.
This project aims to illuminate these damned and shadowy impulses, to examine their character and potential abuse. Both Salò and Raspberry Reich explicate sexual perversion in service of fascism, or against it, or one by way of the other, etc.
O Fantasma engages the rough and raw sexual desire driving one to the brink of mania.
FUTHER READING:
“Unspeakable Desire: The Films of João Pedro Rodrigues”
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