“Holy Beasts” doesn’t work on every level, but it hits the bullseye where it matters most: as a cinematic reclamation project in honor of the late Dominican director Jean-Louis Jorge. Murdered in 2000 at age 53, Jorge only completed three feature films, but his predilection for kitsch and blurring the line between dreams and reality could have eventually made him the homegrown answer to Pedro Almodóvar and Alejandro Jodorowsky.
In “Holy Beasts,” a commanding Geraldine Chaplin plays Jorge’s fictional friend, Vera, who has arrived in Santo Domingo to helm the late director’s never-filmed screenplay. To its detriment, the resulting tribute-within-a-tribute often plays like a private, alienating conversation between the filmmakers and anyone who knows more about Jorge’s work than you do. But this languid yet engrossing homage is alive with tasty characters and tantalizing, if underdeveloped, ideas and its polished production values bode well for future crossover arthouse...
In “Holy Beasts,” a commanding Geraldine Chaplin plays Jorge’s fictional friend, Vera, who has arrived in Santo Domingo to helm the late director’s never-filmed screenplay. To its detriment, the resulting tribute-within-a-tribute often plays like a private, alienating conversation between the filmmakers and anyone who knows more about Jorge’s work than you do. But this languid yet engrossing homage is alive with tasty characters and tantalizing, if underdeveloped, ideas and its polished production values bode well for future crossover arthouse...
- 12/18/2021
- by Mark Keizer
- Variety Film + TV
Geraldine Chapman And Udo Kier Star In A Campy Film-within-a-film Celebrating B-movie Filmmaker Jean-louis Jorge And Making Its North American Premiere On July 23, 2021 To celebrate Geraldine Chaplin’s birthday (July 31), Film Movement Plus unspools the North American Premiere of one of her latest films, a campy, tongue-in-cheek fictional film-within-a-film in honor of flamboyant …
The post Geraldine Chaplin and Udo Kier Star in Holy Beasts, a Campy Film-Within-a-Film Making its North American Premiere on 7/23 appeared first on Horror News | Hnn.
The post Geraldine Chaplin and Udo Kier Star in Holy Beasts, a Campy Film-Within-a-Film Making its North American Premiere on 7/23 appeared first on Horror News | Hnn.
- 7/14/2021
- by Adrian Halen
- Horror News
It isn’t hard to imagine the kind of sexy 1970s pastiche that filmmakers Laura Amelia Guzman and Israel Cardenas set out to make with Holy Beasts (La Fiera y la Fiesta). The goal was certainly a campy, tongue-in-cheek fictional film-within-a-film in honor of flamboyant filmmaker, writer and theatrical producer Jean-Louis Jorge (a real person), who was an active member of the trendy '70s underground scene — think Warhol, think Studio 54, think European version of the above. He became a legend in Santo Domingo on the strength of his eccentric B-movies, until his work was cut short when he ...
- 2/15/2019
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
It isn’t hard to imagine the kind of sexy 1970s pastiche that filmmakers Laura Amelia Guzman and Israel Cardenas set out to make with Holy Beasts (La Fiera y la Fiesta). The goal was certainly a campy, tongue-in-cheek fictional film-within-a-film in honor of flamboyant filmmaker, writer and theatrical producer Jean-Louis Jorge (a real person), who was an active member of the trendy '70s underground scene — think Warhol, think Studio 54, think European version of the above. He became a legend in Santo Domingo on the strength of his eccentric B-movies, until his work was cut short when he ...
- 2/15/2019
- The Hollywood Reporter - Film + TV
Berlin — “Holy Beasts” begins memorably with a shot of an inky sea, as black as death. Surveying it is Vera, played by Geraldine Chaplin, an actress who travels to the Dominican Republic to shoot the unfinished film of real-life Dominican director Jean-Louis Jorge, who died in 2000.
Vera is most probably dying. This will certainly be her last film, she tells its producer.”Holy Beasts” is a step up in scale for its directors, Laura Amelia Guzman and Israel Cardenas. Shot at the island’s Pinewood Dominican Republic Studios and extraordinarily plush Casa de Campo Resort, “Holy Beasts” records the bathetic happenstance of movie shoots, the tight budgets and schedules, the accidents, the conflict of creative will. Above all, however, the film turns on Vera who asks what matters and mattered in her life: Her answers, respectively, her grandson and Jean-Louis. Shooting his film may rescue not only Jean-Louis from oblivion but be,...
Vera is most probably dying. This will certainly be her last film, she tells its producer.”Holy Beasts” is a step up in scale for its directors, Laura Amelia Guzman and Israel Cardenas. Shot at the island’s Pinewood Dominican Republic Studios and extraordinarily plush Casa de Campo Resort, “Holy Beasts” records the bathetic happenstance of movie shoots, the tight budgets and schedules, the accidents, the conflict of creative will. Above all, however, the film turns on Vera who asks what matters and mattered in her life: Her answers, respectively, her grandson and Jean-Louis. Shooting his film may rescue not only Jean-Louis from oblivion but be,...
- 2/10/2019
- by John Hopewell and Jamie Lang
- Variety Film + TV
Madrid — Big Spanish-language arthouse sales company Latido Films has just acquired world sales rights to Berlinale Panorama entry “Holy Beasts,” a step up in scale for its directors, “Sand Dollars” Laura Amelia Guzman and Israel Cardenas, which turns around the extraordinary, if ill-known, Dominican cineast Jean-Louis Jorge.
The deal excludes producers’ home territories.
Starring Geraldine Chaplin, Udo Kier, Luis Ospina and, “Holy Beasts” is produced by the Dominican Republic’s Gabriel Tineo at Batú Films (“Miriam Miente”), Lantica Media and Aurora Dominicana, Argentina’s Rei Cine, and Mexico’s Pimienta Films, represented by Nicolás Celis and Sandino Sarabia Vinay, a producer and associate producer on “Roma.”
“Holy Beasts” turns on an actress (Chaplin), based on the figure of Edwige Belmore, who travels to the Dominican Republic to direct and star in an unfinished film she originally took part in, begun by Jean-Louis Jorge.
George’s short oeuvre, with just two...
The deal excludes producers’ home territories.
Starring Geraldine Chaplin, Udo Kier, Luis Ospina and, “Holy Beasts” is produced by the Dominican Republic’s Gabriel Tineo at Batú Films (“Miriam Miente”), Lantica Media and Aurora Dominicana, Argentina’s Rei Cine, and Mexico’s Pimienta Films, represented by Nicolás Celis and Sandino Sarabia Vinay, a producer and associate producer on “Roma.”
“Holy Beasts” turns on an actress (Chaplin), based on the figure of Edwige Belmore, who travels to the Dominican Republic to direct and star in an unfinished film she originally took part in, begun by Jean-Louis Jorge.
George’s short oeuvre, with just two...
- 1/30/2019
- by John Hopewell
- Variety Film + TV
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