Metrograph

Zar Amir stars opposite Portrait of a Lady on Fire’s Luàna Bajrami in Singh and Musteata’s audacious mid-length tragicomedy, Two People Exchanging Saliva. Narrated by Vicky Krieps and shot in strikingly stark black and white, it sets its scene in a world where kisses are punishable by death and slaps to the face are a regular part of social intercourse. In this dystopia, unhappily married Angine (Amir) finds herself flirting with catastrophe as her deepening infatuation with salesgirl Malaise (Bajrami) threatens to put both of them in danger of terrible reprisals. A small miracle of narrative compression and tonal balance, now being adapted by its directors into a full-length feature after premiering at Telluride and enjoying a lauded festival run. The short film plays here, accompanied by a selection from Singh and Musteata of thematically connected shorts.

“The Old Testament traces all our ills back to an unchaste embrace in the garden of Eden. Selig’s Something Good - Negro Kiss stands among the first moving-image depictions of that fateful act; his lovers are unbridled and joyous. Espuche’s Yuck! makes childhood’s early stigma around that simple kiss surreally tangible. After puberty, male prurience fused with religiosity can blind men to women’s sexual power. Madani’s Sex Ed by God even casts Him, the Creator, in that same priggish ignorance. Tafakory’s Irani Bag takes ‘His’ strictures to their absurd limit: with inter-gender contact forbidden in Iran, handbags become the leitmotif of a Buñuelean choreography of touching by not touching. And when a young woman’s budding attraction to girls is mocked and exploited in Sciamma’s Pauline, she delivers a searing, cathartic monologue that expunges her pain and embarrassment in one powerful breath.” —Filmmakers Natalie Musteata & Alexandre Singh

Two People Exchanging Saliva by Natalie Musteata & Alexandre Singh

Something Good - Negro Kiss by William Selig

Yuck! by Loïc Espuche

Sex Ed by God by Tala Madani

Pauline by Celine Sciamma

Irani Bag by Maryam Tafakory

Q&A with Natalie Musteata, Alexandre Singh, and Vicky Krieps moderated by filmmaker and actor Callie Hernandez on Saturday, October 4th