Assassins hiding behind garish masks, sadistic performers and deadly
candyfloss: Our Film Night organised as part of the exhibition Evil Clowns is not for the fainthearted! We will be screening three films from different eras and genres in which the circus ring becomes a ferocious allegory of society.
Admission € 7 / concessions € 6 reduced (whole movie night)
19:00
FREAKS
USA 1932, R: Tod Browning, 64 Min., FSK 16
The midget Hans, who is part of a freak show in a travelling circus, falls in love with the beautiful trapeze artist Cleopatra. Cleopatra secretly despises the freaks, but upon hearing that Hans has inherited a fortune, she devises a cunning plan with her lover, the strongman Hercules, to marry him.
Deemed shocking by its contemporaries, this quirky, strange and yet moving horror film from 1932 became a cinematic reference decades later.
20:30
SPACE INVADERS (KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE)
USA 1988, R: Stephen Chiodo, 83 Min., FSK 18
A burning comet falls into a forest near a quiet little American town. When teenagers Mike and Debbie inspect the area, they stumble across a brightly lit circus tent. Entering the mysterious object, they discover the horrible truth: the tent is a spacecraft from outer space whose occupants, aliens who look like clowns, are after human flesh... This oddball sci-fi horror comedy stages our fear of evil clowns as a chilling and trashy spectacle.
22:15
THE LAST CIRCUS
ES 2010, R: Álex de la Iglesia, 107 Min., FSK 18
In 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, a circus clown is arrested by Republican militia and forced to fight fascist troops. Decades later his son Javier joins a circus as a sad clown, having witnessed too much suffering to make people laugh. Sergio, his counterpart as funny clown, is a brutal sadist, and soon enough, the two men come head to head… The Last Circus is a grotesque political parable – “a sad trumpet ballad”, as the Spanish title indicates (Balade triste de trompeta).