TOFIFEST is going to show the films of Ken Russell, the master of postmodern mishmash.
Camp Not Dead is a special section for the fans of ironic, rebellious, unconventional and abstract cinema. Camp grew up in the 60’s resulting from the wave of postmodernism and defense of popular culture, with Susan Sontag as its advocate. She was the first one to define so called “bad art” — kitsch, to put it bluntly.
The key to understand its aesthetics is balancing between kitsch and high art, just like in the films of Ken Russell — the main figure of this thematic block and definitely its icon.
Russell is considered both a genius and a madman.
His films have always featured visual abstraction, frequently mixing high and low culture, revealing dark side of human soul, breaking conventions, taboo and all possible genres, bold in terms of depicting sexual issues and altered states of consciousness, as the title of one of Ken’s films.
At the festival we are going to present Tommy, Salome’s Last Dance, Altered States and Lisztomania starring Ringo Starr as the Pope, to name the few.