Cult Epics is proud to present JEAN GENET'S UN CHANT D'AMOUR, the only film made by the French novelist Jean Genet. Visually reminiscent of Jean Cocteau's Blood of a Poet, Belle et la Bete and Kenneth Anger's Fireworks. The story, set in a prison with three main characters, a guard and two prisoners, is a voyeuristic, confrontational, poetic masterpiece. Forbidden in France upon its release, and only available in the US in censored form and through underground distribution. UN CHANT D'AMOUR is now released from its obscurity and is presented in its complete version on DVD, together with the in-depth Documentary GENET.

Catalog Number: MC-981	Type: Feature	Genre: Experimental
Copyright: 2009	Length: 77 minutes	Format:  DVD  Region: 0 (All)
TV System: NTSC	ISBN:	UPC: 881190007693
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2009-03-03  filmsdefrance.com By James Travers Jean Genet’s inspired and totally unique visual poem evoking homosexual desire and existentialist suffering has achieved the status of an icon of gay cinema, although it is only quite recently that the film has succeeded in reaching a wide audience. After its initial screening in 1950, the film was immediately banned in France and the only copies remained in the hands of wealthy gay intellectuals for well over a decade. Attempts to screen the film in America in the 1960s resulted in arrests, near-prosecutions and finally an outright ban. Fifty years after its near still-birth, the film was finally judged to be acceptable for public screenings, although in many cases some of the film’s more controversial scenes (in particular, a full-frontal close-up shot of a naked man masturbating) were cut. Genet himself disliked the film and, in later life, disowned it. Despite its chequered history and reputation as pornography for the gay intelligentsia, Un chant d'amour is arguably Genet’s most evocative and haunting work. His only film, it is easily on a par with his celebrated literary works, such as Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs and Querelle de Brest. With the mocking surrealism of Luis Buñuel and dark poetry of Jean Cocteau, it is as much a condemnation of middle class values (particularly contemporary society’s harsh attitudes towards homosexuality) as it is a celebration of sexual desire and a reflection of Genet’s grim existentialist outlook. Few, if any, subsequent films with a gay theme have been anywhere near as successful at conveying the essence of same-sex attraction and the brutality of a world that regards such a thing as unnatural and immoral. The film depicts homophobia with uncompromising brutality, through the sadistic prison warder, an obvious metaphor for a society that is both titilated and repulsed by the idea of homosexual acts. This is a short film (the total runtime is just 26 minutes), made in black and white, with no soundtrack. Stylistically, the film is nearer to the experimental films of the 1930s – such as Cocteau's Le Sang d'un poète or Man Ray's surrealist shorts – than anything else produced in 1950. The cinematography is crude, some might say primitive, but it could hardly be more effective. Genet is clearly able to draw on his own experiences in prison to bring a sense of raw authenticity to what we see. Small wonder that Genet was a hero of the existentialists – his film conveys the bleakness of a existence in a godless universe with painful believability. As the prisoners languish in their solitary cells, yearning for the merest form of human contact to reaffirm their existence, we cannot help but share a fragment of the existentialist nightmare that was Genet’s own troubled life, a life marred by rejection, depression and self-doubt. Anyone with a wider appreciation of Genet’s work will see that Un chant d'amour is less a film about homosexuality or voyeurism, but much more one about the torment of living in an empty loveless universe, a bleak kind of humanism that makes it surprisingly relevant to a 21st century audience. Whilst it may have a reputation for being one of the most notorious pieces of gay erotica, it is also probably the most effective fusion of existentialist philosophy and cinema.

2009-03-03  Outcome By Michael D. Klemm "Like Anger's movie, sexuality explodes into violence but it is also one of the most poetic and sensual films about men loving men ever filmed. Some might call it porn, but you feel the loneliness as the camera lingers, almost lovingly, on these men. They just seem to want some contact. The older man kisses the wall as tears stream down his unshaven face, the younger one hugs himself on his cot, both men open their mouths wide to receive the sensuous smoke through a phallic straw stuck through the small "glory hole." Two hands reach from between the bars of their cell windows and try to touch. These are the images we had to imagine while reading Our Lady of the Flowers. They will resonate again decades later in Fassbinder's film of Genet's Querelle (1982), Todd Hayne's Poison (1992) and even on HBO's Oz." [excerpt]

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