Starring Victor
Pagan and Kelly Webb
Adapted for the screen and directed by Dietmar Post
Produced by Lucía Palacios
Based on a play by Michael
O'Donnell
Photography by Claudia Amber
Supported by Filmbüro North-Rhine Westphalia
In 1998 the short film was invited to the International Film Festival in Rotterdam and screened with Michael Powell's PEEPING TOM. Over the years it screened together with Werner Herzog's film EVEN DWARFS STARTED SMALL. Here some excerpts from the official Rotterdam acceptance letter:
"Our programme advisor Gertjan Zuilhof saw your film Cloven Hoofed and he would very much like to invite this film for screening at the festival. The film could be linked to a special programme we are preparing The Cruel Machine. The intention of the programme is to do justice to some very recent disturbing but great films. Films that revitalize the ongoing and urgent as never before creating debates about the really dark side of the image. By no means we are looking exclusively for the hard core or the extreme but we do not want to avoid it either. We would like to follow sincere, courageous and uncompromising filmmakers all the way. Maybe sometimes the films in this programme will be tough to watch, but they will deserve the effort. (…) We hope to present Cloven Hoofed to our mutual pleasure and advantage."
Press Quotations
"Harsh theatrical monologue by a desperate man. Ray is a crack addict who has not scored for too long. Withdrawal symptoms cloud his paranoid mind. He sharpens his knife to take it out on his girlfriend who fled with his pipe and his crack. Sometimes his cruel and violent sexual fantasies are visualized, but in general the insane verbal ravings of the goaded Ray predominate."
27th Rotterdam Film Festival, Netherlands
"Cloven Hoofed is simple, disturbing and great."
Bryan Wendorf, Programmer, Chicago Underground Film Festival, USA
"About
as far from a 'date' film as you are likely to find, this abrasive
short has the same intensity as the best of the '80s underground
efforts, except instead of their slap dash technique, Post recruits
an expert crew for the project. It's much appreciated."
Steve Puchalski, USA
"Based on a play by Post's friend Michael O'Donnell, cloven hoofed opens with a man named Ray (actor Victor Pagan) sharpening a knife. But comparisons to traditional or derivative horror along the lines of Freddy Krueger end there. Ray's world is a dark, claustrophobic and minimalist space comprised of a space heater and a cage containing a cardboard box with a round hole in it. It is to this box that Ray spits his anger, a raw and desperate monologue that, combined with the film's milieu and the uncompromising camera work of director of photography Claudia Amber, simply pulses with danger."
Chris Lee, Film Critic, New York
"In a piece obviously made for the stage, the filmmaker took full advantage of the film medium. What makes the film most memorable is the line that it crosses to make the audience uncomfortable. The actor draws you in and you feel like a hostage. Direction was superb as was lighting and cinematography. The film left me with a deeply disturbed sensation in my gut and the feeling that I won't soon forget this film. Like I was just hit in the stomach."
Jury of the Reject Film Festival in Philadelphia, USA
"Somehow
disturbing! I liked very much the look and the mood of the film.
Keep it up! When will we see your first feature-length film?"
Splatting Image Magazine, Berlin, Germany
"Typical
New York art cinema in the style of Richard Kern and Nick Zedd.
Filmed literature."
Videodrom, Berlin, Germany
"I
like the shot composition most. Also the actor has a very interesting
face. It's hard to get a face like that. The dialogue and the
cadence both remind me of a not so innocent version of a Paddy
Chayefsky play, or those old TV plays that were done in the 50's.
I like the shot of him ranting as the woman fingered her vagina
over his head. Is this how men really feel when they get mad at
us?"
Tamara Hernandez, Director of MEN CRY BULLETS,
USA
Victor Pagán
After his cinema premiere in Cloven Hoofed Victor Pagan has appeared
in films, such as Animal Factory by Steve Buscemi, Sex and the
City (HBO), and R-Xmas by Abel Ferrara.
Film festivals
hofHaus
Short Film Festival (Germany), 2007; 27th
International Film Festival Rotterdam (Netherlands), 1998; Florida
Anti Film Festival (USA), 1998; Williamsburg-Brooklyn Film Festival
(New York, USA), 1998; 5th Chicago Underground Film Festival
(USA), 1998; 3rd 1 Reel Film Festival-The Seattle Arts Festival
(USA), 1998; 27th Festival Internacional de Cinema - Figueira
da Foz (Portugal), 1998; Festival Internacional Valdivia Cine
& Video (Chile), 1998; Reject Film Festival Philadelphia
(USA), 1998; 1st Clair-Obscur Filmfestival Basel (Switzerland),
1998; Ohio Independent Film Festival (Cleveland, USA), 1998;
MicroCineFest Baltimore (USA), 1998 ; 6th New York Underground
Film Festival (USA), 1999; Fantasia Film Festival Montreal (Canada),
1999; New Filmmakers Series at Anthology Film Archives (New
York, USA), 1999; Ocularis - Cinema Williamsburg (New York,
USA), 1999; VI Festival Internacional de Cinema Independent
de Barcelona (Spain), 1999; Semana Internacional del Cortometraje
de San Roque (Cádiz, España), 2001; Dead By Daw
Festival Edinburgh (Scotland), 2001; Modern Art Festival in Plovdiv (Bulgaria), May 1998; Volcano
in London (England), September/October 1998. In association
with The Halloween Society London; Kino Mikro and Theatre Lazina
in Krakow (Poland), October 1998; The Terminal Bar and
The Independent Prague Film Festival (Czech-Republic), October
1998; The House of Cinema in Sofia (Bulgaria), November 1998
(In association with The Union of Bulgarian Filmmakers); Kick
The Machine a time-based media playground at Project304 in Bangkok
(Thailand), Nova Gallery and Kino in Brussels (Belgium) Enthropia
Gallery and Kino Wroclaw in Wroclaw (Poland).
Movie theaters and film festivals can book the original 16mm print at info@playloud.org |