Shadows of Fiendish Ancestress And Occasionally Parajanov on Durian Cialis (2017)

Overview

In an island perpetually suspended by Asian values, the spirit of a dionysian culture lays dormant. What stays awake is the daily repression of sensuality in the name of a constructed morality naturalised by the weight of history. Within this landscape, underground director Chew Tze Chuan continues the search for depictions of native sexuality in history which remains undocumented and only whispered about. With reference to native historical texts and the mythological and religious depiction of the 'Holy Whore', Chew constructs a mythology of a hermaphrodite who comes to town to impart a wisdom that proves to be too carnal and untimely. Years in the making and strung together with documentary-like footage of orgiastic happenings, punctuated with moments of refrain into randomness, the film soon escalates into a schizophrenic psychedelia of multicultural and polymorphous sexuality.