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RIVER OF FUNDAMENT

The Peter B. Lewis Theater/Cleveland Cinematheque, Cleveland Institute of Art
Cleveland, OH

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The indescribable but visually stupendous new film by artist and filmmaker Matthew Barney (the "Cremaster" cycle, "Drawing Restraint 9") is a five-hour-and-19-min. opera (music by Jonathan Bepler) in three acts. (It will be shown with two 20-min. intermissions on Saturday, and a 20-min. intermission and a one-hour dinner break on Sunday.) Inspired by Norman Mailer's 1983 novel "Ancient Evenings" (set in ancient Egypt) and featuring an all-star cast (Paul Giamatti, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Ellen Burstyn, Aimee Mullins, Elaine Stritch, Debbie Harry, et al., with cameos by Dick Cavett, Salman Rushdie, James Toback, etc.), the film is a tale of regeneration and rebirth in which Mailer's soul, aided by deceased Pharaohs and Egyptian deities, seeks reincarnation and immortality. Much of the movie is set in the writer's Brooklyn Heights brownstone during his wake. There New York's cultural elite rubs elbows with the unseen dead while Mailer's soul struggles to be reborn from a mystical River of Feces flowing beneath his house. A separate "subplot" finds the hero's journey paralleled by the rise and fall of the American automobile industry. "Matthew Barney's scatological epic threads Norman Mailer, Egyptian gods and anthropomorphized Chryslers together for six hours of jaw-dropping cinematic art." Hollywood Reporter. Not for the squeamish. No one under 18 admitted! Cleveland premiere. 4K DCP. 7.1 digital sound.