(Info from press release)
Featuring World & Los Angeles Premieres of International Feature Films Plus 13 Shorts Programs
The 5th edition of Film Maudit 2.0, Highways' showcase and celebration of outré films, runs June 12-16, 2024. A re-imagining of French artist Jean Cocteau's 1949 one-time only festival, Film Maudit 2.0 features a range of narrative, documentary and experimental films that are deliberately bold, extreme, confrontational and unusual.
The 2024 edition of the festival returns with a new range of works of cinema from 20+ countries addressing socio-political issues and taboo subject matter that challenge conventional artistic assumptions and sexual mores, and includes:
The World Premiere of Molly Wurwand and Ryan McGlade's My Imaginary Life for Someone (Narrative; Mockumentary/Dark Comedy, 2023), an uncanny tour through a labyrinth of mysterious linked Los Angeles McMansions circa Y2K, provides a dreamlike glimpse into the lives of unique women who live behind the front gate.
The L.A. Premiere of Graeme Arnfield's Hippo (Documentary/Experimental/Found Footage, 2023), loosely based on the Greek tragedy ‘Hippolytus’—examining the coming-of-age of two step-siblings: Hippo, a video-game addicted teenager and Buttercup, a Hungarian Catholic immigrant with a love of classical music and Jesus, which had its world premier at Fantasia Festival and was called “the work of a budding provocateur and American satirist...an unholy fusion of A Clockwork Orange and Napoleon Dynamite” by RogerEbert.com.
The L.A. Premiere of Mark H. Rapaport's Home Invasion (Narrative; Dark Comedy 2023), a nightmarish essay film on the history of the door-bell tracing its invention and constant reinventions through 19th century labor struggles, the nascent years of narrative cinema, and contemporary surveillance cultures, which had its world premiered at the 73rd Berlin Film Festival.
Additional screenings include 13 Short films Programs including “Invasion Politics”, “Uncanny Journeys”, “Future Visions”, “Living Online”, “Stop Motion”, “Dark Currents”, “Lost & Found” and a bonus shorts program in partnership with Cherry Pop Festival (
cherrypopfilmfestival.net/).
Film Maudit 2.0 is inspired by French avant-garde filmmaker, writer and artist Jean Cocteau, who created the original Festival du Film Maudit (literally “cursed films”) in 1949 aiming to celebrate overlooked, shocking and experimental films.
Patrick Kennelly, Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Film Maudit 2.0 says, “There is a connecting spirit to all of the works in Film Maudit 2.0, each selected to engage a different facet of the cinematic imagination. These radical “cinema-sations” are guaranteed to not just entertain, but to challenge the mind and shock the senses.”
Kennelly, who is also the current Highways Artistic Director of Highways, directs film & video, theater, live events and visual arts exhibitions. Kennelly was a recipient of the 2008 Princess Grace Award for Theater, and has received numerous fellowship, grants, and awards for his work. He received his BFA in Film/Video at Cal Arts and an MFA in Theater Direction at UCLA. Kennelly's debut feature film Excess Flesh, which world premiered at SXSW to much controversy and divisiveness (The Daily Beast called it “the most twisted movie at SXSW—and of the year.”) is currently available on DVD and streaming and soon will be available in a Special Edition Blu-Ray from Terror Vision.
