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Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi achieved notoriety in 1962 with the sensationalistic documentary Mondo Cane, a globetrotting exposé of bizarre rites and other human grotesqueries that opened the floodgates for a deluge of Mondo titles. When the release of their 1966 film Africa Addio (a.k.a. Africa: Blood and Guts), a despairing look at the continent’s decolonization movements, led to accusations of racism, Jacopetti and Prosperi sought to address the charges by revealing (some would say reveling in) the history of slavery in America. The resulting film, Goodbye Uncle Tom, is an extremely disturbing, at times almost unwatchable, descent into the inferno of an unpardonable institution.

Goodbye Uncle Tom leaves any pretense of objectivity behind in the dust. Using a conceit similar to such Peter Watkins classics as Culloden and The War Game, Jacopetti and Prosperi’s film brings modern-day documentary technology back into a historical setting, using it in...

Med Hondo’s 1979 musical extravaganza West Indies: The Fugitive Slaves of Liberty is a satirical skewering of the legacy of French imperialism in the West Indies and beyond. From the outset, it defies categorization through its distinct sense of free association as it leaps from one colorful image to the next, often shunning context along the way. Throughout Hondo’s film, the xenophobic and racist rhetoric of haughty, predominately white French aristocrats, bureaucrats, and citizens is combatted, challenged, or lampooned by various African figures. Some are slaves, some are revolutionaries, while some are simply power hungry. The result is a deliriously iconoclastic anti-colonialist work that’s worthy of the finest films from roughly the same period by Ousmane Sembene and Dijbril Diop Mambéty.

Adapted by Hondo and Daniel Boukman from the latter’s novel Les Negriers, West Indies traces an epic history of colonial oppression and enslavement in the West Indies,...

Fantastic Fest is more like summer camp than just a normal film festival. It happens once a year in September. You get together with old friends and meet new ones. Every day and night is filled with fun activities. Most importantly though, this non-traditional camp is for fans of the most bizarre, violent, horrific, and Fantastic films you could imagine. And even still, Fantastic Fest is so much more. I will be covering Fantastic Fest once again this year starting September 24 through October 1. This will be my fourth time attending Fantastic Fest and We Are Movie Geeks fifth time covering the crazy events that take place in Austin. For eight days I will be immersed in a world that is unlike any other film festival I have ever attended. What other festival is going to feature events like an opening night Christmas party, a karaoke competition, a “nerd rap” throwdown,...

Stare at the magnificent poster, and then read the official announcement of what the greatest film festival in the world is up to at the end of September.

Fantastic Fest announces the first wave programming lineup for its 11th annual celebration of exciting genre-bending films, including the World Premiere of Bone Tomahawk with Kurt Russell and Matthew Fox in attendance, a retrospective of Turkish Genre Cinema, and a special Mondo Gallery event and programming series curated by filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn to celebrate the release of his new book Nicolas Winding Refn: The Act of Seeing, which profiles Refn’s collection of vintage exploitation-era American movie posters. “We’re very excited about this year’s mix of premieres, unique events and a retrospective theme unlike any other featuring audacious and otherworldly Turkish remakes of classic Hollywood films,” said Fantastic Fest founder Tim League.

See the full list of first...

Fantastic Fest is touted as the largest genre film fest, from experience, I can tell you the Austin week-long event still feels like an intimate gathering, for fans who love of horror, sci-fi, experimental, foreign, action, animated and just straight-up gnarly film. The curtain has rolled back on this year's first wave of programming at the Alamo Drafthouse fest, held Sept. 24 through Oct. 1 at the South Lamar location. Highlights include the world premiere of Kurt Russell-starrer "Bone Tomahawk"; a retrospective of Turkish genre cinema; and a programming series from "Drive" and "Only God Forgives" director Nicolas Winding Refn, who will be supporting his new book "Nicolas Winding Refn: The Act of Seeing." There are a few films that are crossing over with other major film fest lineups, like one-take flick "Victoria" which took home awards from Berlinale International. The initial film lineup for Fantastic Fest 2015 is below it's new poster,...

The day has come. The reminder that Autumn is nearing and the best genre film festival in the Magnited States of America is nigh! We got the poster and the first wave of films listed below. Nicolas Winding Refn comes back and curates some obscure films and motherfuckin’ Kurt F’n Russell is coming with his new film, Bone Tomahawk! Read below and prepare for our coverage of this year’s Fantastic Fest!!!!

From the Press Release:

Austin, TX – Thursday, July 30, 2015 – Fantastic Fest announces the first wave programming lineup for its 11th annual celebration of exciting genre-bending films, including the World Premiere of Bone Tomahawk with Kurt Russell and Matthew Fox in attendance, a retrospective of Turkish Genre Cinema, and a special Mondo Gallery event and programming series curated by filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn to celebrate the release of his new book Nicolas Winding Refn: The Act of Seeing,...

As genre cinema has found more fans around the world, their place in film festivals have also grown, with genre getting its dedicated sections in acclaimed festivals such as the Toronto International Film Festival’s Midnight Madness section. The demand, however, has grown now to allow for festivals dedicated to genre cinema, and one of the more notable stops in the latter group is Fantastic Fest. Running for a decade now, the 2015 incarnation of Fantastic Fest will be held once again in Austin, Texas, running from September 24th to October 1st. The first wave of films that will play at the festival have now been announced.

The Festival’s closing night film will be S. Craig Zahler’s Bone Tomahawk, which will be making its World Premiere. Kurt Russell and Matthew Fox, who star in the feature, will also be in attendance at the festival. The 2015 Festival will also have...

Kurt Russell, Matthew Fox, and more star in the horror Western Bone Tomahawk, the closing film of Fantastic Fest 2015. Karyn Kusama's The Invitation is also included in the first wave of programming for the Austin-based festival that kicks off September 24th.

Press Release: "Austin, TX - Thursday, July 30, 2015 - Fantastic Fest announces the first wave programming lineup for its 11th annual celebration of exciting genre-bending films, including the World Premiere of Bone Tomahawk with Kurt Russell and Matthew Fox in attendance, a retrospective of Turkish Genre Cinema, and a special Mondo Gallery event and programming series curated by filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn to celebrate the release of his new book Nicolas Winding Refn: The Act of Seeing, which profiles Refn's collection of vintage exploitation-era American movie posters. "We're very excited about this year's mix of premieres, unique events and a retrospective theme unlike any other featuring audacious and...

Please feel free to listen to some of my favorite compositions from the late composer.

His Grammy winning and Oscar nominated song “More” from Mondo Cane.

..which lead Ruggero Deodato to hire him to compose the Cannibal Holocaust score. My first exposure to Riz Ortolani was through Cannibal Holocaust. His main theme was so beautiful that it really didn’t prepare you for the brutality that was about to unfold. His synth stings in the second video I included below echo the sharp and instinctual shocks that I experienced when viewing the violence contained in Deodato’s film while the melancholy strings would represent my afterthoughts on the haunting images and moralities that are put into question by the end of the film.

From Addio Zio Tom

From House on the Edge of the Park

From his recent appearance at the World Soundtrack Awards 2013 where he received a Lifetime Achievement Award.

There’s still a lengthy wait until we get to see Quentin Tarantino’s next feature, but Samuel L Jackson shares some details about Django Unchained...

It’s seemed like an age since Inglorious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino’s last film, was released and whilst our friends across the pond will get the Django Unchained in December, us here in the UK however have to wait until January 2013 to see it.

Even with the film being some months away, it hasn’t stopped one of its stars, Samuel L Jackson, from discussing his role in the movie. Jackson plays Stephe,n a slave who’s owned by Leonardo DiCaprio’s Calvin Candie. And what got him to sign up for the film?

"It's a Tarantino movie so there's no thought that goes into, 'am I gonna do it or not? It's kinda like, 'I'm doing that,' because I know it's going to be great.

Full disclosure: I am a huge fan of the filmmaking team of Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi. This pair, who invented the Mondo documentary film style in 1962 with Mondo Cane, did more to expand the concept of documentary filmmaking than any of their contemporaries, and even today their work continues to ruffle feathers. Over the next fifteen years, the pair made a series of films that pushed not only the boundaries of documentary films, but also the boundaries of European artsploitation in that same era. Following the incredible controversy and financial debacle of their statement on African colonialism, Africa Addio, they had some decisions to make. They moved away from documentaries slowly, but not without a fight. Their next film, Addio Zio Tom (Goodbye,...

Italian creator of the satirical film Mondo Cane and its 'shockumentary' successors

When the Italian film director Gualtiero Jacopetti, who has died at the age of 91, made Mondo Cane (A Dog's Life) in 1962, he tapped into people's curiosity and provided the strangest commercially successful film in the history of cinema. Audiences not yet accustomed to cheap air travel or the idea of globalisation were unprepared for its colourful National Geographic-style montages of "primitive" rites and "civilised" wrongs. The following year, they flocked to see the film's sequels, Mondo Pazzo (Mad World, or Mondo Cane No 2) and La Donna nel Mondo (Women of the World).

Mondo Cane was a film made out of a compilation of pithy sequences depicting strange rituals from around the globe. But while Jacopetti documented the peculiarities of what was then described as the third world, he also mocked the alleged superiority of western culture. The...

Along with fellow documentarians Paolo Cavara and Franco Prosperi, Italian filmmaker Gualtiero Jacopetti helped to birth the exploitation cinema genre known as the mondo film, which took off following the success of their 1962 shockumentary classic Mondo Cane. Jacopetti, aged 92, died this week in Rome; his most provocative films include Africa Addio and Addio zio Tom (Goodbye, Uncle Tom), the latter of which happens to earn a nod in a certain upcoming Ryan Gosling automotive thriller opening next month.

Specialty label Kritzerland today announced the CD release of Les Baxter's music for the cult film Sadismo. From the Press Release:In 1962 a documentary called Mondo Cane was unleashed on the world and became a box-office sensation. The film was such a huge success that it spawned its own genre – the mondo film, and soon everyone was rushing out their own mondo shock docs – Mondo Cane 2, Malamondo, Women of the World, Africa Addio, Addio Zio Tom, and some really low-budget knockoffs like Mondo Bizarro and Mondo Hollywood. A latecomer to the game was 1967&rsquo...