PRAGMATISMI DISTOPICI PRETERINTENZIO(A)NALI: A NEW, SURREAL MASTERPIECE FROM STEVEN SLOZZ/STEFANO DALCA

Oh, how I so look forward to the sublime creations of writer/director Steven Slozz, aka Stefano Dalca. His latest is yet another dark, DVD gem. 

"Pragmatismi Distopici Preterntenzio(a)nali" is as mysterious and provocative as its cryptic label implies: sharp, short (under a half hour) and oh-so-bittersweet. It's the irreverent filmmaker's reply to David Cronenberg's "Videodrome", with a tasty spoonful of Clive Barker; David Lynch; Washington Irving; and Stephen Vincent Benet stirred in, but in this case, the protagonist (Matt Migisi) is lured by bare-bones pornography. 

The detained lad's situation unfolds like some hushed, Faustian pact: the surreptitious selling of dignity for symbols of vapid lust, from which there comes no fulfillment or feasible return. The viewer's gaze remains fixed until the uncanny process spurts a Frankenstein-ish birth and a pledge that the scornful cycle can never end.

The morbid conception is adorned by menacing symbols: a black, creepy-creased chamber (or is it, in fact, an odious womb?); a defiled, cocked crucifix; a ghostly television that summons with groans; and as our stand-in Satan, a presiding, goat-headed specter (played by Slozz; who's also featured in this post's emotive, publicity stills). These profane props bolster the feverish account: one that might have manifested if, perhaps, Carl Theodor Dreyer and Andy Warhol had teamed. 

Slozz and his quirky collaborators juggle the mimicking additives to instill hypnotic inducement, with Migisi's empathetic expressions working as their narrator and the lovely Mery Fromsex finishing them with an ironic brush of doom.

Once it gets rolling, "Pragmatismi" arguably becomes a fierce, pantomimed abridgment of any of life's predestined mistakes and/or births, with harsh, black-and-white currents charging throughout its sick, unremitting queue. Be warned: The film takes its content to the eccentric extreme, as trashy reminders splash from out a technological Pandora's Screen. 

These impious sights press an indelible stain onto the mind, and for all of their unpleasantness, they symbolize a wish fulfilled. To know good, a person must know evil; and to know evil, devilish procreation awaits. "Pragmatismi" is, therefore, a necessary warning from which the spectator arises all the wiser, despite its sordid ooze. 

By the time the credits rolled, I realized I needed this film--had yearned for it, if only on some incorporeal, subconscious level.

Slozz's submissions always emit that addictive quality, but aren't dreams of the same gesticulated ilk? We (re)enter slumber with the hope of gaining discovery through abstract form. "Pragmatismi" is, like the filmmaker's previous experiments, a reverie...a nightmare...captured by camera, with angles raunchy and Caligari-esque, striking and stinging...unforgettable and onerous. 

"Pragmatismi" is available to anyone bold enough to grasp it. For a copy, touch base with Slozz at ... https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100009219645065; or contact bizarrechats, so that your humble host may relay your audacious request.