Annons
âDirector Eckhart SchmidtBRET BERG â PROGRAMMER, THE CINEFAMILYGerman provocateur Eckhart Schmidt here deftly ditches the flavor-of-the-month new wave teenybopper angst angle of Christiane F. in favor of a wonderfully roiling, sordidly screw-loose psychosexual tension that would make even Brian De Palma blush.I was but a fraction older than Der Fan's Simone when I both dealt with my own personal synth savior crush and peeped the film for the first time. Gary Numan is an obvious real-life parallel to the film's mysterious personage of R, but unlike R's aloof musings on the nature of pop fame, Numan preferred to swim in the arcane trappings of musty sci-fi paperback plotsâway more my speed. And while I can honestly say I've never thought about holding Numan hostage with a kitchen knife hovering just above what I would presume to be a blank crotch mound of Ken Doll smoothness, I've felt icky over an occasional primordial empathy with Simone's need to take her specific drive to its logical conclusion.
Annons
YASMINE KITTLES â MUSICIAN ( TEARIST)After having watched this film over 30 times, I can still say this is one of my favorite films. I was asked with my band, TEARIST, to score a horror film for a Halloween party at Los Angeles's Cinefamily. Cinefamily often has events with bands re-scoring cult classic films. For this event we were presented with the opportunity to score the horror film of our choosing. Knowing we'd be opening for Claudio Simonetti (of Goblin)âresponsible for the incomparable score for Dario Argento's Suspiriaâthe pressure was on. When Cinefamily programmer Tom Fitzgerald presented Der Fan as an option and sent the trailerâI fell, immediately, in love.This was unlike any other horror filmâthe predator being a very cute 15-year-old girl. The film is told from the view point of Simone and begins in letters to R. You follow Simone as you realize her young crush is, actually, a very scary obsession. She is attractive and young, so it is difficult to hate her. Due to the men in the film being predators there is a strange sense of heroism in a Joan of Arc martyr sort of way.
Annons
âEckhart Schmidt
JACQUELINE CASTEL â DIRECTORDer Fan is director Ekhart Schmidt's long lost Neue Deutsche Welle psychodrama that explores fanaticism, sadomasochistic obsession, and body horror as a metaphor for the rise and fall of fascism. Nazi. Death. Porn.Subtler than most SadicoNazista cinema, Der Fan parallels the roles of idol and dictator, civilian and fan, codependent lovers enmeshed in eroticized propaganda, commerce, and spectacle. For any despot, image is everything, and synth pop star R is at the height of aesthetic opportunismâthink Telekon-era Gary Numan leading an Oswald Mosley rally backed by an industrial soundtrack. His logo, two black-and-white lighting bolts encased in a circle, a mix of the Sig Runes of the SS, Ziggy Stardust, and Throbbing Gristle. R embodies the fetishized aesthetic of state control.
Annons