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"The wildest of Italian cinema's several wild geniuses … no director has ever come closer to the heightened expressive freedom of animation in live action cinema." – Senses of Cinema
In amongst the flamboyant excess of King Herod's court, a prophet is dragged in to answer charges of sedition. As the cacophony of faces, bodies and colour intensifies, a shaven-headed Salomè prepares to dance.
Carmelo Bene was one of Italy's most notorious avant-garde film and theatre directors. His Salomè takes its narrative cues from the Oscar Wilde play of the same name, but otherwise it's all Bene: a sexualised, idiosyncratic trip that flits from an orgiastic dance with sheep to a man's attempt to nail his free hand to a neon cross.
"An eye-popping visual feast." – Harvard Film Archive
Screening of Salomè in cooperation with Cineteca Nazionale.