Subscribe for €30 and get one-year access to the 70+ films in our streaming library. This supports not only our magazine but also the filmmakers we represent.
The Color of Love
According to Peggy Ahwesh, there is beauty and ecstasy in decay. With her 16mm blow-up of a pornographic Super 8 film, the American artist seeks sensuality. The discarded stag reel has mould stains, scratches, and cracks, but these also add colour. Rot adds something lustful to the performative sex scenes that paint over the mould and dance to melancholic tango.
A motionless, bloodied man lies naked on a bed beneath this kaleidoscopic splendour. Two women kiss his flaccid member and caress it with a knife. The perverse sexual fantasy, though difficult to decipher due to abrasion, unquestionably caters to the male gaze. Ahwesh’s montage emphasises this by slowing down and repeating explicit close-ups. Her intervention, which she dedicates to sexploitation icon Doris Wishman, feels like a welcome critique of the superficial source material.