MUBI Update: 19 April 2012

As we teased in our last update, we have an exciting, exclusive premiere run to announce:

Eggshells (Tobe Hooper, USA)

Tobe Hooper, who made horror film history with his second film, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, made his feature film debut with Eggshells. It was long believed to have been lost until, four decades on, it was rediscovered, restored and presented at the 2009 edition of the South by Southwest Festival.

That’s when Louis Black, a co-founder of both the Austin Chronicle and SXSW, wrote that “Eggshells makes explicit what many have long assumed — that Hooper’s sense of cinema is the defining characteristic that makes [The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)] great. Eggshells is a true 1968 film, psychedelic and political; it seems clear that Hooper had watched more than a film or two by Jean-Luc Godard. The film celebrates alternative lifestyles and politics and people and an odd, kinky semi-mysticism that is grounded more in humor than the supernatural. It captures what Austin looked like in the Sixties as well as the political sensibility shared by so many at the time. As a period piece and/or as a psychedelic film and/or as a first effort by a gifted director, the film is well worth watching. But there is something more going on. Throughout Eggshells are the kinds of telltale camera movements, manipulations of POV, casually intricate cutting, and scenes that are mystifying and haunted, elements that all come to fruition in Chainsaw, where they harmoniously work together to create that horror film masterpiece.”

Beyond a few rare festival screenings, Eggshells has seldom been seen and has never had a proper release. Until now. Watch and enjoy on PS3.

Available in: Everywhere!

Remember, too, that Hooper’s horror-comedy short film, The Heisters, is also exclusively playing on MUBI globally.  It’s a “10-minute color comedy about three medieval outlaws who get into an absurdly escalated Road Runner-cartoony fight over their stolen booty,” as LM Kit Carson describes it in a profile of Hooper for Film Comment. “It won awards at the Tours, Cannes, and San Francisco film festivals.”

Director Tobe Hooper will be answering questions from the MUBI community in a couple weeks, so watch Eggshells and The Heisters and have your questions ready for this master filmmaker. I’ll update you when the time comes as to where to post your questions.

Also of note—especially because the movies are free—are the final days this week of our collaborations with two awesome film festivals:  Images Festival and the Rome Independent Film Festival. We’re showing a selection of Rome’s festival lineup free worldwide through April 20. Images is Toronto’s second oldest festival and the largest festival in North American for experimental and independent moving image culture. We’re showing three films from that festival, again, for free, through April 21. Check back at mubi.com and mubi.com/cinemas to see what festival collaborations are currently on-going!