"Venus on the Half-Shell" / THE BEAST

ABOUT THE FILMS: “Venus on the Half-Shell,” 1975, Dir. Walerian Borowczyk, 5 Mins, Tamasa Distribution, France In French with English subtitles. Featuring Bona Tibertelli De Pisis’s excellent erotic graphic works – wife of writer André Pieyre de Mandiargues while working in her atelier, together with fragments of her graphic works inspired by one of Remy de Gourmont’s writings. Restored in 4K in 2026 by Friends of Walerian Borowczyk at Fixafilm laboratory, from a 35mm internegative and the original 35mm negative. Funding provided by Polski Instytut Sztuki Filmowej. FORMAT: DCP THE BEAST, 1975, Dir. Walerian Borowczyk, 108 Mins, AGFA, France In French with English subtitles. Walerian Borowczyk’s most notorious film wildly re-works BEAUTY AND THE BEAST into an adult fairy tale that parodies pornographic tropes and assaults all notions of “good taste.” Bestial dreams interrupt the plans of a French aristocrat to marry off Mathurin, his deformed son, to Lucy, a horny American heiress. Yet Mathurin seems more interested in his horses than in his bride-to-be. When Lucy discovers the story of an 18th-century ancestor copulating with the titular beast, it sparks to life one of the most outrageous dream sequences in cinema history. A huge hit in France that was extensively censored and banned all over the world, THE BEAST (aka LA BÊTE) broke new ground in sexual explicitness and remains a truly startling experience today. FORMAT: DCP