Eat, for This Is My Body

Critics have invoked Luis Buñuel, David Lynch and Werner Herzog to describe the extraordinary Eat, for This Is My Body, New York-born filmmaker Michelange Quay’s taboo-breaking, voodoo-infused visual poem to his ancestral homeland of Haiti. Beginning with a spectator aerial-shot swoop into the island country, Quay’s seductive, often shocking film explores power relations — racial, sexual, colonial — through a series of symbolic, surreal sequences set in a decaying mansion. There, an elderly white woman, her adult daughter (Sylvie Testud), and a group of black youths enact a series of curious rituals, ceremonies and games — one involving a very large cake, another an enormous vat of cream! “Handsome . . . A solid achievement in avant-garde ethnographic formalism” (Eddie Cockrell, Variety). “Quay’s stunning first feature seductively begs the viewer to abandon the rules of traditional storytelling and instead embrace a poetic, cinematic language. . . There is a muscular confidence and inspired dreamlike quality to Quay’s filmmaking . . . Eat, for This Is My Body is sure to trigger emotions and mark your imagination in mesmerizing and unforgettable ways” (Shari Frilot, Sundance F.F.) Colour, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 105 mins.