Vase de Noces

Vase de Noces
Directed by	Thierry Zéno
Produced by	Thierry Zéno
Written by	Thierry Zéno, Dominique Garny
Starring	Dominique Garny
Music by	Alain Pierre
Cinematography	Thierry Zéno
Edited by	Thierry Zéno
Distributed by	Zeno Films
Release dates	1974 (1974)
Running time	80 min.
Language	None
Budget	Unknown

Vase de Noces (1974) is a Belgian arthouse film directed by Thierry Zéno and stars Dominique Garny.^[1]

Also referred to as The Pig Fucking Movie, the film deals openly and sometimes graphically, with bestiality. It features both real and simulated animal killings and coprophagia, and has been labeled obscene by many sources, notably by the OFLC of Australia.^[2] The film was banned in Australia by the Australian Classification Board in the mid 1970s with two failed attempts, according to the Australian Classification Board. The film went before the Australian Classification Board on April 1, 1977, and was banned again for the third time. The ban status on the film in Australia has remained largely unchanged since then, due to in part that the film violates Australian obscenity laws.

Plot

The film follows an man, who has an intellectual or mental disorder, living on a farm in rural Belgium. He demonstrates bizarre behavior from the beginning: fastening doll's heads to pigeons; collecting his feces in glass jars and beheading a hen for his own amusement. He is also obsessed with a sow who lives on the farm. We see him gleefully rolling around in the manure with the sow, and then he rapes it, which his behavior suggests he sees as an intimate and mutually agreeable act. Later, the sow gives birth to a litter of piglets. The man attempts to spoon-feed milk to the piglets, but the piglets prefer to drink directly from the milk bowl. In general, the piglets prefer their mother's company, repeatedly scorning the man's advances. Taking this rejection as an unforgivable personal slight, the man hangs the piglets to death and leaves their bodies strung up in the open. When the sow discovers the remains of the piglets, it runs madly around the farm squealing. The sow slips into a deep patch in the mud and drowns there.

The man searches for the sow, and becomes visibly distraught when he discovers it dead. He drags the body from the mud, buries it on the farm grounds, and crudely attempts to bury himself on a patch of ground nearby. He gets up, and his grief turns to rage. He rushes around the farm scattering and smashing his belongings from the house, including his jars of waste. He prepares and vigorously consumes a "tea" made of feces and urine, and determinedly climbs a ladder in the barn and hangs himself with a rope. In the final scene we see his spirit floating skyward.

Distribution

Better known by the English title Wedding Trough, the film has never had an official theater release, but has been shown in film festivals around the world (notably at the Perth International Film Festival in 1975, the latter screening upsetting Australian censors).</ref>MITTERNACHTSKINO – Vase de Noces</ref> Because of no official theatrical, VHS, or (until recently) DVD release, Wedding Trough is one of the most obscure movies that is not a lost film. Its last film festival appearance was at the 61 st Film Festival Locarno in "Tribute to the Royal Belgian Cinémathèque / Experimental film Competitions of Knokke le Zoute".

German video distributor Camera Obscura^[3] and Swedish distributor Njuta Films^[4] each released the film on DVD.

Censorship in Australia

In Australia, the Perth International Film Festival scheduled a screening of Vase de Noces in 1975. At the time, film festival submissions did not require approval from Australian censors, however the Western Australian government pressured censors to review the film before the screening. The censors did so, and subsequently refused to classify the film on grounds of obscenity. Festival chairman David Roe and director Thierry Zeno appealed to the censors to reconsider. Their appeal was successful, and the film was shown in the festival after all.^[2] The Western Australian Government was not happy that it the festival went ahead with the screening, and this incident created a precedent for animosity between the two groups for years to come.^[5]

The government of Western Australian urged the Perth Film Festival to discontinue their plans to screen Nagisa Oshima's Empire of the Senses, threatening that future festivals would be subject to thorough censorial review in advance, if they went ahead with the screening. As a result of this pressure, the Perth Film Festival decided not to screen Oshima's film. Film festivals in Melbourne and Sydney went on to screen Empire of the Senses without incident.^[2] On December 17, 1976, Vase de Noces went before the Australian censors again, and again received a judgment of "refused classification". A third such attempt was made a third time on April 1, 1977. But, the Australian censors rejected the film once again, effectively banning its reproduction and dissemination throughout Australia. This ruling has not been successfully appealed.

References

External links

• Vase de Noces at the Internet Movie Database
• Vase de Noces at AllMovie
• Vase de Noces in Lausanne Underground Film and Music Festival