Screening:

E.Elias Merhige,
Begotten, 1990

E. Elias Merhige’s Begotten (1990) is an experimental black-and-white film that stages a myth of creation and destruction through extreme visual abstraction. Shot in high-contrast, flickering monochrome, it presents a wordless world of decaying bodies, ritual violence, and slow, ceremonial gestures. Figures resembling gods, humans, and hybrids enact cycles of suffering and rebirth in a barren, timeless landscape. The film rejects narrative clarity, instead operating as a visceral, almost archaeological experience of origin and collapse. Its grainy texture and hypnotic pacing produce a sense of unease and mythic distance, positioning Begotten as a radical meditation on genesis, corporeality, and cosmic horror.