TAXIDERMIA: Free Screening @ THE OLD SHOREDITCH STATION

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A special pre-cinematic release at THE OLD SHOREDITCH STATION (corner of Old Street and Kingsland Road) to pre-empt the 13 JULY OPENING AT THE ICA. The film is hilariously uncomfortable, beautifully shot and masterfully composed piece of groundbreaking Hungarian cinema. Gyorgy Palfi's grotesque tale of three generations of men, including an obese speed eater, an embalmer of gigantic cats, and a man who shoots fire out of his penis. SPECIAL HUNGARIAN-THEMED DRINKS AND FREE HUNGARIAN VEGETARIAN GOULASH WILL BE AVAILABLE.

"EXCRUCIATING, SHOCKING, HILARIOUS, VISCERAL, DISTURBING, HORRIFIC, BIZARRE, ABSURD, BEAUTIFUL, LURID, REMORSELESS, SURREAL, REPELLANT, BAROQUE, MISANTHROPIC, GROTESQUE, COMPELLING, GRACEFUL, ELEGANT, GRAPHIC, AND ... ABOVE ALL, FUNNY!"

In association with TARTAN FILMS, TODAY IS BORING will be hosting and exclusive screening of TAXIDERMIA, the twisted tale of three generations of grandfather, a father, and son. The dim grandfather, an orderly during WW2 has bizarre sexual fantasies. The hugely obese father seeks success as a speed eater in the post war Soviet era, and the grandson, a corpse-like taxidermist, yearns to create a new legacy through a creation that is beyond bizarre.

The story begins with the grandfather, as a young soldier in WW2, serving a remote outpost with only the company of his berating lieutenant, the lieutenant's fat wife and his two beautiful daughters for company. He soon retreats into the realm of increasingly extreme sexual self-gratification; he watches the daughter's bathing, drinks their dirty bathwater and makes stomach pancakes until his member emits fire. One day, unplanned events seal his fate, and lead to the birth of his son, Kalman. Kalman grows up, becomes rather large, and finds himself competing for Hungary in international speed eating competitions (or is it the other way around?). Against a backdrop of Stalinist spectacle, Kalman strives to be the champion of his game. Falling in love with, and marrying another speed eating competitor, the generously-proportioned Gizella, he soon fathers the more modestly framed Lajos. Quiet Lajos grows up to become a sexually frustrated taxidermist who has no romantic prospects, escaping instead into his own fertile imagination for release. His father, Kalman, has now become morbidly obese, reached gargantuan proportions and is no longer mobile. Completely isolated from the outside world, and still completely obsessed with the sport of speed eating, he trains his three gigantic cats in the discipline of extreme eating. Events spiral out of the ordinary (because, up until now, they have been completely ordinary), leading to a dizzying and grisly Matthew Barneyesque climax of fate, death and disambiguation.