Raspberry Reich

Director: Bruce LaBruce
Screenwriters: Bruce LaBruce

Institute History

  • 2004 Sundance Film Festival

Description

Due to the mature content of this film, no one under18 will be admitted.

Bad boy of cinema, Bruce LaBruce, is back! Just in case you were worried he would soften over time, stand corrected. Raspberry Reich is a porno-political-palooza that makes quick work of the phenomenon of "terrorist chic," the people who emulate terrorists without necessarily understanding the moral implications of what terrorism actually means. Shooting in Germany, LaBruce drew his inspiration from the Baader-Meinhoff gang, the Red Army faction that reeked havoc in Berlin in the sixties and the subsequent public fascination with them.

In Raspberry Reich, Gudrun, an East German with a healthy sexual stamina, leads a group of antiwar, anticapitalist revolutionaries. She devises a caper to kidnap the son of a wealthy industrialist to draw attention to the group's agenda. Her gang consists of her boyfriend Holger and a bevy of strapping young straight lads. Gudrun also believes that heterosexual monogamy is a bourgeois construct that must be smashed to achieve revolution, so she makes her male apprentices have sex with each other. Oddly, they don't need much coaxing.

Crazy and firmly tongue-in-cheek, LaBruce has done it again with Raspberry Reich. A self-proclaimed sexual revolutionary and devoted provocateur, he is also a damned good filmmaker.

— John Cooper

Screening Details

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