Institute History
Description
A prolific filmmaker with over forty films to his credit since 1968, Raul Ruiz is a major figure in contemporary cinema, exploring and exploiting the language in ways that set him apart from all others. His eye has always been modulated toward the surreal, and true to that movement, he has remained visually inventive and audacious. This year Ruiz presents his first U.S. production, an absurdest comedy about Austin, a would-be assassin, and a young rock-magazine critic and philosopher named Israel. At first Austin is a comical, omnipresent dark figure maligning Israel's day, and it only later becomes evident that the true object of his desire is a Mexican soap-opera star. Teamed up, so to speak, for Israel cannot get rid of him by any means, they set out on an outrageous adventure through the streets of New York, where they engage in discussions, arguments, insults and physical fights with a host of the city's better-known media darlings over issues about God and existence. Always exploring through genres, Ruiz has drawn his inspiration for The Golden Boat, particularly for his dialogue, from TV soaps and police thrillers, film noir, and psychologi-cal melodramas to tackle the subject of American expression through culture and media. What he comes up with is both discerningly perceptive and wildly entertaining, as only Raul Ruiz could have imagined it.