Ms. Christ, I’ve been an admirer of your films since my early forays into cinema as a youth. They shaped my understanding of the potentials of radical cinema, both formally and politically. This is my holy grail interview, one I never fathomed would actually materialize. It is such an honour to speak with you.
Okay.
Your work has had a Rosselini-like trajectory. Early on, your films were ripped-from-the-headlines responses to the political moment; your debut film Bay of Pig-Fuckers (1961) was about the Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front; your fifteenth film De Gaulle’s Balls (1970) was a feature-length enactment of mutants desecrating the late president’s corpse, shot days after his death. But in your last decade, you have become exclusively a historical filmmaker, working purely in period pieces. What motivated this transition?
First of all, Rossellini was a reactionary and a prick. As for me, I’m an old hag. State repression’s shoved me into the margins of this pestilent society. I don’t use internet, I don’t have a cellular phone. I’m divorced from the present. I have no business ruminating on a world I’m exiled from. My world is books: the screams of yesteryear.
Your period films are always such unsavoury portraits of historical milieus and historical figures.
I’ll tell you something: as a young girl—a bitch of seven or eight years—I once flipped over a loose boulderstone in my father’s yard. The garden was an idyllic haven of geraniums, hydrangea, and yearlong sunlight. But beneath the stone, the carcasses of worms, spiders, and insects unknown orgied and screeched back my name. My artistic practice solidified then and there. I vowed to unveil veneers and shine torchlight into the asshole of all things ostensibly decent. I tell history in hymens, balladries of ballsacks. In my lifetime, our history’s been a chronicle of the Western war machine sinking fangs into anything with warm blood. It’s fucked all around. Anyone idealizing history ought to be pummeled with mallets.
Your latest film Roosevelt Below the Belt is a three-hour pornographic exposé on the sadomasochistic relationship between FDR and J. Edgar Hoover. After its festival premiere, the film received backlash for its thirteen-minute anal tarring scene and overall accusations of historical fabrication. How do you feel about these detractors?
Bastards, all of them. [puffs cigar smoke into my face]
Is historical accuracy important to you?
I refuse to entertain the swarms of hollow-headed twerps who attend my films tomato-in-hand. History is a chained twink and I’m its dark mother. It’s the corpse of an old cat lady decomposing day by day, slowly devoured by her legions of starved felines. I realized this while shooting Guerilla Gangrene Hanky-Panky (1968). Back then, there was a rumour circulating that Thiệu and LBJ met in Saigon for a night of coprophilia. I figured it was bunkum but included it in the picture because I am history’s puppeteer. Got a problem with it? You can chew my cheeks. Historical revisionism is a baseless accusation. The translation of history—especially histories we never witnessed—into art is innately inaccurate. So what if my interpretations veer into the lurid? So what if I like cumsluts in my archive? By making pictures, we are always mutilating history to our liking. It’s nasty business.
Does this weight of being a history-maker burden you as an artist?
I’m not an artist, I’m a terrorist. Next.
What motivated your decision to cast FDR as a wispy, golden-haired nineteen-year-old Quebecois boy?
For all his influence on liberal society, FDR was not a looker. Jean-Patrice, who I found streetwalking in Gatineau, was. I see no problem. Glen Miller was a squirrely dweeb of a man but no one shook their fist when Jimmy Stewart played him.
On one hand, you are trying to unveil the vulgarities of history. But simultaneously, it seems like you have an impulse to eroticize, to beautify.
How old are you? [eyes me intently]
Uh, twenty-five.
Hmmm. How’s your stamina? How many push-ups can you do? Is that your natural hair colour?
Uhhh, I… I d—
Forget it. I don’t like how your jaw clicks when you talk.
Oh… okay. Well, your body of work is something of an anomaly. You do not fit into any movement and have avoided personal relationships with other filmmakers. Why is that?
Because they’re all opportunists and backstabbers. I’ve been acquainted with my share of big-wig artist types. I once tumbled around in the sheets with Truman Capote; he said he wanted to give “girl-pussy” a whirl. One time Chris Marker called me on the phone praising Mujahideen Milkers (1987), and I told him if he ever contacted me again I’d staple his shaft to his midriff. I have no patience for artists. And what’s a movement anyway? A collective of bandwagoners hopping on the cash train? A bunch of asses! Hee-haw! Hee-haw!
Though I never attend, I always send my movies to festivals because it pays. At premieres, the so-called intelligentsia piss their bladders of vitriol on my work. They call me a brainless pornographer, a wilted provocateur. Some demand I be banned from lineups. And yet, every year, they flock for the next shit-clump I pluck from my asshole! The hypocrisy! I’d denounce it, but it pays my bills.
You were once a major figure in collective revolutionary movements. Does the isolation of your current fugitivity make you long for the organized unity of your past?
That’s a young woman’s game. I’m a bitter hag now. I have no patience for the interpersonal anymore. When I’m not shooting a picture, I give myself a daily allotment of ten minutes of socializing. This means you get three more questions.
What advice do you have for young people interested in dismantling capitalism and Western imperialism?
Honey, walk down the busiest street of your local metropolis and open fire on anyone in a suit-and-tie.
You have lived through much of modern history, met key political figures, witnessed revolutions first-hand; you are a historical figure yourself. Would you ever make yourself a subject of one of your films?
You trying to be cute with me?
What is next for Anne T. Christ?
Spanish Inquisition nudie musical? Gang of Four four-way flesh flick? Cortés dysentery death dramatization? I take it one day at a time. There’s no reason to expect I’ll live through any given midnight.
Ms. Christ, I’ve been an admirer of your films since my early forays into cinema as a youth. They shaped my understanding of the potentials of radical cinema, both formally and politically. This is my holy grail interview, one I never fathomed would actually materialize. It is such an honour to speak with you.
Okay.
Your work has had a Rosselini-like trajectory. Early on, your films were ripped-from-the-headlines responses to the political moment; your debut film Bay of Pig-Fuckers (1961) was about the Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front; your fifteenth film De Gaulle’s Balls (1970) was a feature-length enactment of mutants desecrating the late president’s corpse, shot days after his death. But in your last decade, you have become exclusively a historical filmmaker, working purely in period pieces. What motivated this transition?
First of all, Rossellini was a reactionary and a prick. As for me, I’m an old hag. State repression’s shoved me into the margins of this pestilent society. I don’t use internet, I don’t have a cellular phone. I’m divorced from the present. I have no business ruminating on a world I’m exiled from. My world is books: the screams of yesteryear.
Your period films are always such unsavoury portraits of historical milieus and historical figures.
I’ll tell you something: as a young girl—a bitch of seven or eight years—I once flipped over a loose boulderstone in my father’s yard. The garden was an idyllic haven of geraniums, hydrangea, and yearlong sunlight. But beneath the stone, the carcasses of worms, spiders, and insects unknown orgied and screeched back my name. My artistic practice solidified then and there. I vowed to unveil veneers and shine torchlight into the asshole of all things ostensibly decent. I tell history in hymens, balladries of ballsacks. In my lifetime, our history’s been a chronicle of the Western war machine sinking fangs into anything with warm blood. It’s fucked all around. Anyone idealizing history ought to be pummeled with mallets.
Your latest film Roosevelt Below the Belt is a three-hour pornographic exposé on the sadomasochistic relationship between FDR and J. Edgar Hoover. After its festival premiere, the film received backlash for its thirteen-minute anal tarring scene and overall accusations of historical fabrication. How do you feel about these detractors?
Bastards, all of them. [puffs cigar smoke into my face]
Is historical accuracy important to you?
I refuse to entertain the swarms of hollow-headed twerps who attend my films tomato-in-hand. History is a chained twink and I’m its dark mother. It’s the corpse of an old cat lady decomposing day by day, slowly devoured by her legions of starved felines. I realized this while shooting Guerilla Gangrene Hanky-Panky (1968). Back then, there was a rumour circulating that Thiệu and LBJ met in Saigon for a night of coprophilia. I figured it was bunkum but included it in the picture because I am history’s puppeteer. Got a problem with it? You can chew my cheeks. Historical revisionism is a baseless accusation. The translation of history—especially histories we never witnessed—into art is innately inaccurate. So what if my interpretations veer into the lurid? So what if I like cumsluts in my archive? By making pictures, we are always mutilating history to our liking. It’s nasty business.
Does this weight of being a history-maker burden you as an artist?
I’m not an artist, I’m a terrorist. Next.
What motivated your decision to cast FDR as a wispy, golden-haired nineteen-year-old Quebecois boy?
For all his influence on liberal society, FDR was not a looker. Jean-Patrice, who I found streetwalking in Gatineau, was. I see no problem. Glen Miller was a squirrely dweeb of a man but no one shook their fist when Jimmy Stewart played him.
On one hand, you are trying to unveil the vulgarities of history. But simultaneously, it seems like you have an impulse to eroticize, to beautify.
How old are you? [eyes me intently]
Uh, twenty-five.
Hmmm. How’s your stamina? How many push-ups can you do? Is that your natural hair colour?
Uhhh, I… I d—
Forget it. I don’t like how your jaw clicks when you talk.
Oh… okay. Well, your body of work is something of an anomaly. You do not fit into any movement and have avoided personal relationships with other filmmakers. Why is that?
Because they’re all opportunists and backstabbers. I’ve been acquainted with my share of big-wig artist types. I once tumbled around in the sheets with Truman Capote; he said he wanted to give “girl-pussy” a whirl. One time Chris Marker called me on the phone praising Mujahideen Milkers (1987), and I told him if he ever contacted me again I’d staple his shaft to his midriff. I have no patience for artists. And what’s a movement anyway? A collective of bandwagoners hopping on the cash train? A bunch of asses! Hee-haw! Hee-haw!
Though I never attend, I always send my movies to festivals because it pays. At premieres, the so-called intelligentsia piss their bladders of vitriol on my work. They call me a brainless pornographer, a wilted provocateur. Some demand I be banned from lineups. And yet, every year, they flock for the next shit-clump I pluck from my asshole! The hypocrisy! I’d denounce it, but it pays my bills.
You were once a major figure in collective revolutionary movements. Does the isolation of your current fugitivity make you long for the organized unity of your past?
That’s a young woman’s game. I’m a bitter hag now. I have no patience for the interpersonal anymore. When I’m not shooting a picture, I give myself a daily allotment of ten minutes of socializing. This means you get three more questions.
What advice do you have for young people interested in dismantling capitalism and Western imperialism?
Honey, walk down the busiest street of your local metropolis and open fire on anyone in a suit-and-tie.
You have lived through much of modern history, met key political figures, witnessed revolutions first-hand; you are a historical figure yourself. Would you ever make yourself a subject of one of your films?
You trying to be cute with me?
What is next for Anne T. Christ?
Spanish Inquisition nudie musical? Gang of Four four-way flesh flick? Cortés dysentery death dramatization? I take it one day at a time. There’s no reason to expect I’ll live through any given midnight.