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The 9-minute-long film, which was commissioned for an Amsterdam exhibition that focuses on the acclaimed director, is available online during the duration of the event, which ends on September 14th.
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While we wait for David Cronenberg’s highly-anticipated upcoming Hollywood satire “Maps to the Stars”, the legendary Canadian director – creator of acclaimed thought-provoking cult films such as “Videodrome”, “Scanners” and “Naked Lunch” – has just released a new short film titled “The Nest”.
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The 9-minute-long film, which was commissioned for a Cronenberg exhibition that is currently on display at the EYE Film Institute in Amsterdam, is a disturbingly intriguing, challenging – and atypical – entry in the director’s signature Body-Horror -genre body of work. While it revisits the director’s familiar themes, “The Nest” offers a new way of exploring them, with Cronenberg’s first ever use of a first-person POV camera.
From the point of view of a surgeon (voiced by Cronenberg himself), the film follows a young woman, played by Evelyne Brochu (“Orphan Black”, “Tom at the Farm”), who sits in a rough-looking operating room and asks for a very unorthodox breast operation. As the interview progresses, everything the two characters say is called into question.
Footage from the unsettling (and equally NSFW) short was previously used in the trailer for “Consumed”, Cronenberg’s upcoming novel, which features a character who is an unlicensed surgeon who performs controversial procedures.
The film is available on YouTube until September 14th, when the EYE Film Institute exhibition ends.
But you can also watch it right here:
David Cronenberg is a Canadian filmmaker, screenwriter and actor. He is one of the principal originators of what is commonly known as the Body Horror or Venereal Horror genre. He has been called “the most audacious and challenging narrative director in the English-speaking world.”
Born in Toronto, Canada, Cronenberg was the son of Esther (née Sumberg), a musician, and Milton Cronenberg, a writer and editor. He was raised in a “middle-class progressive Jewish family”.
His breakthrough came with his second feature film, 1977’s “Rabid” (following 1975’s “Shivers”), which was distributed internationally.
Many of his films are considered cult classics, including 1981’s “Scanners”, 1983’s “Videodrome”, 1986’s “The Fly” and 1996’s “Crash”.
Cronenberg has appeared on various “Greatest Director” lists. In 2004, Science Fiction magazine Strange Horizons named him the 2nd greatest director in the history of the genre, ahead of better known directors such as Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Jean-Luc Godard and Ridley Scott. In the same year, The Guardian listed him 9th on their list of “The world’s 40 best directors”. In 2007, Total Film named him as the 17th greatest director of all-time.
In 2002, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada, and was promoted to Commander of the Order of Canada (the order’s highest rank) in 2014. In 2006 he was awarded the Cannes Film Festival’s lifetime achievement award, the Carrosse d’Or.
In 2014, he was made a Member of the Order of Ontario in recognition for being “Canada’s most celebrated internationally acclaimed filmmaker”.
