Lionel Soukaz b. 1953
Ixe (1980)
Runtime: 48 minutes
Language: French | English
Country: France
Color: Color & Black and White

Director: Lionel Soukaz Cast:, Jean-François B., François Dantchev, Farida, Karine, Hervé Leymarie, Lionel Soukaz, Verveine, Philippe Veschi, York

""The masterpiece - Ixe by Lionel Soukaz - concludes the period of expanded cinema from the 1960s and the 1970s. It is the "iXe" of the X rating and it was made as a pure provocation against censorship, because Soukaz's previous film, Race d'Ep, had been x-ed, despite letters of support from Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Roland Barthes. Instinctively Soukaz made a film involving all possible grounds for censorship: heroin fixes, sodomy, zoophilia, pedophilia, blasphemy. . . Ixe, in which of course the artist plays himself, is the ultimate lampoon and means much to me. Very recently the Services des Archives du Film restored it in its original two-screen version (transferred onto 35mm: the "good" version of Ixe requires a double 16mm projection). Lionel Soukaz attended the restoration of his doomed film at the site of the archives and videotaped it, shaking with emotion. And yet, if from time to time the video rendition gets blurred, it is because the film's editing pace is too swift for it."-- Nicole Brenez