High Voltage

There is a rich tradition of cinema of quiet nuance, pregnant pauses, and absorbing, meditative stillness… and then there are the films playing in this series, synapse-shredding movies that plunge the viewer headlong into states of overwhelming anxiety, hallucinatory sensory overload and, occasionally, something approaching ecstatic transcendence. From the immersive, Brueghel-esque slog through medieval squalor in Aleksei German’s Hard to Be a God to the acid-dosed dance of death in Gaspar Noé’s Climax to the drug-addled mood swings of Josh and Benny Safdie’s Heaven Knows What, and with a bevy of other freakouts, breakdowns, and endorphin dumps from around the world thrown in for good measure, High Voltage brings together movies that dare to touch the third rail.