Flaming Ears

Director: Ashley Hans Scheirl, Dietmar Schipek, Ursula Puerrer

1991 / 84min / DCP

A mind-melting laser blast of “cyberdyke” avant-garde science fiction shot on Super 8 and then blown up to 16mm, the dazzlingly grungy, proudly low-rent Flaming Ears sets its scene in the year 2700 in the burnt-out, all-lesbian city of Asche, where the overlapping tales of three women unfold: comic book artist Spy (Susana Helmayr); pyromaniac pervert performance artist Volly (co-director Pürrer); and utterly amoral, reptile revering alien Nun (co-director Scheirl). Storytelling takes a backseat to visual bravado here in this atmospheric, anarchic film of ornate dialogues and homespun SFX that has drawn comparisons to Lizzie Borden’s Born in Flames—and to almost nothing else. “Imagine the film that J.G. Ballard might have made if he’d been born an Austrian dyke, and don’t say I didn’t warn you.”—B. Ruby Rich