page_title: Begotten (film)
section_title: Theatrical screenings
hierarchical_section_title: Begotten (film) / Release / Theatrical screenings
context_page_description: Begotten is a 1989 American experimental dark fantasy horror film written, produced, edited and directed by Edmund Elias Merhige. It stars Brian Salsburg, Donna Dempsy, Stephen Charles Barry, and members of Merhige's theatre company Theatreofmaterial. The film contains no dialogue and mimics the style of aged black-and-white films. Its enigmatic plot, drawn from elements of various creation myths, opens with the suicide of a Godlike figure and the births of Mother Earth and the Son of Earth, who set out on a journey of death and rebirth through a barren landscape. According to art historian Scott MacDonald, the film's allegorical qualities and purposeful ambiguity invite multiple interpretations.
  Begotten was first conceived as an experimental theater piece with dance and live musical accompaniment, but Merhige switched to film after deciding that his vision would be too expensive to achieve as a production for live audiences. Antonin Artaud and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche were major influences on Begotten, as Merhige believed their ideas and theories had not been explored in film to their full extent.
context_section_description: Unable to find a distributor, Begotten did not attain either wide or limited theatrical release. However it became a popular underground film, as a film released outside of conventional commercial channels, especially one with subversive or transgressive content. Lacking a standard theatrical release, Merhige booked one-off screenings at various film festivals and art museums.
  The earliest public screening took place at the Goethe-Institut in Montreal on October 24, 1989, as part of the Montreal World Film Festival. It had three screenings from May 5–7 at the 1990 San Francisco International Film Festival, marking its premiere in the United States. It also premiered later that year in New York at the Museum of Modern Art, on October 22nd with Merhige introducing the film, followed by a post-screening discussion with the audience. New York City's Film Forum would also screen the film on June 5, 1991. It was exhibited at the Stadtkino Theater in Vienna in 1992, as a part of a retrospective of American independent cinema titled "Unknown Territories".
  It screened at the Berlin Film Festival in the early to mid 1990s, and on October 20, 2014, was shown at Brooklyn's Spectacle Theater as a part of its fourth annual "Spectober" film event. The film appeared at the third annual horror film festival SpectreFest on October 28, 2015 along with its spiritual sequel Din of Celestial Birds followed by an onstage discussion with Merhige. The film was shown at the Music Box Theatre in Midtown Manhattan on September 25, 2016, during its 25th Anniversary celebration, where it was screened from Merhige's personal 16mm print. It was viewed as a double-feature alongside the director's other film Shadow of the Vampire, and was followed by a Q&A with Merhige. The film was later screened at the Short Film Festival in London on January 8, 2017, where it was shown again in its original 16mm format, accompanied by a live music score from the film. It was screened on October 17, 2019 at the Rice Media Center, as part of a celebration of "Low-Fi" Analog film series.
caption: The US premiere of Begotten occurred at the 1990 San Francisco International Film Festival, where it was screened at the Japantown Kabuki 8 multiplex (pictured in 2005).[48]
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