My first encounter with the strange art film called Begotten, began right here on YouTube. Quite a few creepy documentary style YouTube channels have used clips from this film as either a dedicated segment in their video, or just as background aesthetic to elevate the tone of their video. Although I was familiar with these strange scenes and clips, I would forget the name of the film quite often, and I’d only stumble across it again whenever the memory of its many haunting scenes would resurface. The shocking imagery of the bleeding masked figure was certainly and intrusively lingering at the back of my mind, and it wasn’t until I watched the Begotten properly, that I realized how many unexpected, thought-inducing themes it contains that go far beyond the notion of mere body horror. Being an art film, Begotten is certainly not a film you’d expect to enjoy in the conventional sense. There is no dialogue, the music score is subtle and minimal with mostly only ambience and foley sounds being present. The film is displayed entirely in black and white with deliberate grainy and saturated quality. And of course, the film is infamous for its disturbing and violent imagery. Due to this imagery and vagueness of the plot, a lot of people on the internet dismiss this movie as being nothing short of some kind of snuff film made by a pretentious student filmmaker or something. And the reactions of most YouTube film critics has been, entertaining to say the least. (How examples). So my curiosity in Begotten only increased the more I saw people’s dramatic responses on what I initially thought was a simple horror movie with slight spiritual themes. But as I mentioned, after watching it through properly I realised there is so much going on in this film that, in my opinion, this film should be regarded as an incredibly underrated work of passion and creativity. Yes there is still horrific and graphic scenes that should not be taken likely, but if you thought gore and violence was the supposed to be the main focus or selling point of Begotten, think again. There are lots of elements to be left to our own interpretation, but there is a clear and obvious theme of humanity facing the concept of eternity, references to mythology and the occult and most crucially, the notion of death and rebirth. The more I researched, the more captivating this film became for me. From the way the movie was filmed, right up until its struggles to be released to audiences, there is a significant amount of fascinating information missing on YouTube about this movie. So I thought I would share some of this information with you in today’s video. I’ve been very excited to finally do a video on this baffling piece of media and I really hope you enjoy it. - ARTIST CORNER: As featured in my new video segment called Artist Corner, please check out more of Franker Heiler's work via the links below! https://www.instagram.com/frankheilerart/ linktr.ee/frankheilerart - Submit your art or say hi: Email - blinddweller@gmail.com Instagram - http://www.instagram.com/blinddweller Discord - http://discord.com/invite/E4864W5snn Patreon - http://www.patreon.com/blinddweller - REFERENCES & CHANNELS FEATURED IN THIS VIDEO - Odd Times with Jacob - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W1Nygl-bDU&t;=7s Unboxed Watched and Reviewed - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbTQ5It1oH0&t;=24s Cinemas Underbelly - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdXSPjr4NJY&t;=27s Stateless: E. Elias Merhige - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpu7HFswOBY

• published: 25 Sep 2021
• views: 165032