Lucifer – Polish Film Festival

This truly is New Horizons cinema: director Gust Van den Berghe and cinematographer Hans Bruch jr constructed a tondoscope, a device similar to a fisheye lens, tailor-made for the needs of “Lucifer”. The invention made it possible to endow the fragments of the story, inspired by the works of the 17th-century artist Joost van den Vondel, with a  mystical character. Among the visual inspirations the director mentions also the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. Each frame is enclosed in a  circle and composed in such a way that it could hang in a gallery as an individual painting. The plot of the film, which is to be something other than cinema according to its makers, refers to the biblical story of Lucifer. On his way down from Heaven to Hell, the fallen angel with Gabino Rodríguez’s face spends some time on Earth, provoking the birth of free will and the awareness of the existence of a border between the good and evil. Lucifer introduces chaos in the life of a Mexican village cut off from the world at the foot of Parícutin volcano. He awakens doubts in a shepherdess Lupita, seduces her granddaughter Maria and heals Emanuel who fakes paralysis.