Gina Velour

A Chel White short film from a story by Joe Frank Eerie, erotic, and touching, Soulmate is a complex study of alienation and obsession. Told from the perspective of a middle-aged woman, the film explores longing and objectification through the story of a landlady and her young male tenant.

The world has ended. All that is left behind are individual beauty cults, groups of girls seeking safety and identity in numbers. Basing their bond on hair color and giving themselves strangely evocative gang names, the blond Phayrays (King Kong), the brunette Satanas (Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!), and the wicked, redheaded Tempests (as in Storm, the stripper) are constantly battling the brutish cavemen roaming the afterworld ruins and looking for potential dye job converts. Only one group tries to incorporate all follicle factions. They are the Superstarlets.

In a cold tile operating room, a surgeon clad in a protective Tyvek suit, goggles and tight rubber gloves demonstrate her skill before a group of observers. They scrutinize the eerie coupling between the surgeon and patient, whose bodies merge like molten lava. Thermal coitus draws the viewer into an erotic experience that probes beneath the boundary of skin. The Operation is an award-winning cult film by Jacob Pander and Marne Lucas, shot in 48 hours on a minuscule budget, using thermal imaging technology. Their exploration of erotic imagery first-hand stems from an interest in intimacy and the viewer's psychological and sexual response. It represents a merging of their fascination with the macabre beauty of the human body as viewed by science and technology; using new infrared imaging devices, the boundaries between physical and intellectual stimulation become blurred.