Send Me to the 'Lectric Chair

Film director Guy Maddin and actress Isabella Rossellini have got a strange and beautiful ongoing collaboration. From their 2003 collaboration in "The Saddest Music in the World" to "My Dad Is 100 Years Old" in 2005 (scripted by Rossellini and directed by Maddin) to their most recent loop "Send Me to the ’Lectric Chair," completed this year for the Rotterdam Film Festival, they have examined skewed gender roles, explored masculine power and feminine mystery, and have created simply indelible images of Oedipal intrigue, sexual transgression and vertigo-inducing androgyny.

The new short film is no exception. Over the course of a gripping seven minutes the diva is tied into an electric chair, sparks fly, smoke curls, and she has a series of incredibly strange and oddly sexual visions until the dreams go up in flames and the film starts again.

For now, the full 6 minute and 52 second epic can be seen exclusively at BOMBsite, which is where you can also read the transcription of a lengthy (and wonderfully bizarre) conversation between Maddin and Rosselini.