Watch Chop Off

Iconoclastic filmmaker M.M. Serra presents a provocative portrait of a man who practices self-amputation as performance art. Introducing the film with footage from Todd Browning's indelible FREAKS and THE UNKNOWN, as well as alluding to Katherine Dunn's unlikely pop novel, "Geek Love," Serra is able to challenge assumptions about a practice that could be seen as a sideshow act. The filmmaker and her subject clearly regard it as something more, art or even a transcendent ritual. Serra has said her work "is about the body, this idea of the abject body, body that is flesh, the body that bleeds, the body that vomits, the body that is scatological, the body that's out of control." She found the perfect characterization of this idea in this short, which took her three years to realize because no one would work with her on the project. "They would be nauseated by it. But I thought he was the most fascinating and articulate artist. I mean, why not? What you see might upset you, but it's a true part of human nature." - Stela Jelincic