VIVA on DVD

TORONTO, ON - Anchor Bay Entertainment Canada is thrilled to distribute the DVD of the feature length film VIVA within Canada on February 10, 2009. This colour saturated tribute to 1970’s sexploitation cinema serves up an art house comedy as beautiful as it is smart.

A suburban housewife in 1972 is abandoned by her husband, and goes out to find herself in the middle of the swinging sexual revolution.  Looking for love and adventure, she is dragged through the worlds of nudist colonies, hippies, modeling, prostitution, bisexuality, and bohemia, becoming a Candide of the 1970’s and finding liberation along the way.

Barbi is played by Anna Biller (director, writer, co-producer, production and costume designer), and Rick (Chad England) is her oft absent race car driver husband. Her swinging neighbours Sheila (Brigitte Brno) and Mark (Jared Sanford) open Barbi’s eyes to an exciting new existence in which she becomes VIVA.

This film is a sumptuously visual commentary on the icons of the Playboy-era sexual revolution, and a tribute to the best of exploitation cinema, from Herschell Gordon Lewis’ Suburban Roulette to Radley Metzger’s Camille 2000. VIVA pays homage to this decade from a sharp feminist perspective, and heightened colour and rich compositions amp up the most flamboyant aspects of life in the 1970’s. 

Anna Biller has produced short films, including the acclaimed horror western, A Visit From The Incubus, and also worked in stage musicals. She is known in the art community for her use of film genres, humour, the burlesque, and visual excess to talk about female roles within culture. For more information about Anna Biiller visit: http://www.lifeofastar.com.

See ‘Review’ of VIVA in the review section.