Sections

Hotels are rich in superstitions, which is why they often hide rooms and floors numbered 13. In the 2025 edition, MOTELX invites guests to stay in Suite 13, where it has prepared a new section that offers an encounter with filmmakers and works that, throughout the history of cinema, question the limits of cinematic forms and what can be filmed and shown, in transgressions that challenge notions of taste and virtuosity. Through films, visual essays, and discussions, we aim to understand the role of these works in the period in which they were produced, their legacy in the history of cinema, and the issues their transgressions may raise in the present day.

We begin with Herschell Gordon Lewis, the godfather of gore, creator of emblematic works that not only defined the grammar of modern horror cinema but whose influence extends far beyond this cinematic genre. Films such as “Blood Feast” (1963), “Two Thousand Maniacs!” (1964), and “She-Devils on Wheels” (1968) illustrate how Lewis, over time, adapted to capture the audience’s curiosity regarding sex and violence, without neglecting the anxieties of the reality in which he created them. The filmmaker, often using humor, ostentatiously displays the interior of the human body, in variations ranging from blood to viscera. The body, in its most grotesque and repulsive facet — the one normally hidden— becomes the medium; and blood, its message.

Guest Programmer: Carlos Alberto Carrilho