Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle Comes to SIFF Cinema

• Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle plays at SIFF Cinema April 9-15.

I could try to describe what Barney is up to with the Cremaster Cycle, but why not begin with a synopsis of one of the films?

CREMASTER 1 (1995) is a musical revue performed on the blue Astroturf playing field of Bronco Stadium in Boise, Idaho - Barney's hometown. Two Goodyear Blimps float above the arena like the airships that often transmit live sporting events via television broadcast. Four air hostesses tend to each blimp. The only sound is soft ambient music, which suggests the hum of the engines. In the middle of each cabin interior sits a white-clothed table, its top decorated with an abstract centerpiece sculpted from Vaseline and surrounded by clusters of grapes. In one blimp the grapes are green, in the other they are purple.

Didn't help, did it? There's actually quite a bit more, but it's equally unilluminating--here's a cheat sheet for the whole cycle. In case you just don't have it in you to face the whole "epic, loony," almost-seven-hour thing, it's recommended that if you see just one film, it be either Cremaster 2 (an hour and 20 minutes) or 3 (a three-hour "haunting visual stream," says Regina Hackett). But be warned: "each film is unfathomable, pretentious, disgusting, beautiful, boring and awe-inspiring."

For people who demand a reference point for symbolism (proles!), you may want to know this, courtesy of Cremaster Fanatic:

Biologically, the cremaster is a muscle that raises and lowers the testicles. Barney uses the descension of the cremaster muscle as a symbol for the onset of male gender (which appears about nine weeks after a fetus is conceived). The five films progress from a state of undifferentiated gender (a fully ascended cremaster muscle, represented by the floating Goodyear Blimps and other symbols), through the organism’s struggle to resist gender definition, to the inevitable point where maleness can no longer be denied (complete descension of the cremaster and release of the testes).

People who like visual art are going to be more inclined to be able to go with the notion of an image-stream without querulously demanding narrative or arc, but if you too have an obsession with the life of the testicles, a potent emotional response to Vaseline, or a can't-look-away attraction to viscera, Barney's fascinations might be just the playhouse you're looking for.