If you only see one film this month, make it Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, a masterful, richly enigmatic evocation of the ‘Nazi generation’ as children. Lighter entertainment comes courtesy of whimsical comedy Bunny and the Bull, directed by Mighty Boosh‘s Paul King, and outrageous Japanese porn farce Lalapipo. The Korean Film Festival is at the Barbican and there is a Bong Joon-ho retrospective at the BFI Southbank, which includes screenings of his latest, Mother, as well as The Host and Memories of Murder.

Also in UK cinemas in November are Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno, a documentary investigating the gorgeous-looking crime thriller the French master could not complete, and low-fi indie romance Paper Heart, for which we have capsule reviews as part of our round-up of the 53rd London Film Festival – read about unknown gems as well as films you can look forward to see on UK screens in the near future. We Live in Public, a documentary about internet pioneer Joshua Harris that also screened at the LFF, is out this month and we have an interview with director Ondi Timoner.

In the DVD section, we look at two very different French works, the acclaimed documentary on France under German occupation during the Second World War The Sorrow and the Pity, and extreme horror thriller Inside and its connection to the Paris riots of 2005. We also review a documentary on the All Tomorrow’s Parties music festival.

We have an interview with Momoko Ando, the young director of the wonderful Kakera – A Piece of our Lives, conducted during the Raindance Film Festival last month. You can read the winning review in our Rollerball film writing competition, which we run every month in connection with the Electric Sheep Film Club at the Prince Charles. And our Film Jukebox this month features the very unusual Non-Commissioned Officers, who formed a band to promote a film – or was it the other way around?

The Electric Sheep Magazine team

Be ready to spend most of the month in dark rooms as October is offering a bumper crop of excellent films. Top of the list is Sion Sono’s extraordinary love and guilt epic Love Exposure, which premiered at the Raindance Festival. Equally as good in a very different style, Johnny Mad Dog is a gut-wrenching portrayal of wild child soldiers in an unnamed African country – we talk to director Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire. Elsewhere, the grande dame of the nouvelle vague Agnès Varda tells us why she chose to revisit her life in cinema in her latest film, The Beaches of Agnès, while Marc Price of the ‘made-for-£45′ Colin reveals the secrets of low-budget zombie filmmaking. Park Chan-wook returns with stylish vampire love triangle Thirst, Shane Meadows offers the hilarious roadie mockumentary Le Donk & Scor-Zay-Zee, and newcomer Peter Strickland’s debut Katalin Varga, made in Romania, is an unusual take on the rape and revenge film.

Also out this month are compelling circular horror thriller Triangle, and smart zombie film Pontypool, which premiered at FrightFest in August. Mamoru Oshii’s animé masterpiece Ghost in the Shell is released in a CGI-enhanced version – this is the occasion for a discussion of the current trend of ‘retrofitting’ old sci-fi films with modern CGI animation. In the DVD section, we applaud the release of Georges Franju’s striking debut feature La Tête contre les murs, and re-assess the social critique offered by British avant-garde film Herostratus.

We report back from the last Secret Cinema event and from the AND festival, which offered a variety of visual delights to the intellectually curious. And in our Short Cuts section we review the outstanding Siggraph Asia programme that screened at the London International Animation Festival in September.

The Electric Sheep Magazine team

‘Ther’s tha devil movin’ in my blood’. The autumn 09 print issue of Electric Sheep looks at religious extremes on film from Christic masochism to satanic cruelty. The extraordinary White Lightnin’ explores the Old Testament world of demented mountain dancer Jesco White while Klaus Kinski disastrously reinterprets the New Testament in Jesus Christ Saviour – and subversives Alejandro Jodorowsky and Kenneth Anger dynamite divine myths. Plus: Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Raindance 09, political animation, and louche mariachi rockabilly Dan Sartain picks his top films! [The magazine contains exclusive articles and interviews not available on the website.] The new issue is available from the specialist book store Cinéphilia, at selected retailers and cinemas or online from Wallflower Press.

This month sees the release of the exceptional White Lightnin’. You can read a short review online, but the interview with director Dominic Murphy is only available in the autumn 09 issue of the print magazine. Also out at the cinema this month is another unmissable film in an entirely different genre: Big River Man is a documentary about Slovenian champion Martin Strel’s attempt to swim the Amazon. Hilarious and tragic at the same time, with definite Herzogian undertones, it is one of the most enjoyable and affecting films of the year so far.

A crop of excellent festivals will be offering unique cinematic experiences throughout the month. Abandon Normal Devices is a new festival that seeks to challenge preconceptions about the moving image, taking place in Liverpool. AND will preview Pontypool, one of the smartest and wittiest zombie movies we’ve seen in a long time. Now in its 12th year, the digital festival onedotzero will also be showcasing new forms of moving images, including shorts, animation, music videos and audio-visual performances, starting in London before going on tour. And to mark the opening of the 17th Raindance Film Festival on September 30, we have a review of Kakera – A Piece of Our Lives, which will be screening as part of the festival’s focus on Japanese women directors.

In the DVD reviews we have wonderful, long-lost giallo Footprints, beautiful, melancholy Japanese teen-centred chiller Goth: Love of Death, little-known Charles Bronson gem Rider on the Rain, Peter Sellers’s first film outing Penny Points to Paradise and a short extract from the discussion of Jane Arden’s Separation, which appears in full in the autumn 09 issue of the magazine.

Finally, we have an interview with Steven Severin and Danny Plotnick about their work in music and film, conducted at the Revelation Perth International Film Festival by our Australian correspondent, while in the Short Cuts we have a piece on a Don Hertzfeldt event organised in June by the London International Animation Festival, which is in full swing right now.

The Electric Sheep Magazine team

Afterschool was one of the best films we saw at last year’s London Film Festival so we’re very pleased that it is now getting a theatrical release in the UK. Other theatrical treats this month include Mesrine, a two-part epic about the charismatic criminal who terrorised France in the 70s, with a phenomenal Vincent Cassel in the title role. Germany offers its own take on the seductive gangster type with Chiko, set in the Turkish community of Hamburg. Sin Nombre is a powerful drama that combines illegal immigrants and Mexican gangs – read our interview with American director Cary Fukunaga to find out more about the unusual and dangerous making of the film. Beautiful Losers documents New York’s Alleged Gallery and the outsider artists such as Harmony Korine and Mike Mills who gravitated around it in the early 90s – we have an interview with director and Alleged Gallery founder Aaron Rose. Finally, Home is an intimate drama that looks at the coming apart of a family when a new motorway opens near their house.

Film4 FrightFest returns at the end of the month with a fantastic programme of chillers and shockers and we are particularly looking forward to Triangle, Pontypool, Heartless and Black. We are planning to attend assiduously and will report back in our September issue.

In the DVD releases we look at two new films from Terracotta, the exuberantly macabre The Fox Family and the understated ensemble drama God Man Dog from Taiwan. We also take a look at Rolf de Heer’s infamous Bad Boy Bubby, Paul Schrader’s Mishima and Orson Welles’s The Stranger.

We have an interview with Baek Seung–bin, director of the remarkable Members of the Funeral, which impressed us at the Edinburgh Film Festival, although it is yet to secure a UK release. In the Short Cuts we have a report on the Soho Rushes Film Festival while The Nightingales are this month’s Film Jukebox guests.

The Electric Sheep Magazine team

This month we look at disastrous Danish relationships with neo-noir Just Another Love Story and Lars von Trier’s latest, Antichrist. Two of our writers try to fathom von Trier’s extreme narrative of conjugal meltdown while in our interview with the director he explains some of the ideas behind the film.

Also out at the cinema in July is Duncan Jones’s Moon, a great new addition to British science fiction cinema. In the DVD releases, we take a look at Roger Corman’s Depression-era crime saga Bloody Mama and discover Jacques Tati’s little-known Parade.

We talk to Claire Denis about her new film 35 Shots of Rhum, report on this year’s Sydney Film Festival‘s focus on female directors and assess the state of gay cinema through an account of the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival and a review of Boys on Film 2: In Too Deep.

We are also very proud to have an interview with Dario Argento, who was a guest at Cine-Excess last month. And in the Short Cuts section, we talk to artists Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard about the films they made to accompany the re-release of the whole back catalogue of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

The Electric Sheep Magazine team

Substitute is the theme of the summer 09 issue of Electric Sheep, with articles on the fraught relationship between Takeshi Kitano and ‘Beat’ Takeshi, the various cinematic incarnations of Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley, interchanging identities in Joseph Losey’s films, the dangers of false impersonation in Danish neo-noir Just Another Love Story, the paradoxes of black and white twins in offbeat lost classic Suture, not to mention cross-dressing criminals, androids and body snatchers. Also in this issue: interview with Marc Caro, profile of whiz-kid animator David OReilly, comic strip review of Hardware, and The Phantom Band’s favourite films! It is available from the specialist book store Cinéphilia, at selected retailers and cinemas or online from Wallflower Press.

As the ICA hosts a season of new British cinema, we take a closer look at some of the young directors who are steering clear of narrow social realism and genre clichés to carve their own individual filmmaking paths. We have reviews of gritty supernatural drama The Disappeared, imaginative quotidian crime drama The Blue Tower and an interview with Julian Richards, director of the intelligent hoodie horror thriller Summer Scars. We also revisit Gerald McMorrow’s stunningly ambitious debut Franklyn to mark its DVD release this month.

From the new to the established, if somewhat underappreciated, names of film history: we are very proud to present an interview with the legendary Kenneth Anger, whose films have been collected as the Magick Lantern Cycle in a superb BFI two-disc set. And we have an article on Joseph Losey, who is the focus of a major retrospective at the BFI Southbank throughout June and July.

Other cinema releases include slick French thriller Anything for Her while in the DVD releases we review the mondo-style documentaries Primitive London and London in the Raw, Věra Chytilová’s exhilarating Dada-inflected Daisies, Walerian Borowczyk’s exquisitely absurd Goto, l’ile d’amour, Dziga Vertov’s sound experiment Enthusiasm: Symphony of the Donbass and Italian exploitation movie Baba Yaga, based on Guido Crepax’s comic Valentina.

We report back on the Cannes festival and preview Club des Femmes‘ summer programme of swinging lesbian films. We also have an interview with Bulgarian director Javor Gardev, who was presenting his brilliant Eastern European noir Zift at the Istanbul Film Festival in April.

In the Short Cuts we talk to shorts producer Rob Speranza who was a guest at the Glimmer 09 Festival. And Scottish innovators The Phantom Band are in the Film Jukebox guiding us through their favourite films.

The Electric Sheep Magazine team