Issue 51: Secret Societies


From Hell

Secret Societies: Freemasons, religious cults, suicide clubs and spy organisations

To mark the themed day of screenings at the East End Film Festival on May 2, we explore Secret Societies this month with articles on Jack the Ripper and the Freemasons, David Fincher’s (a)social clubs, acronymic 60s spy organisations and Sion Sono’s Suicide Club. We also have reviews of Dark Days, a documentary on an underground homeless community, Darren Aronofsky’s paranoid debut Pi and Hiroshi Teshigahara’s sensual and sinister Woman of the Dunes. Our Reel Sounds column focuses on The Wicker Man while Naomi Wood picks Sergeant Howie from the same film as her alter ego and Plinkett’s Secret Army is the subject of our Online Movie column.

Out at the cinema we have Guillem Morales’s slice of Spanish Gothic Julia’s Eyes (with a video interview with producer Guillermo del Toro), Jerzy Skolimowski’s darkly poetic portrait of 1970s London Deep End, Takashi Miike’s take on samurai action 13 Assassins, Rachid Bouchareb’s controversial historical epic Outside the Law, and Italian rural contemplation Le Quattro Volte.

In the DVDs, we look at Jules Dassin’s classic film noir Rififi, Fritz Lang’s Indian Epic, Dario Argento’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and 70s British filmmaker Richard Woolley. Short Cuts focuses on the work of Al Jarnow and in the Blog you can read about Nippon Connection.

PODCAST:
Secret Societies – part 1: In connection with the East End Film Festival’s Secret Societies day of screenings, Virginie Sélavy discusses Jack the Ripper and the Freemasons in cinema with Mark Pilkington, Strange Attractor Press publisher, and Richard Bancroft, contributor to both Electric Sheep and Strange Attractor.