Electric Sheep events at EEFF

Suspiria

Screening: The Holy Mountain + Suspiria

Date: 2 May 2011

Time: 2pm + 4.15pm

Venue: Old Blue Last

Talks: Secret Societies

Date: 2 May 2011

Time: 6.25-8pm

Venue: Masonic Lodge, Andaz Liverpool St Hotel

Part of the East End Film Festival

27 April – 2 May 2011

EEFF website

More details on the Movie Mayday page

Monday 2 May, Old Blue Last, 38 Great Eastern St, London EC2A 3ES, 2pm, free

As part of the East End Film Festival’s Secret Societies series, Electric Sheep presents a double bill of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s spiritual quest The Holy Mountain, a masterpiece of visionary and absurdist cinema, and Dario Argento’s gorgeously oppressive Suspiria, set in a sinister ballet academy run by a coven of witches. With special guests and cult film experts Kim Newman and Xavier Mendik.

The Holy Mountain screens at 2pm, Suspiria at 4.15pm.

Monday 2 May, Masonic Lodge, 40 Liverpool St, London EC2M 7QN, 6.25-8pm, free, but you need to book your seat

Electric Sheep will then move to the atmospheric confines of a Masonic Lodge for an evening of discussion about secret societies in cinema, including talks on Jack the Ripper and the Masons, witches’ covens as well as a panel discussion on religious cults in film. Speakers include Electric Sheep editor Virginie Sélavy, assistant editor Alex Fitch, Nollywood scholar Nicola Woodham, filmmaker and horror specialist Jennifer Eiss, and Jim Harper, author of Flowers From Hell: The Modern Japanese Horror Film.

Full EEFF’s Movie Mayday programme.

Secret Societies: Crime and the Occult

From Hell

Friday 22 April, 5-5:30pm, Resonance 104.4 FM

Virginie Sélavy will host a discussion on secret societies on film in anticipation of the East End Film Festival’s themed day of screenings on May 2. With her guests, Strange Attractor Press editor Mark Pilkington and horror film expert Richard Bancroft, she will discuss the links between crime and the occult, looking at Jack the Ripper and the Masons theory among other things.

Electric Sheep will present a double bill of films and an evening of talks as part of the East End Film Festival’s ‘Secret Societies’ day on Monday 2 May. The East End Film Festival will screen From Hell, Dark Days and Brotherhood of the Wolf in a Masonic Lodge. More details soon!

Find out more about the East End Film Festival.

Indie Movies Online

Evil Aliens

audio With more and more people wanting to download movies off the internet, a new company has come along to help people do this legally with a wide range of films that includes British gems and cult classics. Alex Fitch talks to James Rowley-Ashwood about indiemoviesonline.com: they discuss how the collection of films on the site were curated – from Evil Aliens to the site’s one paying movie A Serbian Film, short films by Lotte Reiniger and the Brothers Quay and back catalogue titles from Peter Greenaway and Alex Cox, some of which are out of print on DVD – and how the site’s funding and distribution are achieved.

East End Film Festival to screen The Devils

The Devils

East End Film Festival

27 April – 2 May 2011

EEFF website

We are very excited to announce that our friends at the East End Film Festival will present a very special screening of Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971) at the Barbican on Sunday 1 May. Heavily cut by the studio and by the British censors on release, this provocative portrayal of witchcraft and possession in 17th-century France has now been restored and footage that was previously thought lost is included in this never-seen ‘director’s cut’. It is only the second official screening of the film in the UK and this chance to see Russell’s astonishing visions and Derek Jarman’s stylised sets on the big screen is not to be missed! Tickets available from the Barbican.

The EEFF will also screen Jerzy Kwalerowicz’s Mother Joan of the Angels (1964), a feverish exploration of sexual repression and religious fanaticism based on the same cases of possession in 1634 France dramatised in The Devils.

In addition, there are two late-night horror screenings: Julia’s Eyes, a Guillermo del Toro-produced chiller about a near-blind woman trying to solve the mystery of her sister’s death, and Agnosia, a retro-futurist thriller about a young woman suffering from a neuropsychological disorder that confuses her senses and who is being manipulated by two ruthless men.

We are especially looking forward to the Secret Societies day of screening in a beautiful and atmospheric Masonic Lodge on Monday 2 May. The films include From Hell, Dark Days and The Brotherhood of the Wolf, with more events to be announced shortly. In fact, we liked the idea so much that we’ve made ‘Secret Societies’ our theme for May, so look out for more on this!

The EEFF runs from 27 April to 2 May and this year’s tenth anniversary edition will open with an all-access documentary about The Libertines, There Are No Innocent Bystanders. Other highlights include the UK premiere of the new, digitally restored print of Taxi Driver introduced by Adrian Utley of Portishead, a special focus on the Romanian New Wave, a free outdoor screening in Spitalfields Market of silent 1925 Romanian drama Manasse with live accompaniment by Minima and a Bank Holiday bonanza of movie madness where hundreds of free screenings, projections, live music and events will be found in every nook and cranny of the East End…

Tickets are now on sale for all screenings and events here. For full programme information, please visit the EEFF Festival website.

Pumzi trailer

Pumzi is a Kenyan science fiction short film written and directed by Wanuri Kahiu, set in Africa in the future, 35 years after ‘The Water War’. As communities live in underground compounds, scientist Asha is led to investigage the possibility of growing seeds in the seemingly dead world outside. Pumzi was screened at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and we hope to be able to see it soon in the UK, the trailer really looks amazing! For more information go to the Pumzi website.

Watch the trailer: