Electric Sheep Film Show May 2017

Flora
Flora

audio In this month’s show we’re looking at poisonous plants and post apocalyptic cannibalism, with two ‘revenge of nature’ film Q&As recorded at this year’s SCI-FI-LONDON film festival. Alex Fitch talks to director Sasha Louis Vukovic about his Canadian period drama Flora, which depicts an expedition by 1920s botanists into uncharted territory, only to find their new environment is completely toxic and they’ve run out of food. Also, guest presenter and host of the Arthur C Clarke Awards, Tom Hunter discusses the film adaptation of acclaimed British zombie drama The Girl with all the Gifts and its print prequel The Boy on the Bridge with author Mike Carey.
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The Electric Sheep Film Show is broadcast every third Wednesday of the month, 5.30-6.30pm at Resonance FM 104.4. Next date: Wednesday 21 June 2017.

This show was first broadcast on Wednesday 17 May 2017.

Clear Spot – 17 May 2017 (Electric Sheep) by Resonance Fm on Mixcloud

Cannes 2017 Preview

Cannes 2017

Cannes International Film Festival

17-28 May 2017

Cannes, France

Cannes website

The 70th anniversary editoion of the Cannes Film Festival promises to be as intriguing, fun and unpredictable as ever.

Opening on Wednesday 17 May with Arnaud Desplechin’s latest offering Ismael’s Ghosts, the Competition line-up continues to follow the slighter darker, more adventurous direction introduced last year, this time including exciting new films such as Sofia Coppola‘s The Beguiled, Todd Haynes‘ Wonderstruck, the Safdie brothers’ Good Time, and Snowpiercer-director Bong Joon-ho‘s Okja.

Yorgos Lanthimos follows up his acclaimed The Lobster with The Killing of a Sacred Deer, a Kubrickian version of a modern Greek tragedy starring Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman, while Michael Haneke has teamed up again with Isabelle Huppert for his latest offering Happy End . We also very much look forward to Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Loveless, Fatih Akin’s thriller In the Fade and You Were Never Really Here, the new film by Lynne Ramsay, which sees Joaquin Phoenix’s killer protagonist plunging deep into conspiracy and crisis.

In comparison, this year’s Un Certain Regard strand looks somewhat pale at first sight. However, the two titles that stand out are Before We Vanish by veteran director Kiyoshi Kurosawa as well as Wind River, the directorial debut by Sicario and Hell or High Water writer Taylor Sheridan. Also worth checking out seems Western by German director Valeska Grisebach, who worked as a writer on last year’s Cannes favourite Toni Erdmann.

Out of Competition titles include Takashi Miike’s Blade of the Immortal and the new film by Hedwig and the Angry Inch director John Cameron Mitchell, How to Talk to Girls at Parties, while the Midnight Screenings strand seems to offer equally intriguing fare with Jung Byung-Gil’s The Villainess and Byun Sung-Hyun’s The Merciless. Plus, this year two episode’s of David Lynch’s upcoming season of Twin Peaks and two episodes of Jane Campion’s Top of the Lake will be screened, despite the fact that there is usually little television on show at Cannes.

As always, one must also take note of the usually excellent Directors’ Fortnight strand, which this year opens with Claire Denis‘ Un Beau Soleil Interieur, starring Juliette Binoche. However, the slate also includes new films from Abel Ferrara (Alive in France) and Sean Baker (The Florida Project), as well as Sundance frontrunner Patti Cake$ by Geremy Jasper, which serves as the closing film.

Pamela Jahn

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Check out the full Official Selection line-up below.

Competition

Loveless – Andrey Zvyagintsev
Good Time – Benny Safdie and Josh Safdie
You Were Never Really Here – Lynne Ramsay
A Gentle Creature – Sergei Loznitsa
Jupiter’s Moon – Kornél Mundruczó
L’Amant Double – François Ozon
The Killing of a Sacred Deer – Yorgos Lanthimos
Radiance – Naomi Kawase
The Day After – Hong Sang-soo
Le Redoutable – Michel Hazanavicius
Wonderstruck – Todd Haynes
Rodin – Jacques Doillon
Happy End – Michael Haneke
The Beguiled – Sofia Coppola
120 Battements Par Minute – Robin Campillo
Okja – Bong Joon-ho
In the Fade – Fatih Akin
The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) – Noah Baumbach

Un Certain Regard

Barbara – Mathieu Amalric
The Desert Bride – Cecilia Atan and Valeria Pivato
Closeness – Kantemir Balagov
Beauty and the Dogs – Kaouther Ben Hania
L’Atelier – Laurent Cantet
Lucky – Sergio Castellitto
April’s Daughter – Michel Franco
Western – Valeska Grisebach
Directions – Stephan Komandarev
Out – Gyorgy Kristof
Before We Vanish – Kiyoshi Kurosawa
The Nature of Time – Karim Moussaoui
Dregs – Mohammad Rasoulof
Juene Femme – Léonor Serraille
Wind River – Taylor Sheridan
After the War – Annarita Zambrano

For more information on the full line-up, visit the Cannes website.

Chimerical Optics: Haiti, Colonialism and Voodoo Terror

Undead

Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies – London

Instructor: John Cussans

Date: 18 May 2017

Time: 7-10pm

Venue: Horse Hospital

Address: Colonnade, Bloomsbury, London WC1N 1JD

Prices: £10 advance / £8 concs / £11 door

Miskatonic website

Since the first descriptions of bizarre ceremonies witnessed by the French colonial historian Moreau de Saint-Méry, Haitian Vodou has been characterized by most European and American commentators as a deplorable and dangerous African atavism that, if allowed to flourish, could eventually corrupt and destroy the economic and social order of the New World. Such omens were spectacularly affirmed by the Haitian Revolution of 1791, which, according to legend, was triggered by a Vodou ceremony in which a blood-sacrifice was offered to the ‘demon gods’, and the slaves, in a state of trance-like possession, butchered their white masters in a ‘racial holocaust’. Since then Haiti has held a special place in colonial imaginings of all that is macabre, sinister and maniacally savage, a land of irredeemable barbarism and ‘Voodoo Terror’.

This class will trace a history of such representations, discussing how they continue to shape xenophobic and neo-colonial imaginings of Haiti as a country mired in superstition and incapable of enlightened self-governance, and the importance of the zombie figure for these ‘chimerical optics’.

About the instructors:

John Cussans

John Cussans is an artist, writer and researcher based in London. Since 2009 he has been involved with the Ghetto Biennale in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, often working with the Haitian video collective Tele Geto. He is the author of Undead Uprising: Haiti, Horror and the Zombie-Complex (Strange Attractor).

About the Miskatonic Institute:

Named for the fictional university in H.P. Lovecraft’s literary mythos, The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies is a non-profit, community-based organization that started in Canada, founded by Kier-La Janisse in March of 2010. The school currently has branches in Montreal and London, with Miskatonic London operating under the co-direction of Kier-La Janisse and Electric Sheep Founder/Editor Virginie Sélavy.

All classes take place at the historic Horse Hospital, the heart of the city’s underground culture. Season ticket is £35 and will be available shortly. Individual class tickets are £10 advance / £11 on the door / £8 concessions and will be available 30 days in advance of each class.

For full details of the next courses please check the Miskatonic website. For all enquiries, please email Miskatonic.london[at]gmail.com.