All posts by Alex Fitch

Alex Fitch used to present I'm ready for my close-up on Resonance FM and is now the main contributor to their show Strip! which is podcast as Panel Borders. Alex has been nominated for an Eagle Award for his services to mankind/comic books (delete as appropriate) and is working on both his first novel and his first graphic novel. He studied art at Goldsmiths, film in New York and clowning at the University of Life. Along with Virginie, he is one of three hosts of the Electric Sheep/Resonance FM film night - Hectic Peelers - currently held at the Roxy Bar and Screen.
Radio and Podcasts

The Films of Sally Potter

rage
Sally Potter's 'Rage'

audio

In an hour-long Q&A recorded at Cinephila West in Westbourne Grove, London, Sophie Mayer talks to director Sally Potter about her career, focusing on the films Orlando, The Tango Lesson and her new film Rage. Recorded and edited by Alex Fitch.

For more info about the variety of formats you can download this podcast in / stream, please visit www.archive.org.

Use iTunes?

Links:
Official movie website
Sally Potter’s website
More info about Sophie Mayer’s book The films of Sally Potter: A Politics of Love

Electric Sheep in Print

Electric Sheep Magazine Autumn 09


‘Ther’s tha devil movin’ in my blood’. The autumn 09 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.

The magazine is no longer available and we are no longer published by Wallflower Press.

Also in this issue: Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Raindance 09, political animation, and louche mariachi rockabilly Dan Sartain picks his top films!

Radio and Podcasts

Dario Argento + Goblin

Dario Argento directs Adrien Brody on the set of Giallo
Dario Argento directs Adrien Brody on the set of Giallo

I’M READY FOR MY CLOSE-UP

In an interview recorded at the Cine-Excess film festival in London, Alex Fitch talks to Italian cult filmmaker Dario Argento about his career from writing ‘Spaghetti Westerns’ scripts in the 1960s such as Once Upon a time in the West to his most recent film Mother of Tears. Argento talks about the importance of music in his work, why he doesn’t like being pigeon-holed as a horror director and his new project Giallo.


5pm Resonance 104.4 FM (London) / streamed at www.resonancefm.com


audio Listen to the podcast of the Dario Argento interview + Goblin Q&A led by Alex Fitch at the Supersonic music festival in Birmingham.

Goblin circa 2009 - Fabio Pignatelli / Massimo Morante / Maurizio Guarini / Agostino Marangolo
Goblin circa 2009 - Fabio Pignatelli / Massimo Morante / Maurizio Guarini / Agostino Marangolo

Alex Fitch talks to the Italian prog rock band Goblin – Fabio Pignatelli, Massimo Morante, Agostino Marangolo and Maurizio Guarini – about scoring Argento’s films from Profondo Rosso (Deep Red) to Non ho sonno (Sleepless).

For more info about the variety of formats you can download this podcast in / stream, please visit www.archive.org

Use iTunes?

Links:

Read a transcript of Alex’s interview with director Dario Argento in Electric Sheep Magazine
Goblin‘s official website
Cine-Excess website

Watch the trailer for Giallo:

Electric Sheep events, Events and Screenings

Electric Sheep Film Club: White Lightnin’

Still from White Lightnin' by Dominic Murphy
White Lightnin'

Date: Wednesday 2 September

Time: 9pm

Venue: Prince Charles Cinema, London

Price: £5.00/£3.50 Prince Charles members

Certificate: 18 tbc

Dir: Dominic Murphy, UK 2009

Prince Charles Cinema website

ticketWEDNESDAY 2 SEPTEMBER, Prince Charles Cinema, 9pm : WHITE LIGHTNIN’ – Special preview and Q&A

A dark, surreal semi-biopic about glue-sniffing, hard-drinking, hell-raising Appalachian mountain dancer Jesco White (impressively played by newcomer Ed Hogg), British director Dominic Murphy’s controversial debut feature takes us deeper and deeper into Jesco’s crazed visions and wild religious fantasies, culminating in horrific revenge and violent redemption.

We are delighted to welcome Dominic Murphy for a Q&A after the screening.

With thanks to Momentum Pictures. White Lightnin’ starts its theatrical run at the ICA and Rich Mix (Bethnal Green), London, on September 25.

Next screening: WEDNESDAY 7 OCTOBER – Rollerball
Radio and Podcasts

Radio: Francis Matthews

Francis Matthew is Paul Temple while Captain Scarlet looks on
Francis Matthews is Paul Temple while Captain Scarlet looks on

To coincide with the release of the little known BBC TV adaptation of the Paul Temple mysteries on DVD, Alex Fitch and Robin Warren talk to actor Francis Matthews about his career from playing the aforementioned suave mystery writer turned detective to voicing the indestructible puppet Captain Scarlet and fighting Christopher Lee’s Rasputin in the underrated Hammer film about The Mad Monk.

10.30pm Thursday 13/08/09, repeated 5pm Friday 14/08/09, Resonance 104.4 FM (London) / streamed at www.resonancefm.com / podcast online at http://www.sci-fi-london.com 20/08/09.

Links:
Wikipedia pages on Francis Matthews, Paul Temple and Captain Scarlet.

Electric Sheep events, Events and Screenings

Electric Sheep Film Club: Carnival of Souls

Still from Carnival of Souls by Herk Harvey
Carnival of Souls

Date: Wednesday 5 August

Time: 8pm

Venue: Prince Charles Cinema, London

Price: £5.00/£3.50 Prince Charles members

Certificate: 15

Dir: Herk Harvey, USA 1962

Prince Charles Cinema website

ticketWEDNESDAY 5 AUGUST, Prince Charles Cinema, 8pm : CARNIVAL OF SOULS

This seminal atmospheric horror film influenced such masters of fright and strangeness as George A Romero and David Lynch. After surviving a car crash that left her friends dead, Mary Henry is beset by nightmarish visions involving a menacing ghost and becomes increasingly isolated from her community. As daily life is gradually contaminated by the otherworldly, the film takes on the texture of a horrific dream, fluid and eerie, rich, dark, deep and infinitely memorable.

Next screening: WEDNESDAY 2 SEPTEMBER – Special preview of White Lightnin’ + director Q&A!
Events and Screenings

Goblin at the Supersonic Festival

Goblin circa 2009 - Fabio Pignatelli / Massimo Morante / Maurizio Guarini / Agostino Marangolo
Goblin circa 2009 - Fabio Pignatelli / Massimo Morante / Maurizio Guarini / Agostino Marangolo
Supersonic festival 2009 poster
Supersonic festival 2009 poster

This weekend, the cult Italian rock band Goblin are headlining the Supersonic festival in Birmingham, playing the final gig of the event at 11pm on Sunday 26 July. The band will be doing a Q & A on stage about their music with Electric Sheep Magazine‘s assistant editor Alex Fitch at 6.15pm. The name Goblin first appeared on the map in 1975, when the band recorded the soundtrack for Dario Argento’s film Profondo Rosso. This was the starting point for a decade-long, highly creative and widely influential collaboration between the eccentric filmmaker and Goblin, which turned the group into the aural signifier of Italian horror films of the 70s and 80s. They created soundtracks to such cult classics as Suspiria (1977) and Dawn of the Dead (Zombi, 1978).

For more info about the Supersonic festival and how to buy tickets, visit the festival website at www.capsule.org.uk/supersonic.

The Q & A will be podcast in a future Electric Sheep podcast

Links: Goblin‘s official website
Info about Goblin on wikipedia and the IMDb
Read Alex Fitch’s interview with director Dario Argento in Electric Sheep Magazine

Radio and Podcasts

The current state of gay cinema part 2 (Monika Treut / Paul Morrison)

Still from Ghosted by Monika Treut
Ghosted

I’M READY FOR MY CLOSE-UP
Monika Treut is an independent German filmmaker who has explored female and lesbian sexuality in her films since her debut feature, the controversial Seduction: The Cruel Woman, in 1985. She followed it up with the coming-out tale Virgin Machine in 1988. She turned to documentary in 1992 with Female Misbehavior, four portraits of ‘bad girls’ including Camille Paglia, and made the acclaimed Gendernauts in 1999, which portrayed a group of transgendered people in San Francisco. In 2001, Treut made Warrior of Light, a documentary on Yvonne Bezerra de Mello, an artist and human rights activist who works with slum children in Rio de Janeiro. In 2002, Treut travelled to Taiwan and became fascinated by the country. She made the documentary Tigerwomen Grow Wings about three generations of women, and recently returned to fiction with Ghosted, an unconventional love story between a German artist and a Taiwanese woman set between Hamburg and Taipei.

Virginie Sélavy talked to Monika Treut during the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, where Ghosted has its UK premiere.

5pm Resonance 104.4 FM (London) / streamed at www.resonancefm.com

audioListen to the podcast: The second of two podcasts looking at the current state of gay cinema includes Virginie Sélavy’s interview with Monika Treut + guest interviewer Chris Patmore, from Films and Festivals magazine talks to director Paul Morrison about his film Little Ashes, which looks at the relationship between Dali and the poet Federico Garcí­a Lorca, as played by Twilight star Robert Pattinson and Javier Beltrí¡n respectively. (Part 2 of 2)

little
Federico Garcí­a Lorca played by Javier Beltrí¡n and Robert Pattinson as Salvador Dali in Little Ashes

For more info about the variety of formats you can download this podcast in / stream, please visit www.archive.org


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Radio and Podcasts

Radio: Fly Me to the Moon

Gerry Anderson on the set of Space: 1999
Gerry Anderson on the set of Space: 1999

On the 40th anniversary of the moon landings, Alex Fitch talks to two television pioneers who were inspired by the events of July 16, 1969.

Alex Fitch talks to Gerry Anderson about how the space race and technological innovations of the 1960s inspired such shows as Supercar and Thunderbirds. Anderson also talks about his stint in the RAF as an aircraft controller, responding to the fashions in genre with Four Feathers Falls and Fireball XL5 and mixing animation styles in lesser known series such as Lavender Castle and The Secret Service.

Sir Patrick Moore and Apollo 11, photo by Paul Grover
Sir Patrick Moore and Apollo 11, photo by Paul Grover

Sir Patrick Moore covered the events of the Apollo 11 mission live on TV and discusses the events of that day with Alex Fitch as well as the highlights of his six decades presenting The Sky at Night.

(N.B. The interview with Sir Patrick is available to download now at Sci-Fi London)

Thursday 16/07/09 10.30pm Resonance 104.4 FM (London) / streamed at www.resonancefm.com

 

 

Links: 
Buy Fireball XL5 and Space:1999 from Network DVD
Gerry Anderson’s fan club
Sir Patrick Moore’s website
The Sky at Night page at www.bbc.co.uk

Radio and Podcasts

The current state of gay cinema part 1 (Kenneth Anger / LLGFF)

Kenneth Anger at the Imperial War Museum, photo by Damon Cleary
Kenneth Anger at the Imperial War Museum, photo by Damon Cleary

I’M READY FOR MY CLOSE-UP
To herald the arrival of London Gay Pride weekend, Virginie Sélavy talks to infamous experimental filmmaker Kenneth Anger about his career, from his ground-breaking Magick Lantern Cycle to his recent return to the medium after a 20-year break.

Friday 03/07/09, 5pm, Resonance 104.4 FM / streamed at www.resonancefm.com

audioListen to the podcast: In the first of two podcasts exploring the current state of gay cinema, Alex Fitch looks at this year’s London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival and at the short film collection Boys on Film 2: In Too Deep + Virginie Sélavy’s interview with Kenneth Anger. (Part 1 of 2)

For more info about the variety of formats you can download this podcast in / stream, please visit www.archive.org


Use iTunes?

Links:
Read a transcript of Virginie Sélavy’s interview with Kenneth Anger
Artforum article about Anger’s recent films
London Pride film screenings
Buy Boys on Film 2 from Peccadillo Pictures