Running from 1 to 12 July, this year’s edition of the East End Film Festival presents an eclectic mix of new films from global and local independent filmmakers as well as industry masterclasses, free pop-up cinema screenings and music-focused events. With a special focus on showcasing home-grown talent , it’s also a great place for late and new discoveries of all kinds and one of the most exciting events this year is the screening of Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s neo-giallo The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears, now presented with a brand new original score by Edinburgh-based musician Ben Power (Blanck Mass, Fuck Buttons). The result is a fascinating score that enthralls, seduces and terrifies in equal measure and that is also available on double vinyl, released by Death Waltz Originals, presented in a 425gsm reverse board gatefold sleeve pressed on an exclusive screening event colour ltd to 500 units.
We are also delighted to be taking part again in a special day of screenings in the opulent and ornate surroundings of the Masonic Lodge Temple on Saturday 4 July, the perfect venue for a krimi classic such as The Dead Eyes of London, which screens at 1pm, followed by a special talk on krimi cinema hosted by Electric Sheep’s Alex Fitch, who will be joined by author and critic Kim Newman, and author Jim Harper. The afternoon screenings are then followed by a masquerade ball, in homage to George Franju’s 1963 production of Judex.
Among other highlights we are looking forward to an afternoon of radical film from contemporary Greece at the Whitechapel Galley, Marielle Heller’s celebrated Sundance hit Diary of a Teenage Girl and a special gala screening of Volker Schaner’s enlightening docu-portrait Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s Vision of Paradise, with the reggae and dub legend himself in attendance.
For more information about the programme and how to book tickets please visit the EEFF website.
Electric Sheep is very pleased to be partnering again with the East End Film Festival this year for a screening of The Dead Eyes of London at the amazing Masonic Temple, Andaz Hotel Liverpool Street, London, on Saturday 4 July, as part of the ‘From Murder to Mind Control’ weekend at the East End Film Festival. The film will be followed by a panel discussion hosted by Electric Sheep assistant editor Alex Fitch with celebrated film critic and author Kim Newman, author of Nightmare Movies, and Jim Harper, author of Flowers from Hell, who is currently working on a book on krimis.
The Dead Eyes of London, directed by Alfred Vohrer in 1961, is one of the best examples of the krimi (Kriminalfilm) genre, which flourished in West Germany from the mid-50s to the late 70s. Based on the work of English mystery writer Edgar Wallace like many of these crime thrillers, The Dead Eyes of London revolves around a series of murders committed by blind criminals who lure their victims into London’s dark back streets. And in the shadowy city engulfed in permanent fog hides a monster. Strange and atmospheric, it is a great introduction to a fascinating genre that remains relatively little known and unexplored, and the Masonic Temple the perfect venue to enjoy it!
Next up at the Masonic Temple will be Cigarette Burns’ screening of Sergio Martino’s seductive gialloThe Case of the Scorpion’s Tail on 16mm. More details of the ‘From Murder to Mind Control’ weekend on the East End Film Festival website.
Electric Sheep and Strange Attractor present All the Colours of the Dark (Tutti i colori dei buoi, Dir Sergio Martino Italy/Spain 1972 88 mins) on Wednesday 24 September 2014 at the Horse Hospital as part of Scalarama.
Hallucinatory satanists infest swinging London in this hard-to-find psychedelic giallo from one of its boldest proponents, Sergio Martino (The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh, Torso, Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I have the Key). All the necessary ingredients are here, including giallo queen Edwige Fenech as the troubled victim of a psychopathic stalker, exotic West London locations and a psyched-out sitar heavy theme from Bruno Nicolai.
Scalarama takes place from 1 to 30 September over 250 venues across the UK and Ireland. Among the 400 events already confirmed are screenings of Polyester in Odorama, The Last House on the Left on 35mm, Nekromantik, Daisies, Branded to Kill and The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. For the full programme and to buy tickets, please visit the Scalarama website.
Loosely based on Sheridan Le Fanu’s ‘Carmilla’, extravagant, sumptuous, macabre Alucarda hails from the golden age of Mexican horror. Raven-haired orphan Alucarda has been brought up in a convent to shield her from the evil influence of her diabolical father. But the devil in her blood cannot be suppressed and she draws the newly arrived Justine into her world. Thereon ensue copious amounts of nudity, wild-eyed hysteria, repressed desires, hints of lesbian love, religious exaltation, levitation, exorcism, self-flagellating nuns and unholy rituals, most of it set in a womb-like convent with nuns dressed in what looks like bloodied bandages. Part of the Panique movement co-founded by Alejandro Jodorowsky, director Juan López Moctezuma shared his interest in creating a magical and ritualistic kind of spectacle that would shake up audiences’ perceptions. He certainly succeeded with this astounding, surreal, eye-popping stunner.
+ The Moon Bird (Brothers McLeod, UK 2010, 15 minutes)
A dark animated fairy tale in black and white, about an orphan girl kidnapped by a witch who wants her tears for a magic potion.
Co-curated by Strange Attractor Press, this special weekend of EEFF screenings at the Andaz Hotel Liverpool Street’s Masonic Temple includes witches, ghosts and devilish mermaids, taking you from Wicca to haunted Mexican convents, and from British classics to a special evening with Dave McKean. Full schedule below.
12:00 Witchumentary Double Bill + Discussion
with Mark Pilkington (Strange Attractor) and William Fowler & Vic Pratt (BFI Flipside)
Legend of the Witches
Malcolm Leigh | UK | 1970 | 72 mins
Featuring Alex & Maxine Sanders, the spirit of the late 1960s magical revival is captured in this exploration of the currents of English witchcraft.
Secret Rites (in association with BFI Flipside)
Derek Ford | 1971 | Derek Ford | 47 mins
A rarely seen mondo-esque documentary sees a young West London hairdresser join a Notting Hill coven in a spectacular nightclub rite.
15:00 Alucarda
Juan Lopez Moctezuna | 1978 | Mexico | 74 mins
Alucarda has been brought up in a convent to shield her from her father’s evil influence, but the devil in her cannot be suppressed.
The Moon Bird
Brothers McLeod | 2010 | UK | 15 mins
An orphan girl is kidnapped by a witch in this dark animated fairy tale.
18:00 Possession Double Bill
Invocation of My Demon Brother
Kenneth Anger | 1969 | USA | 12 mins
Part of Anger’s Magick Lantern series with a soundtrack by a Moog-wielding Mick Jagger.
Night Tide
Curtis Harrington | 1961 | USA | 86 mins
+ post-screening discussion with Will Fowler (BFI Flipside) & Mark Pilkington (Strange Attractor)
Seaman Johnny Drake (Dennis Hopper) falls for Mora (Linda Lawson), who believes she’s descended from the sirens.
20:30 The Last Winter
Larry Fessenden | 2006 | USA/Iceland | 107 mins
Oil company employees, led by Ron Perlman, are building an ice road in the remote Arctic. When a member of their team is found dead, fears arise that nature may be striking back.
Eye of the Devil
J. Lee Thompson | 1966 | UK | 92 mins
Vineyard owner (David Niven) returns to his castle, where he and wife (Deborah Kerr) are confronted by a witch, calling for a blood sacrifice.
14:00 Night of the Eagle
Sidney Hayers | 1962 | UK | 87 mins
A psychology professor discovers that his wife has been practicing witchcraft and presses her to stop. Then things begin to go horribly, supernaturally wrong.
16:00 Audrey Rose
Robert Wise | 1977 | USA | 113 mins – 16mm Screening
A young Anthony Hopkins is unnervingly obsessed with the idea that Ivy Templeton is the reincarnation of his daughter.
19:00 An Evening with Dave McKean
Illustrator and designer Dave McKean has created books and graphic novels of The Graveyard Book (Neil Gaiman) and The Homecomeing (Ray Bradbury), worked with Richard Dawkins and Stephen King, designed characters for Harry Potter, and exhibited across the world. Join us for an evening with a truly unique artist, where Dave will discuss his work, and offer an exclusive first look at footage from his upcoming feature Luna. His other work can be seen on www.keanoshow.com
Mirrormask
2005 | USA/UK | 104 mins + Shorts + Dave McKean in conversation with SF Said
A collaboration with Neil Gaiman, Mirrormask is a dizzying journey into a complex fantasy world. 15-year-old circus worker Helena finds herself in a landscape filled with giants, monkeybirds and dangerous sphinxes. The mysterious Mirrormask is her only hope of escape.
The Week Before
1998 | UK | 23 mins
A card game between God and the Devil, inspired by jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt.
[N]eon
2002 | UK | 28 mins
Bruised from a failed marriage, a man wanders around Venice finding old books, memories, and a momentary ghost.
As part of Scalarama, Electric Sheep and Strange Attractor are excited to present the brilliant dystopian science fiction tale Phase IV, the only feature film directed by genius designer Saul Bass + special guest speakers art historian Petra Lange-Berndt and director of SCI-FI-LONDON Louis Savy.
Famed as a graphic designer of posters and title sequences, Saul Bass only got one shot at directing a feature, and the resulting film is a period masterpiece that is both a microcosm of contemporary environmental issues and a beautiful, intelligent science fiction film.
After an unusual planetary alignment in our solar system exposes planet Earth to anomalous electromagnetic fields, ants start preying on larger animals, including humans, marching across America and destroying whole towns. In an attempt to try to stop them, English entomologist Dr Ernest Hubbs (a frothingly good Nigel Davenport) and American mathematician James Lesko (Michael Murphy) set out to observe a colony of the super-intelligent ants from the apparent safety of a geodesic biosphere in the Arizona desert. What follows is a long, tense stand-off between ants and humans.
Although its interiors were shot at Pinewood, Phase IV‘s arid, ant-ravaged locations convey a convincing sense of a dying America and, as you’d expect from a first-class designer, the film looks exquisite. A brooding score, featuring eerie synthesiser sounds from White Noise’s David Vorhaus, further accentuates the mood of alienation and impending ant-nihilation.
Nobody can have expected this enigmatic, philosophical and ultimately rather downbeat film to be a commercial success, but Paramount still tried to exert control over the final cut, leading to a quarrel over its ending. We are very excited to present Bass’s intended ending after the film.
We’re also thrilled to have art historian Petra Lange-Berndt, author of Animal Art, and Louis Savy, director of SCI-FI-LONDON, in attendance, who will be talking to Mark Pilkington and Virginie Sélavy after the screening.
Scalarama is a UK-wide film season dedicated to all forms of cinema exhibition that will run from 31 August to 29 September 2013. Check the Scalarama website for the full programme and follow them on Twitter for updates.
Evil Knights Templar rising from their graves, riding skeletal horses in pursuit of tourists gone astray, ruined monasteries and deserted villages: Amando de Ossorio’s creepy, atmospheric Tombs of the Blind Dead has some of the most memorable imagery of the Spanish horror boom of the 1970s. Influenced by George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, de Ossorio nevertheless makes the returning dead his own: having had their eyes pecked out by crows after being hanged for their wicked ways, the Knights rely on sounds to hunt their preys. Released in the final years of Franco’s dictatorship, Tombs of the Blind Dead is not only a terrific eerie chiller, but also a subversive allegory for corrupt military and religious power oppressing and persecuting ordinary people. Tombs of the Blind Dead was followed by another three films on the blood-sucking Knights, all directed by the prolific de Ossorio.
Electric Sheep and Strange Attractor are proud to present a rare screening of Tombs of the Bind Dead at the Masonic Temple, Andaz Hotel Liverpool Street, London, on Saturday 29 June, as part of the East End Film Festival. Jim Harper, author of ‘The New Regime: Spanish horror in the 1970s and the end of the dictatorship’, published in The End: An Electric Sheep Anthology (Strange Attractor Press), will introduce the screening.
The screening ends a whole day of cult classics around the theme of secret societies at the Masonic Temple starting from 2pm: Sherlock Holmes hunts Jack the Ripper in British classic Murder By Decree, introduced by critic and novelist Kim Newman; a woman begins seeing strange apparitions in 1970’s giallo The Perfume of the Lady in Black; Jodorowsky’s Mexican circus grotesque Santa Sangre is introduced by its composer Simon Boswell; and finally, we descend into the Tombs of the Blind Dead.
Schedule:
2.00pm | Murder By Decree | Dir. Bob Clark
4:30pm | The Perfume of the Lady in Black | Dir. Francesco Barilli
6:15pm | Santa Sangre | Dir. Alejandro Jodorowsky
8:45pm | Tombs of the Blind Dead | Dir. Amando de Ossorio
In association with Titan Books, Cigarette Burns Cinema, Electric Sheep Magazine and Strange Attractor Press.
In May 2011, Electric Sheep took part in the East End Film Festival’s first celebration of Secret Societies at the Masonic Temple. Read our feature on the Freemasons and their connection to Jack the Ripper and listen to a podcast of our radio show on Jack the Ripper, the Freemasons in cinema and the links between crime and the occult with guests Strange Attractor Press publisher Mark Pilkington and Electric Sheep and Strange Attractor contributor Richard Bancroft. You can also listen to a podcast of a panel discussion on Jack the Ripper, witches’ covens and religious cults in film recorded at the Masonic Lodge. 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. Includes clips from Murder by Decree, Season of the Witch, The Wicker Man and Rosemary’s Baby.
Electric Sheep are proud to present a screening of Khavn de la Cruz’s Mondomanila at the Flatpack Festival in Birmingham on Friday 29 March.
A joyfully outrageous slice of life in the slums set to a punky soundtrack, Mondomanila is a slap in the face of Western expectations of politely miserabilist depictions of the downtrodden. A hyper kinetic, super stylised wild carnival of the destitute, it follows a midget, a one-armed rapper, a ‘day-glo fairy’, a disabled pimp and their friends as they try to get as much sex and drugs as they can and tackle a racist white paedophile. A toothless showman opens this exuberant bad taste spectacle, promising something horrible and creepy, but the Mondo-style shockumentary aspect is underpinned by the crude reality of life in Manila, making the film vital and energising.
Although Filipino director Khavn de la Cruz has made 33 feature films and 100 shorts, British festivals have tended to ignore his prolific output, and the Flatpack screening provides a rare opportunity to discover his provocative work.
Electric Sheep and Strange Attractor Present: The Lair of the White Worm + Talk with Flipside programmers
‘It has a lair, it has a worm, the worm is white.’ Roger Ebert
Electric Sheep and Strange Attractor are proud to present a rare outing for this unjustly neglected horror romp from the late Ken Russell as part of Ken Russell Forever, a tribute to the director organised by the good people of Scala Forever to coincide with the release of The Devils on DVD in March that runs from 10 to 20 March 2012.
Tenuously based on a 1911 novel by Bram Stoker – itself inspired by the ancient tale of the Lambton Wyrm, a staple for every book of true monster stories – this shamelessly camp horror comedy is generally considered to be Russell’s last great film.
Our Ken gleefully captures the spirits of Hammer and Carry On, doses them both with LSD and then dangles them over a bottomless pit containing an 80ft phallus while standing at the side pointing and laughing.
Featuring a soon-to-be-all-star cast including Hugh Grant, Peter Capaldi and Amanda Donahoe, gags and gore galore, not to mention sex, folk rock and slapstick, The Lair of the White Worm is a joyful outrage from beginning to end.
Plus talk with BFI archive curators and Flipside programmers Vic Pratt and Will Fowler.
Electric Sheep is very proud to be involved in Scala Forever, the celebration of the legendary Scala cinema organised by the Roxy Bar and Screen taking place across a range of London venues from August 13 to October 2.
In collaboration with Strange Attractor Press, Electric Sheep will present an evening of film and talk on Tuesday 20 September at the Horse Hospital. The event will start with a discussion, hosted by Electric Sheep editor Virginie Sélavy, about the life and times of the Scala with Jane Giles, former Scala film programmer and currently Head of Content at the BFI, horror maestro Kim Newman and Mark Pilkington, publisher of Strange Attractor Press and a regular Scala visitor. This will be followed by a screening of demented horror porno-comedy Thundercrack! (1975, dir Curt Mcdowell, starring and written by George Kuchar).
Doors at 6:30pm, talk at 7pm, film at 8:30pm. Buy tickets
The very exciting Scala Forever programme includes John Waters, Dario Argento, Russ Meyer and Fassbinder nights, a Turkish Grindhouse evening, a Jack Smith programme, a screening of one of our favourite 60s Italian exploitation films The Frightened Woman, and much more! For full details, please go to the Scala Forever website, or find them on Facebook and Twitter.
We will be celebrating the publication of our first book, The End: An Electric Sheep Anthology, a collection of previously unpublished essays on the darker side of cinema, on Tuesday 7 June at the Horse Hospital. Please come along to toast the book with us, all welcome!
The event will start off with a panel discussion on apocalyptic cinema at 8pm, featuring writers and illustrators who have contributed to the Electric Sheep anthology, including Electric Sheep assistant editor Alex Fitch, writer and musician Frances Morgan (former publisher of Plan B Magazine), graphic artist and film writer Mark Stafford (Cherubs!) and Jim Harper, author of Flowers from Hell: The Modern Japanese Horror Film.
This will be followed at 9pm by a screening of Night of the Living Dead: REANIMATED (2009) with a live DJ soundtrack by Robin Warren (Resonance FM). NotLD: REANIMATED is an experimental collective reinterpretation of George A. Romero’s classic zombie film by various artists, animators and filmmakers, using mixed media including puppetry, CGI, hand-drawn animation, illustration, acrylics, claymation, etc.
+ DJ sets by Frances Morgan and Zoe Baxter (Lucky Cat, Resonance FM)
Watch the trailer of Night of the Living Dead: REANIMATED:
For more information on the next projects of the people behind NotLD: REANIMATED and open calls for international artists, illustrators and animators please go to the Unseen Horror website and the Facebook page What is the Use of a Book without Pictures.