This year’s 58th edition of the BFI London Film Festival promises an exciting line-up filled, as ever, with a mixture of high-profile gala features, previous festival winners and hits, and a vast number of smaller gems that are unlikely to be coming to a cinema near you any time soon.
Running from 8 to 19 October 2014, the festival opens with the European premiere of The Imitation Game and closes with Brad Pitt tank-confined thriller Fury, with plenty of thrills on offer in between.
Featuring some of our favourites from this year’s Cannes and Etrange Festival, the line-up also includes Sion Sono’s Tokyo Tribe, Ana Lily Amirpour’s Iranian vampire tale A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, Aleksei German’s final sci-fi epic Hard to Be a God, David Robert Mitchell’s creepy, intelligent thriller It Follows and Lisandro Alonso’s hallucinatory 19th-century meta-Western Jauja, starring Viggo Mortensen as a dizzy captain who follows his missing daughter into an existential void.
Straight from TIFF, we also recommend Mark Hartley’s Electric Boogaloo, which delivers a frenetic look at the rise and fall of 1980s action-exploitation studio Cannon Films, and Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy’s shocking The Tribe, whereas Abel Ferrara’s Pasolini, which attempts to recreate the last day in the life of the Italian director, is too elliptical and confounding to really satisfy.
Among the films we look forward to are The World of Kanako, a new stylish and provocative thriller from Confessions director Tetsuya Nakashima, Ning Hao’s racy Spaghetti Western homage No Man’s Land and the Misery-style Spanish thriller Shrew’s Nest, as well as a 40th anniversary screening of Tobe Hooper’s restored horror masterpiece The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
And we will definitely be checking out In the Basement, the new documentary by Austrian enfant terrible Ulrich Seidl, in which he investigates the many strange things his fellow countrymen do in their cellars. Also worthy of note are Gregg Araki’s White Bird in a Blizzard, Damián Szifrón’s Wild Tales, Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s Spring and the Nordic werewolf fantasy When Animals Dream.
Finally, for everyone who hasn’t had a chance to see it on the big screen yet, the LFF’s popular archive screenings will include a painstaking restoration of Sergei Paradjanov‘s 1968 masterpiece The Colour of Pomegranates, along with other treasures such as King Hu’s Dragon Inn and restored 1934 silent film The Goddess, starring the iconic Ruan Lingyu.
Pamela Jahn
For more information about the programme and how to book tickets visit the LFF website.
The unique and wonderful Etrange Festival celebrated its 20th anniversary this year with a spectacular line-up, which, as always, defied categories with the latest offerings from Takashi Miike and Marjane Satrapi, special programmes picked by Godfrey Reggio, Jacques Audiard and Sion Sono, musical events, emerging talent, short films and an exhibition on Fumetti.
Among the freaky treats on offer, we loved Kim Ki-Duk’s extreme castration drama Moebius, Bill Morrison’s elegiac The Miners’ Hymns, the Mo Brothers’ action thriller Killers, Fabrice du Welz’s staggeringly intense take on the Honeymoon Killers story Alleluia, atmospheric Irish ghost story The Canal and offbeat Iranian vampire tale A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night.
Older treasures included Sergei Paradjanov’s sumptuously poetic Sayat Nova, Jerry Schatzberg’s seminal 70s road movie Scarecrow, Jörg Buttgereit’s ingeniously disturbing The Death King and Blaxploitation rarity Dolemite while the Pere Ubu Film Group’s did a live score to Carnival of Souls.
Marjane Satrapi’s dark animated killer tale The Voices won the audience award and we were particularly excited to discover David Robert Mitchell’s fantastical take on American sexual puritanism It Follows, David Wnendt’s uninhibited erotic comedy Wetlands, Nacho Vigalondo’s found footage thriller Open Windows, Austrian Western The Dark Valley, Aleksei German’s last film Hard to Be a God, hallucinatory French nightmare Horsehead and Austrian experimental dance film Perfect Garden.
To mark its anniversary, the programme also included a selection of the best of 20 years of the festival, including Nikos Nikolaidis’s demented noir homage Singapore Sling, Ian Kerkhof’s avant-garde documentary Beyond Ultra Violence: Uneasy Listening by Merzbow, Harmony Korine’s Gummo, Clive Barker’s Lord of Illusions, the short films of the Quay Brothers, Duncan Jones’s Moon, Hungarian oddity Hukkle, Shinya Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo and Ben Wheatley’s Down Terrace.
For many years the Toronto International Film Festival has been as overwhelmingly big and thrilling as a film festival can be. But with every new edition, TIFF seems to get even bigger and better. This year’s event, which runs from 4 to 14 September, has a packed Midnight Madness selection that includes the world premiere of Matthew Kennedy and Adam Brooks’s The Editor, a loving tribute to, or parody of, the gory giallo thrillers of Mario Bava and Dario Argento, alongside Jonas Govaerts’s promising Belgium horror debut Cub, and Kevin Smith’s bizarre Tusk.
In addition, the line-up features Sion Sono’s Tokyo Tribe, David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows, Hal Hartley’s Ned Rifle and Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy’s The Tribe, all of which also screen at Etrange Festival in Paris, which takes place at the same time. Mark Hartley presents his latest documentary Electric Boogaloo, which chronicles the rise and fall of 1980s action-exploitation juggernaut Cannon Films, plus there will be another opportunity to catch the hilarious Vampire mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows, which arrives in UK cinemas in November.
James Franco’s latest Faulkner adaptation The Sound and the Fury, Abel Ferrara’s Pasolini and Jean-Baptiste Léonetti’s The Reach, the eagerly awaited follow-up to his 2011 debut feature Carré Blanc will receive a special presentation, plus the most promising big hitters in the official gala section come in the form of Shim Sung-Bo’s high-seas adventure Haemoo, co-scripted by Bong Joon-ho, and Andrea Di Stefano’s debut feature Escobar: Paradise Lost.
In addition to the many world and international premieres on show, there are of course this year’s earlier festival favourites to catch up on such as Cannes winner Winter Sleep, David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars, Xavier Dolan’s Mommy, Gabe Polsky’s Red Army about the Soviet Union’s dominance of ice hockey during the Cold War and Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher, which also receives a gala screening at this year’s 58th BFI London Film Festival (8-19 October). Straight from Venice comes Ramin Bahrani’s superb dramatic thriller 99 Homes, atmospheric Austrian chiller Goodnight Mommy and The Look of Silence, Joshua Oppenheimer’s highly anticipated follow-up to The Act of Killing.
As a very special treat, the always exciting Cinematheque archive strand presents Winnipeg director John Paizs’ 1985 classic Crime Wave, which brilliantly apes the look of 1950s educational films and trashy crime movies, alongside Atom Egoyan‘s Speaking Parts and a painstaking restoration of Sergei Paradjanov‘s 1968 masterpiece The Colour of Pomegranates.
For more information about the programme and how to book tickets visit the TIFF website.
The first edition of Film4 FrightFest in its new venue on Leicester Square, the Vue, was a resounding success, with an impressive line-up of films, terrific guests such as John McNaugton, Alan Moore and Jörg Buttgereit, and a lively sense of community. Stylistically and thematically, the programme was diverse, ranging from witty horror comedies to emotionally weighty thrillers and mind-boggling science fiction. After years of zombie domination, the monster of predilection this year was the werewolf, while children in peril and dangerous lovers also featured heavily and there was an underlying current of concern with the medium of film itself.
The festival opened with Adam Wingard’s wildly entertaining homage to 80s slasher/action flicks The Guest, about a mysterious soldier who ingratiates himself into the lives of a family after bringing them a message from their dead son with whom he served in Afghanistan. After a tense, enigmatic first part, the story shifted into black comedy, turning into a fun popcorn horror movie – which was very enjoyable, but it would be nice to see Wingard return to the more serious territory of A Horrible Way to Die at some point. Following the opposite trajectory, Faults started as a comedy about a washed-out cult expert who attempts to de-programme a young woman controlled by a mysterious cult, but turned into an increasingly strange and riveting face-off between the characters, in which roles become reversed. Also of note among the more comedic offerings, the hilarious and bloody Housebound from New Zealand was a blast, with clever twists and hugely satisfying characters, led by delinquent ball of rage Kylie and her well-meaning but clueless chatterbox mother.
The greatest find of the festival was undoubtedly Jennifer Kent’s wonderfully creepy and poignant monster story The Babadook. There were more children in peril in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer director John McNaughton’s return to the big screen, The Harvest, a chilling autumnal fairy tale of sorts.
Fabrice Du Welz’s intense take on The Honeymoon Killers story Alleluia was another heavyweight of the festival and the most accomplished of the unsettling psycho-sexual thrillers in the programme. Ate De Jong’s Deadly Virtues used bondage to explore the bonds of marriage in a story of home invasion with a twist. Despite its flaws, it was a captivating film with ideas and originality. Marriage was also under scrutiny in simmering two-hander Honeymoon. The dark rape-revenge thriller Julia investigated violent catharsis and female empowerment in interesting, if rather muddled ways – director Matthew A. Brown did not seem entirely sure of where he was taking his story. On a lighter note, Hitoshi Matsumoto took a delirious approach to S&M in R100, an insane Japanese comedy about a middle-aged widower who gets more than he bargained for when he joins an underground club whose dominatrixes include The Queen of Spit in an eye-popping musical sequence and The Queen of Gobbling…
With a greater diversity of complex characters, in particular female, than in previous years, the programme also interestingly reflected a strong male anxiety. Deadly Virtues made a point about the wife earning more money than her husband, an important element in the shifting dynamic of their marriage. In the same way, Ivan Kavanagh’s The Canal added a twist to its familiar jealous husband story in that the wife is the one with the high-powered job while his job, seen as lowly, is dismissed by other characters. With physical castration featuring in a number of films in the programme (Julia being the most notable), there seemed to be a simmering unease about the place of men in marriage and society, and a fear of sexual and social emasculation.
The Canal was one of a handful of films concerned with its own medium, probing the ghostly quality of film itself. In R100, the story of the widower is a film being made within the film – and shown to flabbergasted executives. The excellent occult-tinged Hollywood ambition tale Starry Eyes focused on a would-be actress who sells her soul to a satanic production company for stardom. VHS Viral continued the found footage franchise with a great segment by Nacho Vigalondo while Jessica Cameron’s Truth or Dare took on reality TV with the same subtlety as the shows it satirizes. Among the documentaries, David Gregory’s fascinating Lost Soul – The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau was one of the most talked about films of the festival.
It was great to see werewolves used to dig into a variety of themes, even if the results were not always fully convincing. The Samurai, by German director Till Kleinert, was an intriguing, although heavy-handed take on queerness in a small town. It had a very memorable character in the transvestite sword-wielding lone wolf maniac who leads the solitary young local policeman into a journey of bloody self-discovery. Another interesting angle came from Adrian Garcia Bogliano in Late Phases, which stars the brilliant Nick Damici as a cranky blind veteran who moves into a retirement community terrorised by a mysterious creature. With most of its characters above the age of 60, it was a fairly brave, original and entertaining film about ageing, and how to face death with dignity.
Science fiction had a strong presence in the programme this year with Nacho Vigalondo’s mind-puzzler Open Windows, The Signal which closed the festival in beautiful, if somewhat mystifying manner, and James Ward’s convoluted chiller Coherence presented by the Duke Mitchell Film Club. For the first time, the Duke Mitchell brought their inimitable film party to FrightFest, invading one of the cinemas on the Saturday night with their anarchic mix of outlandish clips, excellent guests and wild shenanigans, which was much enjoyed by the packed auditorium.
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.
Support our friends at Close-Up and their new independent cinema in Shoreditch showcasing classic, contemporary, documentary, experimental and artists’ films. As other cinemas are converting to digital, Close-Up will continue to offer 16mm and 35mm reel-to-reel as well as digital projection.
Your donation is vital to the success of their project! Please donate on the Close-Up website.
The 49th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival opens tonight with the premiere of Mike Cahill’s (Another Earth) sci-fi mystery I Origins. With the festival’s location, it is no wonder that a large part of the programme is dominated by films made in Central and Eastern Europe, but Karlovy Vary has proven in the past that it is a place where discovery and surprise are almost guaranteed, and this year seems no exception.
We are particularly looking forward to the uniquely comprehensive Tribute to Elio Petri, showing 10 films by the seminal and vigorous Italian filmmaker, including The 10th Victim (1965), Investigation of a Citizen above Suspicion (1969), his early Kafkaesque detective thriller The Assassin (1961), the murder mystery (and one of the first Italian films about the Mafia) We Still Kill the Old Way (1967) and the dazzlingly experimental A Quiet Place in the Country (1968), alongside two documentaries: Elio Petri: Notes on a Filmmaker, based on the reminiscences of friends and colleagues, including Paola Petri, Ennio Morricone, Franco Nero and Vanessa Redgrave; and Only One Name in the Headlines, a documentary portrait of screenwriter and author Ugo Pirro, one of Elio Petri’s consistent collaborators.
Another exciting festival highlight is the appearance of special guest William Friedkin, who will receive the Crystal Globe for Outstanding Artistic Contribution to World Cinema and present a restored version of one of the central films of his career, Sorcerer.
Peter Strickland (Katalin Varga, The Berberian Sound Studio) and Nick Fenton will be on hand for the gala presentation of Biophilia Live, a documentary of Björk’s concert at London’s Alexandra Palace, which completed her 2011 Biophilia tour and multimedia project.
Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer screens as part of the Horizons strand alongside some of the best films from this year’s Berlin and Cannes selections, including David Michôd’s The Rover and Xavier Dolan’s Mommy.
Starting on Sunday 29 June, the brilliant Duke Mitchell Film Club prsent their first DukeFest Zero festival, four nights of fun, intriguing and odd cinematic gems, including special guests, an anniversary screening, a music night, a mystery trailer reel and a live translation by someone who doesn’t speak the film’s language.
The festival kicks off with the European premiere of My Name is Jonah, a documentary on self-described ‘real-life warrior, adventurer and musician’ and cult internet icon Jonah. Monday 1 July is ‘Mix-It-Up Night’, including a screening of Stockholm Nights with live audio translation by Duke host and Electric Sheep contributor Evrim Ersoy (who doesn’t speak Swedish), the Japanese edition of The Great VHS Experiment, and Night of the Trailers. The following night is a music night including Death Waltz’s Musical Horror Trip and Music Video Found Footage. The festival closes on Wednesday 3 July with a 30th anniversary screening of Ulli Lommel’s SF musical comedy Strangers in Paradise, about a hypnotist who cryogenically escapes from the Nazis only to be defrost by fascist Americans in the 80s.
Opening on 18 June 2014 with the world premiere of Gerard Johnson’s Hyena, the 2014 Edinburgh International Film Festival runs until 29 June, boasting a selection of 156 feature films from around the world. This year, there will be a special focus on German cinema and we are looking forward to the retrospective ‘Border Warfare: John McGrath’s Work in Television, Theatre and Film’, celebrating the work of the radical writer-director-producer, which includes three films he scripted: Ken Russell’s sprawling spy thriller Billion Dollar Brain, plus two films directed by Jack Gold, The Bofors Gun and The Reckoning.
But we are, of course, most excited about the long-awaited UK premiere of Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer, starring a terrific Tilda Swinton, on 22 June 2014. Taking place on the same day is a special event called EDIT, which sounds intriguing: a unique collaboration between musician Joe McAlinden, visual artists Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard and writer Martin McCardie, EDIT showcases a musical work performed live by McAlinden and set against a film by Forsyth and Pollard, scripted by McCardie. The performance will be followed by a Q&A with the four artists.
Snowpiercer screens as part of the Directors’ Showcase strand, which also includes Cathedrals of Culture, an expansive 3D project exploring the soul of buildings from six acclaimed filmmakers such as Wim Wenders and Robert Redford. In addition, the Directors’ Showcase will present Taiwanese master Tsai Ming-liang’s Stray Dogs, which premiered in Venice last year and is said to be his farewell to cinema.
Other highlights of this year’s EIFF programme include Anton Corbijn’s A Most Wanted Man, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman in one of his final performances, and Abel Ferrara’s controversial Welcome to New York, inspired by the case of former IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn (Gérard Depardieu), which premiered in Cannes last month.
One of the promising contenders among the British films in competition for the Michael Powell Award is Guy Pitt’s compelling debut feature Greyhawk, along with opening film Hyena and We are Monster by Antony Petrou, which explores the real-life case of an Asian teenager murdered by a racist fellow inmate in a UK young offenders institution.
Previously called ‘Night Moves’, this year’s re-launched ‘Wicked & Weird’ strand includes the world premiere of Noel Clarke’s futuristic thriller The Anomaly, James Ward Byrkit’s low-key sci-fi chiller Coherence, Eli Roth’s take on cannibalism The Green Inferno, and Leigh Janiak’s intimate horror Honeymoon, starring Rose Leslie and Harry Treadaway as newlyweds.
The very popular EIFF’s Audience Award is also back this year with nominations including Jim Mickle’s highly entertaining revenge thriller Cold in July, John Maloof and Charlie Siskel’s gripping photographer documentary Finding Vivian Maier, and Jeff Baena’s zombie romantic comedy Life after Beth. In addition to the numerous films on show, there will be a series of ‘Hero Hangouts’, which are essentially on-stage interviews with some of the personalities featured in the programme, such as Cold in July star Don Johnson.
For more information about the programme and how to book tickets visit the EIFF 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.
Masonic Temple at Andaz Hotel Liverpool Street
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.
