Check it out, Electric Sheep events, Events and Screenings

Electric Sheep Film Club: Guy Maddin double bill

The Saddest Music in the World

Date: Wednesday 10 March

Time: 6pm + 8pm

Venue: Prince Charles Cinema, London

Price for single film: £6.50/£4.00 Prince Charles members

Double bill: £11/£7 PCC members

Certificate: 15

Canada, 1992/2003

Prince Charles Cinema website

WEDNESDAY 10 MARCH, Prince Charles Cinema, 6pm+ 8pm : Guy Maddin Double Bill: CAREFUL + THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD

We celebrate the genius of Guy Maddin, who over the last two decades has developed an entirely personal and always enchanting world, poetic, macabre and playful in equal measures.

A delirious silent-style homage to the German mountain film of the 1920s, Careful takes place in a village whose inhabitants must talk in whispers for fear of triggering an avalanche. In such a repressed environment, forbidden passions and incestuous desires dangerously come close to boiling point. This is a very rare occasion to see Maddin’s feverish mountain extravaganza on the big screen.

In The Saddest Music in the World, a musical set in Winnipeg, Isabella Rossellini’s crippled baroness holds a contest to find the saddest music performer on earth. Eccentric musical interludes alternate with a convoluted story of complicated love triangles, familial rivalries and buried past traumas, the outlandish melodrama shot through with exquisitely strange details (glass legs filled with beer!) and deadpan humour. Hilarious, dreamlike and full of wonders, this is a film like no other. Watch and be amazed!

FILM WRITING COMPETITION:
Film students and aspiring film writers are invited to enter our film writing competition: write a 200-word review of Careful or The Saddest Music in the World and send it to ladyvengeance@electricsheepmagazine.com, marked ‘Film writing competition’ in the subject line. We are delighted to announce that Greg Klymkiv, the producer of Careful, will select the best review. Deadline: Thursday 25 March. The selected review will be published on the Electric Sheep website in April. This is a regular feature of the Electric Sheep Film Club. You can read the winning review of Repulsion here.

Next screening: WEDNESDAY 14 APRIL – Battle Royale
Electric Sheep events, Events and Screenings

Electric Sheep Subterranea: The Phantom of the Opera

The Phantom of the Opera
The Phantom of the Opera

Date: Saturday 6 February

Time: 4-8pm

Venue: Notting Hill Arts Club, London

Price: Free

Certificate: PG

Dir: Rupert Julian, USA, 1925, 93 mins

Notting Hill Arts Club website

SATURDAY 6 FEBRUARY, Notting Hill Arts Club, 8pm : THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA + live DJ rescore by DJ DOWNFALL

Electric Sheep hosts an afternoon of film, music and comics as part of Rough Trade Shops’ RoTa afternoons.

The earliest film version of the legendary figure and one of the first silent horror films, The Phantom of the Opera (1925) stars the great Lon Chaney as the horribly disfigured Erik who leads a secret and lonely existence beneath the Paris Opera. After falling in love with a beautiful young singer, he holds her prisoner in his underground lair. Darkly poetic and full of visual delights, the film creates a startling world of nightmarish beauty while Chaney superbly brings out the terrible humanity of the monster.

The film will be shown with a live DJ rescore by DJ Downfall.

Courtesy of Eureka Entertainment

+ WE ARE WORDS + PICTURES COMICS STALL
We Are Words + Pictures are a London-based team of illustrators and writers who bring comics to new readers through events, workshops, publications and market stalls. WAW+P will be bringing illustrator Anna Saunders to Electric Sheep Subterranea, where she’ll be drawing alongside the screening, as well as a selection of ‘zines and comics, which will be on sale in the bar. WAW+P are contributors to the new anthology Solipsistic Pop edited by Eagle Award winner Tom Humberstone, which aims to showcase the best in current British small press and underground comic books, and will be available for sale at the event.

+DJS AND SHORT FILMS

Electric Sheep events, Events and Screenings

Electric Sheep Film Club: Kiss Me Deadly

Kiss Me Deadly
Kiss Me Deadly

Date: Wednesday 10 February

Time: 8pm

Venue: Prince Charles Cinema, London

Price: £6.50/£4.00 Prince Charles members (new 2010 prices)

Certificate: 12

Dir: Robert Aldrich, USA 1955, 106 mins

Prince Charles Cinema website

ticket WEDNESDAY 10 FEBRUARY, Prince Charles Cinema, 8pm : Twisted Valentine screening: KISS ME DEADLY

Here’s your antidote to forthcoming Valentine soppiness: promising ‘red-blood kisses’ and ‘white-hot thrills’, Kiss Me Deadly is a noir classic that has lost none of its power to shock and surprise. Private investigator Mike Hammer, a thuggish, macho anti-hero, is drawn into a bottomless pit of conspiracy and corruption after picking up a mysterious and beautiful hitch-hiker. Exposing the black soul of America in the atomic age, this is as hard-boiled as it gets.

FILM WRITING COMPETITION:
Film students and aspiring film writers are invited to enter our film writing competition: write a 200-word review of Kiss Me Deadly and send it to ladyvengeance@electricsheepmagazine.com, marked ‘Film writing competition’ in the subject line. Jason Wood, director of programming at Curzon Cinemas, film journalist and author of 100 American Independent Films and 100 Road Movies among others, will select the best review. Deadline: Thursday 25 February. The selected review will be published on the Electric Sheep website in March. This is a regular feature of the Electric Sheep Film Club. You can read November’s winning review of Repulsion here.

Next screening: WEDNESDAY 10 MARCH – Special Guy Maddin double bill!
Radio and Podcasts

Interview with Susannah York

Susannah York
Susannah York

audio Alex Fitch interviews celebrated actress Susannah York about her career, focusing on her performances in war-themed productions and her interest in peace activism. York talks about her narration for the 1987 Channel 4 TV series The Struggles for Poland, writing the wartime drama Falling in Love Again, her iconic role in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? and using her reputation and theatre tours to promote the work of the Movement for the Abolition of War.

‘The Struggles for Poland’ screens at the Imperial War Museum, London, on January 16 (Episodes 1-4), 17 (Episodes 5-8) and 23 (Episodes 3-5 and 9) as part of
Polska! Year.

Partially broadcast 13/01/10 as part of a ‘Clear Spot’ on Resonance 104.4 FM

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

Links:
Film at Imperial War Museum, London – download a pdf of the cinema schedule
Information about Polska! Year
Info about the Movement for the Aobolition of War

Radio and Podcasts

Living in Harmony with Ian Rakoff

The Prisoner
The Prisoner

audio To coincide with the 42nd anniversary of the broadcast of The Prisoner episode for which he wrote the original script, Alex Fitch talks to writer, editor and raconteur Ian Rakoff about his experiences working on the cult 60s series and being an observer of British film culture in the 1970s and beyond. Rakoff talks about the bowdlerisation of his script for ‘Living in Harmony’, his experiences with Lindsay Anderson on such films as If…. and O Lucky , working with Nicolas Roeg, Stephen Frears and John
Boorman and his lifetime interest in comic books.

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

Links:
Interview with Ian Rakoff on Electric Sheep contributor Paul Gravett’s website
Buy The Prisoner on Blu-ray from Network
Buy Ian Rakoff’s book Inside the ‘Prisoner’: Radical Television and Film in the 1960s from Amazon
Listen to / watch Alex Fitch’s interview with Malcolm McDowell and Mike Kaplan about working with Lindsay Anderson
Read Prisoner inspired rock group Do not forsake me oh my darling‘s list of favourite films on Electric Sheep

Check it out, Electric Sheep in Print

Electric Sheep Magazine Winter 09

‘I Fought the Law’ – The winter 09 issue of Electric Sheep looks at what makes a cinematic outlaw: read about the misdeeds of low-life gangsters, gentlemen thieves, deadly females, modern terrorists, cop killers and vigilantes, bikers and banned filmmakers.

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

Also in this issue: interview with John Hillcoat about his adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, the art of Polish posters according to Andrzej Klimowski, Andrew Cartmel discusses The Prisoner and noir comic strips!

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