Tag Archives: Jess Franco

Jesús Franco: Shooting at the Speed of Life

eugenie-de-sade-1-e1378661713539-640x350
Eugenie de Sade

Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies – London

Instructor: Stephen Thrower

Date: 11 June 2015

Time: 7-10pm

Venue: Horse Hospital

Address: Colonnade, Bloomsbury, London WC1N 1JD

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

Miskatonic website

The final class of this season’s Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies – London is a special treat that is not to be missed: leading horror authority Stephen Thrower will launch his gorgeous and extensive new book on legendary exploitation figure Jesús Franco with a talk exploring the Spanish director’s singular approach to filmmaking and his lifelong passion for horror and erotica. Tickets are now on sale.

During a career spanning more than fifty years, Jesús (‘Jess’) Franco created a strange and unique style of commercial genre filmmaking, bordering at times on the avant-garde. Obsessed with ‘aberrant’ sex, erotic horror and the writings of the Marquis De Sade, he took a resolutely personal approach to movie-making, and after spending the 1960s honing his technique on slightly more conventional projects he embarked in the 1970s on a sustained period of intensive shooting, making as many as ten or twelve films in one year. Shooting with a small crew, exclusively on location, he worked at a speed that allowed little time for the honing of a perfect finished product, instead creating a cinema of spontaneity, improvisation and caprice. Franco valued freedom above all: by combining a rapid-fire series of small-scale commercial film projects, a ‘creative’ approach to finance, and a dedicated passion for the sensational, he was able to carve his own niche and digress into the most extraordinary experimental ellipses. In this evening’s discussion, Stephen Thrower will explore Franco’s ability to juggle the commercial and personal dimensions of filmmaking through his confrontational works of horror, sadism and erotic spectacle.

About the instructor:

Stephen Thrower, writer and musician, was born in Lancashire in 1963. After moving to London in 1985 he began writing reviews for the seminal horror magazine Shock Xpress, before launching his own film periodical Eyeball in 1989 with contributors including novelist Ramsey Campbell, filmmaker Ron Peck, and critics Kim Newman, Daniel Bird and Alan Jones. His first book, Beyond Terror: The Films of Lucio Fulci, was published in 1999, followed by The Eyeball Compendium (2003) and Nightmare USA: The Untold Story of the Exploitation Independents (2007). His most recent work is Murderous Passions; the delirious cinema of Jesús Franco, published by Strange Attractor in March 2015.
Thrower and his partner Ossian Brown are founders of the avant-garde music group Cyclobe, who recently recorded new soundtracks for three Super-8 films by the British filmmaker and queer activist Derek Jarman (Sulphur, Tarot and Garden of Luxor). As a solo artist, Thrower scored Pakistan’s first gore film, Zibahkhana aka Hell’s Ground (2007), contributed electronic music to Down Terrace (2010) by Ben Wheatley, and was commissioned by the BFI in 2012 to score three silent short films by the pioneering director of gay erotica Peter De Rome.

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. 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.

The Battle of the Sexes: Sado-masochism in 1960s-70s cinema

Femina Ridens 1
The Frightened Woman

Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies – London

Instructor: Virginie Sélavy

Date: 12 March 2015

Time: 7-10pm

Venue: Horse Hospital

Address: Colonnade, Bloomsbury, London WC1N 1JD

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

Miskatonic website

In the 1960s-70s, the relaxation of censorship, together with women’s greater social assertiveness, led to the appearance of a substantial number of art and/or exploitative films that explored male/female relationships through sexual power games. A large sub-section, including Mario Bava’s The Whip and the Body (1963), Luis Buñuel’s Belle de jour (1967), Sergio Martino’s The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh (1971) and Vicente Aranda’s The Blood Spattered Bride delve into what are presented as women’s secret repressed desires and internal conflicts. Aside from his numerous Sade adaptations, Jess Franco also dreamily explored female characters who are both victims and tormentors in Venus in Furs (1969) and Succubus (1968). Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Woman in Chains (1968) and Alain Robbe-Grillet’s Eden and After (1970) create hyper-aesthetic worlds of kinky abstract obsession while in Kôji Wakamatsu’s The Embryo Hunts in Secret (1966) and Pete Walker’s House of Whipcord (1974), the violence of amorous relationships takes on social and political connotations. Artist Niki de Saint Phalle made two unusual and fascinating contributions to this theme: not only did she co-direct her own semi-autobiographic perverse family fantasy, Daddy with Peter Whitehead (1973), but her art also appears in the fascinating Femina Ridens (Piero Schivazappa, 1968), which toys with expectations about dominant and submissive roles. The lecture will examine all these and more ramifications of the period’s unfettered sado-masochistic fantasies.

About the instructor:
Virginie Sélavy is the founder and editor of Electric Sheep, the online magazine for transgressive cinema. She has edited the collection of essays The End: An Electric Sheep Anthology, and has contributed to World Directory Cinema: Eastern Europe and written about Victorian London in Film Locations: Cities of the Imagination – London. Her work has appeared in various publications, including Sight&Sound, Rolling Stone France, Cineaste and Frieze.

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. Individual class tickets are £10 advance / £11 on the door / £8 concessions and will be available 30 days in advance of each class.

The next course dates are 9 April, 14 May, 11 June. For the full details of the courses please check the Miskatonic website. For all enquiries, please email Miskatonic.london@gmail.com.

Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies – London unveils full Jan-June line-up

HorseHospital
Miskatonic London will be based at the Horse Hospital from January 8

Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies – London

Pilot season: Jan-June 2015

Dates: 8 January, 12 February, 12 March, 9 April, 14 May, 11 June

Time: 7-10pm

Venue: Horse Hospital

Address: Colonnade, Bloomsbury, London WC1N 1JD

Prices: £10 advance / £11 on the door / £8 concs / £50 full season ticket

Miskatonic website

THE MISKATONIC INSTITUTE OF HORROR STUDIES – LONDON UNVEILS FULL JANUARY-JUNE LINEUP

The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies has revealed the full curriculum for the pilot season of its branch in London, which opens on January 8th, with intensive film classes on a wide range of topics from safety films to cannibals by some of the horror world’s most renowned critical luminaries.

Canadian founder Kier-La Janisse will make a brief UK appearance to launch the season with a lecture on classic classroom safety films and the shocks they deliver. She will be followed in February by Mark Pilkington, who will explore the exotic horrors of cannibal films. In March, Virginie Sélavy will look at 1960s-70s sado-masochistic erotica and the meanings of the various power games represented. The following month, Stephen Thrower will talk about Jesús Franco’s unique style of art, erotic and commercial filmmaking, marking the publication of his new book on the director. In May, Jasper Sharp will investigate the psychological and supernatural significance of landscapes, from Onibaba to Dust Devil. Closing the season, Kim Newman will discuss Gary Sherman’s 1972 Death Line the and the film’s use of cannibalism and political subtext.

Named for the fictional university in H.P. Lovecraft’s literary mythos, The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies is a non-profit, community-based organisation that started in Winnipeg and Montreal, Canada, founded by Kier-La Janisse in March of 2010. Miskatonic London operates under the co-direction of Kier-La Janisse and Virginie Sélavy.

All classes take place at the historic Horse Hospital, the heart of the city’s underground culture. Registration for the full season is £50. Individual class tickets are £10 advance / £11 on the door / £8 concessions and will be available 30 days in advance of each class.

For the full details of the courses please check the Miskatonic website. For all enquiries, please email Miskatonic.london@gmail.com.

Jess Franco, King of Euro-trash

Vampyros Lesbos

I’M READY FOR MY CLOSE-UP, Friday 21 September, 5-5:30pm, Resonance 104.4 FM

Justin Harries of the FilmBar70 film club talks to Virginie Sélavy about king of Spanish exploitation Jess Franco. FilmBar70 will screen Franco’s hypnotic, stylish Vampyros Lesbos (1971), starring smouldering screen siren Soledad Miranda, as part of their Scala Beyond Eurotrash all-nighter on Saturday 22 September at the Roxy Bar and Screen.

Electric Sheep and Strange Attractor Press also celebrate Jess Franco as part of Scala Beyond with a screening of The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein (1972) accompanied by a talk with writer Stephen Thrower on Wednesday 19 September at the Horse Hospital.

Scala Beyond is a 6-week nationwide film season dedicated to all forms of cinema exhibition that runs from 8 August to 29 September 2012.

The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein + guest Stephen Thrower

The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein

The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein + talk

Date: Wednesday 19 September 2012

Doors: 7pm

Venue: Horse Hospital

Address: Colonnade, Bloomsbury, London WC1N 1JD

Price: £7 / £5 concs

Horse Hospital website

WeGotTickets

WeGotTickets concession tickets

As part of Scala Beyond, Electric Sheep and Strange Attractor present Jess Franco’s The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein (La Maldici&#243n de Frankenstein, 1972) + guest Stephen Thrower.

Bizarre even by the exotic standards of Spanish exploitation maestro Jess Franco, The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein is a lurid high point in his monumental filmography. Attempting to summarise the plot will only scramble your mind, but this rich, wild, cross-genre cocktail features a tortured, silver Frankenstein’s monster, the mesmeric Count Cagliostro and his screeching feather-covered birdwoman lover, hordes of undead sadomasochistic zombies, mind control, torture dungeons, beautiful women, beefcake men, gorgeous locations, and a storming soundtrack of free jazz, library music and synth-burble. Bring a spare brain in case yours burns out after this one.

We’re also thrilled to have Stephen Thrower in the house – the author of Beyond Terror, Eyeball and Nightmare USA will talk to Virginie Sélavy and Mark Pilkington about Jess Franco’s life and films as a taster for his new book on the filmmaker, forthcoming from FAB Press.

Scala Beyond is a 6-week nationwide film season dedicated to all forms of cinema exhibition that will run from 8 August to 29 September 2012. Check their Scala Beyond website for the full programme and Facebook and Twitter for updates.

Buy advance tickets from WeGotTickets.

Buy advance concession tickets from WeGotTickets.