Etrange Festival 2010

We’ve had our eye on L’Etrange Festival for a few years now and we are very much looking forward to the 16th edition of the event, which takes place from September 3-12 in Paris. The inventive programming of the festival gives Parisian audiences a chance to see unusual and forgotten, disturbing and enchanting images, drawn from a wide pool of B-movies, exploitation, genre and fantastic cinema. It is the occasion to savour lost gems from the past as well as to discover exciting new films.

Among the premieres, L’Etrange Festival will be presenting George A Romero’s latest addition to his zombie series, Survival of the Dead; Eli Roth’s The Last Exorcism; Pontypool, a smart low-budget take on the zombie movie from Canada; Deliver Us from Evil (Délivrez-nous du mal), the new film by Ole Bornedal, director of The Substitute and Just Another Love Story; and A Serbian Film, the most talked-about horror film of the moment, which has just been pulled from FrightFest in London after being cut by the British censors.

In the section ‘Pepites de l’etrange’ (Strange Gems), we are very much looking forward to 1979 US wheelchair exploitation movie The Amazing Mr No-Legs (L’Infernale poursuite), 1966 giallo Il terzo occhio (Le Froid baiser de la mort) and Swiss sci-fi tale L’Inconnu de Shandigor (another Swiss sci-fi movie, the recent Cargo, is also showing at the festival). There is also a special evening of Tobe Hooper films, including his rarely seen first film, Eggshells, The Funhouse (Massacre dans le train fantôme) and, of course, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

L’Etrange Festival always ask various personalities of the cinema world to put together a selection of films, and this year Alejandro Jodorowsky has programmed a strand of the festival, which includes Todd Browning’s wonderful The Unknown (L’inconnu), and Nacho Cerda’s acclaimed short film Aftermath. Other programmes have been selected by Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn and gay militant Lionel Soukaz. The festival also includes homages to actors Jean-Pierre Kalfon and Mimsy Farmer, as well as a musical evening and short films. And there is a Vampire all-nighter, with rock’n’roll Canadian vampire comedy Suck, Belgian mockumentary Vampires (inspired by Man Bites Dog/C’est arrivé près de chez vous), and Prowl, the new film by Manhunt director Patrick Syversen.

This year, as in previous years, the programme impresses by its diversity, intelligence and the energy and dedication that are clearly behind it. Look out for our report at the end of September!