Underwater Love

We are very much looking forward to our friends Third Window Films’ UK premiere of Underwater Love on Sunday 16 October at the Rich Mix in London, with live performance from German/French synth-pop duo Stereo Total and DJs.

Underwater Love is a whimsical Japanese pink film (Japanese soft porn) musical by world-renowned cinematographer Christopher Doyle (Hero, In the Mood for Love, Limits of Control) and legendary pink film director Shinji Imaoka with all original music (in Japanese!) by Stereo Total.

Asuka works in a lakeside fish factory. She is just about to be married to her boss. One day, she encounters a Kappa, a water creature living in the lake and learns that it is the reincarnation of Aoki, her first love. What ensues is a zany spectacle of love, music and sex.

An evening of psychedelic cine-sonic shape-shifting presented by The Anti-Gravity Chamber and The House of Black Fuzz in association with the British Film Institute.

Featuring:

Rarely seen mind-blowing psychedelic short films funded by the BFI Production Board, all projected in their original 16mm format

A special performance of mind-bending live music by Raagnagrok

Special guest DJs Julian House and Jim Jupp (Ghost Box Music) will sonically enhance the mood of the happening and extend the evening into an after-show party

All accompanied by a mind-frying live psychedelic light show with ultra-vivid coloured oils boiled alive before your very eyes

Solar Flares Burn for You presents a specially curated programme of rarely seen short psychedelic and pop-art films (1967-73), all originally produced with the financial assistance of the BFI (British Film Institute) and now preserved in the BFI National Archive.

Famed for hosting underground burlesque nights, performance art and raucous music events, for this evening only the venue will be transformed into an immersive moving image environment to invoke the spirit of the original underground arts lab culture from which the films emerged.

Moving outside of the staid and reverential space of the traditional cinema theatre, Solar Flares Burn for You will harness moving images and sonic experimentation to take you beyond the screen and into the fabric of a live happening in which all are welcome to participate.

With the 90-minute programme of short films forming the centrepiece of the event, the screening will segue into a special live music performance by Raagnagrok, visually augmented by a live mix of visuals by the Bardo Light Show and the Anti-Gravity Chamber.

Beyond this final frontier our guest DJs, Julian House and Jim Jupp of Ghost Box Music, visually enhanced by their own official video loops will shift the mood up a gear and into after-show party overdrive with an eclectic sound-collage of way-out library music, obscure folk, soundtracks, electronica and psychedelia until the small hours of the morning.

Edinburgh 2011: Director's chair along Princes Street

The Edinburgh International Film Festival has announced an innovative new venture, Project: New Cinephilia, aimed to stimulate debate around film criticism and appreciation today.

The project, which culminates in a day-long event on June 16th, will spark conversation with essays, thoughts and ideas from critics, writers, bloggers and filmmakers who are challenging established modes of thinking about cinema. Remote contributors will publish work via a dedicated microsite, launching on May 17 and co-presented by online cinematheque/social network MUBI, which will host comments and discussion around these commissioned materials in their Forums. Other contributors will participate in online roundtables chaired by Jigsaw Lounge founder Neil Young and Michael Koresky, editorial manager at The Criterion Collection and co-founding editor of Reverse Shot. Koresky will join two other visiting journalists, freelance critic Eric Hynes (Village Voice, Time Out New York), and filmmaker/critic Jeff Reichert (Gerrymandering; co-founding editor of Reverse Shot) attending the event.

Project: New Cinephilia will culminate in a day-long symposium comprising of six interactive sessions which are open to audiences, press, bloggers and film lovers. Topics include new critical approaches to reading film; discussions on how film is consumed in the 21st century and the role of cinema in our daily lives; and a masterclass in how to start your own fanzine, blog or film journal. The day will come to close with a playful 140-character Film Critic Deathmatch, a “battle to the best review” using Twitter.

Let's Scare Jessica to Death

To celebrate the launch of Kim Newman’s updated essential horror tome Nightmare Movies (published 18 April), Newman and fellow horror expert Mark Kermode will take to the BFI Southbank stage for an illustrated conversation on all things scary in film. Immediately followed by a screening of a special evil treat picked by Newman, the rarely seen Let’s scare Jessica to Death.

Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (Dir John D Hancock, USA, 197, 89 min)
Recently released from a stay in a mental institution after a nervous breakdown, Jessica moves to a Victorian-era farmhouse with her husband and close friend in an effort to start afresh. Already fragile, when Jessica encounters Emily, an enigmatic and supposedly transient hippie in her new home, it disturbs her and, convinced that Emily is a vampiric ghost who is draining the rural town’s population, she becomes increasingly unnerved. Is Jessica having another breakdown or is something sinister going on?

Following the screening Kim Newman will be signing his new edition of Nightmare Movies which will be available for sale at the BFI Filmstore.

Mother Joan of Angels

Don’t miss the East End Film Festival’s very special screening of Mother Joan of Angels in the beautiful church of St John on Bethnal Green. You can win a pair of tickets to this fantastic event on our Film Roulette page!

This is what our writer Stephen Thomson previously wrote about the film:

Polish master Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s acclaimed Mother Joan of Angels is a feverish exploration of sexual repression and religious fanaticism.

‘Is it my fault that I’m possessed by eight powerful demons?’ Father Jozef is only the latest in a regiment of exorcists dragged to a convent in a blasted wasteland to sort out Mother Joan. Initially impressed in a purely professional capacity by her range of devil moves, he is gradually drawn into her drama, until he loses himself in it. When desire can only find expression in the baroque theatre of possession and devotional self-harm, director Jerzy Kawalerowicz seems to be saying, the consequences are dire. But Mother Joan is not all Tarkovskian gloom: love in the convent precincts may be ultimately doomed, but the film has a fond eye for cheeky grins peeping out of wimples.

In fact, Kawalerowicz maintains near-perfect poise between taking religious torment seriously and celebrating earthly delights. The narrative traces a path back and forth between the inn with its unrestrained if boorish cavorting, and the convent where the battle between purity and lust contorts its denizens into hieroglyphs; now human crucifixes, now packets of convulsed limbs.

Lucyna Winnicka as Joan most brilliantly condenses these conflicts into one radiant face, able to slide seamlessly between sincere religious devotion and more earthly desire. Her rapt adoration for Father Jozef’s benediction pivots on the word ‘love’ into habit-rending lust. Between these extremes, it is as if there really is no difference, only a change in the light. In manifesting passion like an electric charge through a body, Winnicka’s performance is exemplary, the equal, mutatis mutandis, of Kathleen Byron’s in Black Narcissus. With practically no commentary or explication, Mother Joan is a brilliant visual exposition of the idea of possession as the only available mise en scène for emotions that inexorably inhabit and overpower a ceremonial sincerely meant to transcend them.

Future Cinema: Dennis Hopper Tribute

Our friends at Future Cinema, creators of the acclaimed Secret Cinema, present a very special screening tribute to the late, great Dennis Hopper with a unique screening of David Lynch’s 1986 cult classic Blue Velvet on Saturday 31st July.

Taking place at the Troxy, one of London’s oldest cinema spaces and the site of Secret Cinema’s famous Bugsy Malone events in November 2009, the night will mix film, live music, food and drink to celebrate the life and work of cinema’s favourite rebel.

The audience are invited to come dressed as their favourite Hopper character or leading lady.

Dennis Hopper’s career spanned over 5 decades throughout which he became known as one of Hollywood’s most unconventional and charismatic icons. Starring in some of cinema’s most recognisable classics including Rebel Without A Cause, Apocalypse Now and Easy Rider, Hopper played an important role in redefining the face of cinema – representing a new breed of idealist, risk-taking filmmakers who broke from convention in the 1960s and beyond. The icon tragically died of cancer in May this year.

The tribute screening also marks the first in an ongoing campaign by Future Cinema to reclaim the cinema-going experience by bringing it back to the local community. By taking cinema out of multiplexes and into unique venues around London and the UK, Future Cinema aim to unite local audiences, encourage debate and celebrate the true spirit of cinema.

Secret Cinema: Blade Runner

Emerging from the escalators at Canary Wharf into an unseasonably cold and damp June evening, the first sight that greeted us was of two futuristic policemen standing guard, while air stewardesses in retro outfits guided ‘passengers’ to a Utopian Airways shuttle. After a few minutes on board, a man in a trench coat abruptly stopped the bus, alerting the passengers and crew that we were to be redirected to a holding station in the wake of a replicant rebellion. In case anyone hadn’t figured it out by now, we were on our way to a screening of Ridley Scott’s classic sci-fi film Blade Runner.

The bus reached its destination a few moments later, a desolate yard in the shadows of Canary Wharf’s skyscrapers. Walking between rows of shipping containers, boys in uniform yelled at us to hurry inside the warehouse; we were harassed by refugees and disturbed by the site of three vertically challenged men taking baseball bats to a car. Inside was a stunning recreation of the film’s futuristic vision of LA, with its crowded stalls selling anything from noodles to replicant pets. Pole dancers, masks covering their faces, shimmied on top of scaffolding, overlooking the bar where Chrome Hoof, clad in gold, played a set of jarring, angular rock. Women with snakes draped across their shoulders roamed through the crowd. A woman in a see-through plastic coat sat at a vanity table applying make-up. An actress, dressed in torn stockings and a fur coat, wearing a blonde wig, wandered, oblivious, through the guests. Outside in the back yard, a fire-eater performed on top of an armoured vehicle.

While it was impossible to completely shake the feeling that it was all an elaborate set-up, the level of detail that went into organising the event was near genius. The army of actors, who portrayed nuns, strippers, police officers, Decker, Roy, Rachael, and almost everyone from the cast, were impressive in their ability to stay in character while surrounded by throngs of film-goers knocking back sushi and beer. A few drinks later, when we were finally ushered into the screening room, the recreation of J.F Sebastien’s apartment that greeted us was breathtaking; more actors and actresses dressed as his robotic playthings littered the remarkable set. By that time, the film itself was almost a side-show, the crowd even cheering at the scene when Decker and Rachael kiss. But there was still a surprise left in store for the audience: Decker and Roy, playing out their final scene, hanging off the brick wall of the warehouse, illuminated by a projection of the building’s façade.

It was a remarkable night; and it’s almost impossible to imagine how Secret Cinema will ever top it. I’ll certainly be there next time to see if they pull it off.

Sarah Cronin