Genre Reawakenings: Experimental Horror Shorts

Online Program. PROGRAM EXPIRED April 21 to 28, 2021

To reawaken a genre is a type of resurrection. In horror, such resurrections—whether by magic or experiment—never go according to plan, often bringing the haunted or concealed into plain focus. The transgressive or painful results of these confrontations are irrevocably lingering, if not transformative. This program is both a celebration of and commentary on horror; a genre with the capacity to uniquely underscore political and aesthetic concerns. The artists featured here reconfigure the formal and thematic conventions of narrative horror films with an urgency that reminds viewers: when one entity is reawakened, it is rarely alone.

Curated by Pleasure Dome Board Director Katie Connell. Co-presented by Rue Morgue.

JOIN US for a closing Q&A moderated by Mariam Bastani (Rue Morgue) Wed., April 28, 7 pm EST.

Topic: PD Q&A Genre Reawakening
Time: Apr 28, 2021 06:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

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https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81307953155

Meeting ID: 813 0795 3155
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Meeting ID: 813 0795 3155

Mariam Bastani (she/her) is a producer/writer based in Toronto. She is the operations coordinator of Rue Morgue Magazine and co-founder of QTIBIPOC focused multimedia horror creators Audre’s Revenge Film. Mariam has curated Canadian, US and International horror screenings and was the Editor-in-Chief of Maximum Rocknroll Magazine. She has been on a number of academic speaking tours regarding PoC in punk culture and several Women in Horror panels.

Program
You Are a Lesbian Vampire, Thirza Cuthand (Canada, 2008)
Necromantic, Mark Pariselli (Canada, 2015)
Little Red’s Pie, Rae Shaw (USA, 2016)
1,2,3 Knockup, Ariel Smith (Canada, 2007)
They Will Know You by Your Fruit, Monika Estrella Negra & Valérie Bah (Montreal, QC, Canada, 2017)
Incidents, Hajeer Moradi (Iran, 2019)

Total Run Time: 00:41:29 min

Online program.

Everyone knows that monsters live in the closet and under the bed. What we are sometimes less likely to admit is that monsters live under our skin as well. Horror is not just about monsters and things in the shadows. The horrors of the 21st century have turned much more inward. In the age of COVID-19–where our own bodies have become both the victim and the perpetrator–horror also comes from inside our heads, fluctating between life and death, love and sex, family and loneliness, and everything in between.

Pleasure Dome presents Genre Reawakenings, a simultaneous resurrection of the genre and the body. Horror has always had a deep connection to the body, whether in the blood and viscera of a murder victim or the results of science run amok or even in the eponymous failure of the corpus in the tradition of body horror. As such, it only makes sense that this resurrection in the post-narrative style of the avant-garde would lead to videos less concerned with the external and more concerned with the eternally internal.

This program offers the horrors of living. The gore and shocks will continue to haunt your nightmares; but are reanimated by political urgencies and existential pangs expressed by both the alive and the undead.

In Genre Reawakenings, you will see horrors that your eyes have never seen before (outside of your own living daylights): you will see the relationship issues that come with dating in a small community of queer women who are also vampires in You Are a Lesbian Vampire. You will see what happens when you go down to the cemetery looking for love in Necromantic. You will see what happens when you discover new ways to become sexually empowered and stop unwanted wolf attacks in Little Red’s Pie. You will see the dilemma of a coming-of-age that twists around the horrors of unwanted pregnancy in 1, 2, 3, Knock Up. You will see the visceral terrors of in/fertility and historical trauma in They Will Know You by Your Fruit. And you will even see the horrors of life, aging, and death in the dreamscape–or nightmarescape–of Incidents. All this and more will be available to you in the horrific program, Genre Reawakenings.

No one under the age of 18 will be permitted without parental guidance. This program may cause heart palpitations, breakdowns, existential crises, and terror-induced side effects. In case of any of these effects, simply repeat to yourself, it is only a movie (even if it is not)!

What does your $10 membership support?

Truly, the intrinsic values of arts programming are varied and complex. Your membership allows us to contribute to the intellectual and critical understanding of experimental media through writing, discussions, screenings, essays, and interviews. In turn, our publications and engagements improve arts literacy, critical engagement, and intellectual curiosity in the sector, and in the public. Your membership allows us to support the production, presentation, and interest in radical and utterly experimental moving image work. Importantly, your membership allows us to provide reputable, professional, and paid presentation opportunities for the exhibition of marginalized works. For more info visit our membership page.