Part of Fall 2006
From a forerunner of modern horror films to a necromantic tour de force, Horror and Terror asks you to reconsider the supernatural. Jack Stevenson, American cult film theorist, self-proclaimed “B Movie Archaeologist” and author of Witchcraft Through the Ages: The Story of Haxan, The World’s Strangest Film (2006) brings to Pleasure Dome (in Person) a rare print of Benjamin Christensen’s macabre masterpiece Witchcraft Through the Ages. This 1960s version is narrated by William S. Burroughs with an anarchic musical score featuring Jean-Luc Ponty. Medieval superstitions, folklore, witchcraft, and devil worship are explored in exotic, explicit scenes that traverse genres.
Ever wonder what the offspring of Count Orlok and Ellen Hutter would be? What was conceived before the cock crowed at sunrise? Jennifer Reeves, a highly regarded New York based experimental single-strand filmmaker, imagines it was Madame G. In her modern horror film Shadows Choose Their Horrors, set to Aaron Copland’s ballet Grohg, Nosferatu’s necromancing daughter struggles with a Faustian complex; the gift of everlasting life can also be eternal damnation.
From the historical to the contemporary the short-works programme What are YOU scared of? examines fears and anxieties that exist within collective social conscience post 9/11. As Stephen King writes, “we make up horrors to deal with real ones.”
Programme:
What are YOU scared of? Short-works Programme:
Shadows Choose Their Horrors, Jennifer Reeves, USA, 2005, 31:00
intermission
Jack Stevenson, Introduction
Witchcraft Through the Ages, Benjamin Christensen, 1968, 77:00
